So I am choosing to remain 51 for another year, or, hell, maybe start going backwards….

Inside every old person is a young person who looks in the mirror and says, "What the f*ck happened?" I am officially 67 now; by a variety of statistical sources, that gives me less than 20 expected years. It's not enough. There are too many things that I still don't know. And I can't learn them as fast as I used to.

First, you need to sort the particulars.

There's a $300 weekly federally funded bump up in Unemployment Insurance, to be administered by the states.

There's a $600 one time stimulus check.

And Biden has proposed adding $1400 to this to get to $2000.

While the debates you outline might serve certain pedantic interests, there's no lack of clarity here on what is under discussion.

I am, on the advice of my doctor, making An Excursion! this weekend. I am masking up (probably breaking out the KN95s I bought for lab this semester) and going to the JoAnn Fabrics and the Kroger (and maybe, if I go early enough and it's not busy, the Ulta right next door to the JoAnn's.

I had my regular checkup (I am on a six month schedule because of high blood pressure and allergies and some difficulty initially getting both under control) and it was a televisit, and she asked me - as she said she was asking all her patients - how I was doing emotionally and I kind of laughed and said "good days and bad days" and that I was feeling isolation hard, because I was only doing grocery shopping at the small local grocery and that only once every 10 days, and she was of the opinion that an early-in-the-day, well-masked and distanced trip was safe, and probably necessary for my mental health.

Also there are some things the Kroger sells that my local grocery does not. I laid in a supply back in October when I last got out there, saying to myself, "Well, maybe by the time I run out of these things I'll be vaccinated" but I've learned since NOT to say that (sigh). So it's a stock up and then hunker down trip.

But yeah, I am really feeling what they call "third quarter phenomenon" right now - tired of being alone, tired of only short conversations from 6 or 10 feet away and then with a mask on, tired of the inside of my house and of my office, tired of my hands being chapped from constant washing, just TIRED. And the hell of it is? I don't know if it's really the third quarter or only the first still.

I have already said I refuse to acknowledge getting a year older (52! how did I get here) the end of February if it's not safe for me to go DO anything. And it almost certainly won't. So I am choosing to remain 51 for another year, or, hell, maybe start going backwards....

I was surprised to see $1200 hit my account on January 1. I didn't think I met the criteria for a second check but I guess my adjusted income puts me below the line? I assume I got $1200 because I claim one of my sons as a dependent (the other fucker can remain outside... he knows what he did).

I don't really need the stimulus. I'll likely have an eventual loss of income due to time off I'm taking to support the boys' schooling, but I have sufficient savings to more than make up for it. My plan is to spend the money locally as much/best I can and/or donate to charity.

Exactly. If the Capitol insurrectionists did need there to be a lesson about a 'lack of response' before they would have done this(1), that they needed to know they would get away with 'We shall take over a legislative body and not allow the government to do what they are trying to do'...this was a lesson learned by, and I feel this is somewhat obvious, the previous time right-wing activists took over a government building and stopped the government from doing what they were trying to do, and there was no response and they all got away with it.

1) Not that they really did. They're white people. They know they can protest however they want

Exactly. If the Capitol insurrectionists did need to be a lesson about a 'lack of response' before they would have done this(1), that they needed to know they would get away with 'We shall take over a legislative body and not allow the government to do what they are trying to do'...this was a lesson learned by, and I feel this is somewhat obvious, the previous time right-wing activists took over a government building and stopped the government from doing what they were trying to do, and there was no response and they all got away with it.

1) Not that they really did. They're white people. They know they can protest however they want

RE: ...absent a very obvious display of force.

I expect thousands of national guard soldiers at Biden's swearing in. I expect there won't be any problems.

Well sure, but if LE was on the ball in Minneapolis instead of being all rage-aholic that anyone would dare not respect their authoritah then we'd probably not have had the riots in the first place.

That stipulated if we just posit that the police were slightly decayed instead of badly decayed and they and the DA's were trying to go after the violent vandals and looters, well, how exactly would they do that? Chasing after the capitol invaders is comparatively easy because pictures of them in the capitiol at the time of the invasion is pretty open and shut case for the charges that will be levied at them. The looting and vandalizing mostly occurred (in Minneapolis at least) under cover of darkness by masked young men. I was standing, sick with fury, on my own condo’s balcony watching as what looked like a bunch of white and asian college kids in masks sacked the liquor store across the street. Could I identify them in a police lineup? No, I certainly could not. And how would the cops even get the right candidates into a lineup? The population of suspects is too big, the identifying info seems too sparse, the cases are too numerous.

