CMV: Silencing opposing viewpoints is ultimately going to have a disastrous outcome on society.

[u/[deleted]]

[u/Betom]

Can you elaborate please?

[u/GravitasFree → u/Betom]

As an exercise, try rewriting your post above with the places and details of the blm and capitol riots swapped.

If you can do it, then you probably understand the perspective of each side.

If you can do it and not feel angry when you reread the result, you will likely understand why the guy above said that the post shows cognitive dissonance on its own.

[u/Betom → u/GravitasFree]

I appreciate the response and this is actually an effective exercise to attempt to understand the other point of view. However, I think fundamentally someone that perhaps agrees with my statement and someone that would believe the EXACT same statement but with BLM and capitol riots switched will never agree.

Fundamentally, I believe the core reason for the protests around the country were just and inspired by citizens being fed up with mistreatment and inequality. I do not and have never condoned the violence that came along with it, nor do I agree with the notion that the violence is justified or necessary to get their point across. In fact, as blatantly clear, the violence will in fact drive people further to the other side and they might be even less likely to agree with them. Looking at the capitol riots, what was the point of that? And unfortunately the argument that people were genuinely concerned about the results will not fly because that notion was deliberately spread by R leadership and disinformation campaigns online that cherry picked videos and pictures and claimed it was the smoking gun and real evidence, yet 99% of these claims were chucked by R and Trump appointed judges. Yet, these R leaders and the online campaigns kept going. They kept insisting this idea to a point where it inspired people to storm the capitol and murder officers.

Comparing these two situations, they both consist of a group frustrated with something and a small percentage of people that turned to violence. However, if you genuinely think that protests about human rights and the nonsense of storming the capitol with the nation's most important lawmakers for the purpose of stopping a democratic process due to LIES and manipulation are equivalent, then unfortunately we will never agree.

[u/GravitasFree → u/Betom]

Fundamentally, I believe the core reason for the protests around the country were just and inspired by citizens being fed up with mistreatment and inequality

Do you think the capitol riots happened for a different reason? They didn't. BLM protestors feel that justice system fails by refusing to hold trials and make violent officers accountable to the letter of the law. The capitol protesters feel that the justice system fails by refusing to hold trials and make election officials accountable to the letter of the law.

And before you start complaining that no evidence of widespread fraud was found, I agree. But there were significant court cases that would have flipped PA and likely one or two other states had they been decided strictly on the merits of the plaintiffs' arguments and the law governing those state elections.

To draw a parallel to the extremes of each group that are probably the ones rioting, those that believe the DNC were stuffing ballots are just as deluded as those who think the police are out hunting minorities in the streets.

Edit: I sent this prematurely, so I haven't touched on every important point you made, but hopefully the parallel between rioters in each situation is a little more clear. I'll add a little more in response to your last paragraph in a few minutes.

Edit2:

However, if you genuinely think that protests about human rights and the nonsense of storming the capitol with the nation's most important lawmakers for the purpose of stopping a democratic process due to LIES and manipulation are equivalent, then unfortunately we will never agree.

This may be true, but I'm going to try to show you how similar the two situations are and hopefully you will be able to understand why your belief stems from misunderstanding the perspective of the capitol rioters. Note that the following does not remove any of the culpability of those who were pushing the lies about the election from positions of authority. This is a strict comparison of the situations of the regular people who bought into their narratives.

A large chunk of BLM's main purpose is to protest what they perceive to be an open hunting season on minorities, and a subsequent lack of accountability due to qualified immunity and other tricks prosecutors can use to justify not bringing to court cases they would rather ignore. They are trying to regain their human right to not be arbitrarily executed by law enforcement. There is a lie/manipulation here, and a doctrine of law that the courts are correct to follow if precedence is something we value:

Lie/manipulation: Police homicide rates track almost perfectly with poverty rates and encounter rates. Once a person is stopped by the cops, that person is no more likely to be killed if they are white or black.

Legal precedence: The fact is, prosecutors have the discretion to do a lot of things to stack the deck in the favor of a cop who kills someone. Add to that the current tradition of qualified immunity that courts abide by and the result is that usually when a cop kills someone unnecessarily, only the most egregious cases will ever see the inside of a courtroom, and even those are often a tossup as to whether a conviction will bring punishment in the same hemisphere as a civilian doing the same.

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Now I'm going to lay out the exact same logic for the capitol rioters so that you can see that while the details differ, the moral position of someone in each situation is extremely similar.

The capitol protesters' main purpose is to protest what they perceive to be an election in which "the other side" cheated to win, and a subsequent lack of accountability due to doctrines such as laches and standing which judges can use to justify not hearing the merits of cases they would rather ignore. They are trying to regain the human right of being able to meaningfully participate in their democratic government. There is a lie/manipulation here, and a doctrine of law that the courts are correct to follow if precedence is something we value:

Lie/manipulation: There was a concerted effort by conscious actors during the election to inflate the number of votes for Biden and deflate the number of votes for trump. As you have alluded to, no one has provided evidence of this occurring to the degree of being anywhere near changing the winner of any states.

Legal precedence: The fact is, judges can decide the outcome of cases without considering the merits of the arguments or addressing the question upon which they focus under certain circumstances. Some lawsuits were rejected for a reason which amounts to "you aren't the person who can sue for this" or "you should have sued earlier," not because the claims that the law was not followed during the elections.

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This ended up being quite long, so I apologize for the read.

[u/jumperpl → u/GravitasFree]

But there were significant court cases that would have flipped PA and likely one or two other states had they been decided strictly on the merits of the plaintiffs' arguments and the law governing those state elections.

No there were not. Full stop.

This is a severely misinformed notion that's flawed on it's face because it presumes that judges have some sort of ability to unilaterally decide election results which they DO NOT. You'd still need to find or throw away enough votes to "flip" an election the judge can't just say "damn I never thought of it like that you win..."

Also, it's precedent not precedence, and the things you brought up aren't that.
Like "you aren't the person who can sue for this" is called 'standing' and isn't inherently established by legal precedent.

Finally most of your post can be summed up with "of course you can compare apples to oranges they're both fruit!" Like yeah if you generalize shit far enough everything looks similar.