Let's take it for what it is: a completely unacceptable act of violence by a few people instigated by the constant delivery of blatant lies.
At first the lies were shocking: "Biggest inauguration ever? What the hell is he talking about? Didn't he see the pictures? Oh, alternative facts.. LOL. Well, good thing they're incompetent and not dangerous."
Now the lies are dangerous. So many were complaining 4 years ago because this arc seemed inevitable. Let someone lie and verbally attack anyone who slightly disagrees with them without repercussion and they'll keep pushing to see where the line is.
So many thought: "I'm sure he's learned his lesson this time!" In reality, you'd have to be blinded by naiveté or something worse to think he was going to change or moderate his behavior or tactics.
It's not that people are scared that a few hundred people storming the capital will actually overturn our almost 250 year old democracy. It's that if we don't respond with intense rejection of this behavior, this behavior could easily become an existential threat to the republic. What's to stop the next President from bringing an armed secret service or a willing FBI SWAT team into a Senate proceeding?
The line should have been drawn long before this incident. But now, for sure, if you violently attack the halls of democracy you should be banned from far more than a few private digital platforms.
> What makes the "attack" on the Capitol any worse than the "attack" on the White House in Sep 2020?
Those protesters didn't have bombs and guillotines. And they were being beaten and gassed by police, they weren't killing police officers. I hear you that if that mob killed someone it would be just as bad, 100% agree.
> It boggles my mind to think that censorship is how to handle dissent.
Because you have the right to be a jerk in your own house, but not in mine. Twitter is not Trump's house, it's Jack's and his shareholders. Trump's being a jerk so them kicked him out. Some things that will get you banned on Twitter, FB will let slide and visa versa. If people don't like their policies, they can leave. It's a free market, which is a traditional Republican position. It's never been a Republican position to force a company to allow someone to create their own Terms & Conditions or User Agreement or force companies to accept someone as a customer until this modern "free speech should apply to private companies" movement.
And dissent is different than lying. It's clear his ego can't handle losing and he will desperately resort to pressure folks to "find votes" in Georgia, or pressure Senators to not certify electoral votes that withstood every legal challenge. This isn't normal and this isn't OK. It's not like this is a healthy debate or a passionate dissent that someone's getting deplatformed for. This is a dangerous, self-indulgent, completely self-serving game of lying to the public that's already resulted in multiple deaths.
If Trump gets arrested for speaking his mind in a public park then we have a huge problem. Until then, he can build his own platform and spout his ideas there. No one is stopping him and no one should.
Setting fire to an empty church (arson) is a lot different than attacking an active session of congress (terrorism) with the stated goal of forcibly blocking the certification of the next democratically elected President (coup). Yes, they're both crimes and both bad, but only in the same way that assault and murder are both crimes and both bad.
Parler is still free to operate. Just don't expect the tacit cooperation of those who understand just how bad situation could have been if the mob actually found Pence and did what they were chanting they wanted to do to him.
Yeah, but they weren’t instructed to go there by a politician. And their goal was to disrupt, not kill.
This is a classic “both sides” argument.
Are you arguing that both sides have done bad things? Yes, that’s true. Everyone at some point in their life has done a bad thing, so you will always be able to point out “a bad thing”.
Are you arguing that both sides have done bad things of the same degree? No way. I’d love to hear an example of any other party leader in history using the inflammatory language Trump has used, lying about election results to supporters and begging politicians to overturn an election, resulting in terrorism and multiple deaths. This is unprecedented, inexcusable and unfortunately completely predictable.
I don't know of any example in the last 150 years of a party leader doing that.
But this isn't about Trump; this is about Parler and the consistency of AWS is applying to its Terms and Service to of service for hundreds of thousands of users over the weekend.
Trump doesn't even use Parler AFAIK; his actions are related but tangential to the core issue of Parler + AWS.
Parler is not independent though, in the sense that they rely on Amazon servers, and Amazon has a right to decide who they do business with.
Similarly, Google and Apple can choose who they allow to use their marketplaces. On Android I believe Parler wouldn't have too hard a time distributing their app on their own. But granted, on Apple devices, I think installing non App Store software is a non-starter for most people.
This begs a somewhat unrelated question though--why doesn't Parler just live as a web application that doesn't require an app? They would still have to migrate from AWS, but it would still allow people to continue using it despite Google and Apple's decisions, right?
and no one has said that parlor has to shut down. if you agree with the train of thought that if twitter doesn't want you go and start your own, then you apply that same logic to Apple and Google saying they don't want parlor.
At first the lies were shocking: "Biggest inauguration ever? What the hell is he talking about? Didn't he see the pictures? Oh, alternative facts.. LOL. Well, good thing they're incompetent and not dangerous."
Now the lies are dangerous. So many were complaining 4 years ago because this arc seemed inevitable. Let someone lie and verbally attack anyone who slightly disagrees with them without repercussion and they'll keep pushing to see where the line is.
So many thought: "I'm sure he's learned his lesson this time!" In reality, you'd have to be blinded by naiveté or something worse to think he was going to change or moderate his behavior or tactics.
It's not that people are scared that a few hundred people storming the capital will actually overturn our almost 250 year old democracy. It's that if we don't respond with intense rejection of this behavior, this behavior could easily become an existential threat to the republic. What's to stop the next President from bringing an armed secret service or a willing FBI SWAT team into a Senate proceeding?
The line should have been drawn long before this incident. But now, for sure, if you violently attack the halls of democracy you should be banned from far more than a few private digital platforms.