I’ve been mulling over why the BLM comparisons with the Capitol invasion chafes me so much and I think, setting aside the ludicrous BSDI/moral equivalency element which is mostly absent in this specific line of argument, it’s that it’s self-defeating. If we did this near impossible thing when the BLM demonstrations happened then it might have discouraged the Capitol invasion from happening? I mean, maybe, but it’s near impossible. If we’re talking about throwing the book at those few people who were identified and caught looting or doing violence? Well, umm, aren’t we doing that?

If we’re talking about denouncing the violence and looting, well, the majority of the left did that. The minority of public figures and the and the online chattering examples who are dissenting or demurring from that denunciation are simply being megaphoned and highlighted as indicative of the wider left. FFS, AOC is brought up constantly. How many fishing Congresspeople are in the God(ess?) damned squad again? Isn’t it 3? We both know why the positions of 90 some moderate Democratic Congresspeople and the Democrats own President Elect are ignored in these discussions- because their moderate sensible opinions on rioting are inconvenient and doesn’t advance this equivalency narrative.

And, yet, this is mostly me digressing. Sure, I agree that if the white looting fishers had been identified and strung up then MAYBE it would have been disincentive to the Capitol invaders- but I doubt it. The Capitol invaders were middle clase, middle aged prosperous white men. They'd have looked at the BLM looters and said "Those fishers got what's coming to them and are nothing like us. They wanted free booze and TV's, we want Patriotism." So even strictly on it's own merits I think your point is a weak one.

Adding: seems to me the better counterfactual analysis to explain the insurrectionists behavior on Jan 6th would be the police response to two events conducted by folks on the right: the Bundy's occupation of the wildlife refuge and the armed militia taking over the Michigan state legislature. Both of those were *wildly* successful uses of private power to oppose government. Ie. "if not for those events and the correlated responses, there would have been no siege of the capitol."

Perception is EVERYTHING here. The entirety of the argument rides on perception.

Well, perception can't be "everything" otherwise the argument you made in the OP makes no sense, right? Delusional people have perceptions that are divorced from reality, yet they still act on their perceptions.

Maybe you want to say that the Trumpist insurrectionists had *correct* perceptions about not facing any consequences for engaging in a violent attack on the Capitol building despite the fact that those "correct" perceptions may turn out to be incorrect?

Let's flip it around. Seems to me that you're argument is that the thought process invoked by the folks that violently attacked the Capitol builidng (with intent to murder and kidnap elected CCers and Pence) was that since the BLM rioters weren't arrested and charged for the illegal violent acts they committed, they wouldn't be arrested and charged for illegally storming (and attempting to kill and kidnap various CCers) the Capitol building.

Is that plausible, though? In what way would *ascribing* (and let's be clear here, that's what you're doing in the OP, you're ascribing a mental state and a thought process to the insurrectionists) that belief be plausible? They'd have to (falsely) believe that storming the capitol wouldn't result in criminal charges against them; they'd have to believe (falsely) that the riots flowing from the BLM protests didn't result in charges against those perpetrators; they'd have to believe (falsely) that the use of violence to achieve political ends was justified based on the (incorrect) evidence of the riots over the summer. And that last one is the key, it seems to me, in understanding the thought processes of the insurrectionists: irrespective of the riots over the summer, those folks truly believe that the election was stolen from Trump and that Congress and/or Pence had the power to make things right, but that they were too chicken-s*** to act without some prodding. That was the perception they were acting under.

Two additional thoughts: if the response is that those protestors aren't so stupid as to actually believe the election was stolen so there's some other cause of their actions, I'd say that your hypothesis already attributes a high level of stupidity to them. Second, if the response is an insistence of that the violent protests over the summer helped cause the siege of the capitol, I'd insist that the counterfactual has no truth conditions, especially since the motivation for the siege can be explained by other factors (like a kindasorta did above).

I remember watching Rocky and Bullwinkle on the TV in my parent's bedroom, lying on their bed before having to rush off to catch the bus for school. This'd be in the first house I can remember us living in.

Nothing in particular on my docket this weekend (wash/rinse/repeat).

How were they stoppable? I mean, I suppose if the mass demonstrations themselves hadn't happened then the opportunistic douchebags wouldn't have turned out to take advantage of the suppressed police presence to loot and trash stuff. That seems like a non-starter to me.

I'm uncertain how BLM itself could have prevented the violent element. The police themselves strongly prioritized harassing the peaceful demonstrators and ignoring or even encouraging the violent ones. That's policing 101 for undermining protests against police tactics.

I mean, heck, I'm second to no one in my disdain of the parasites who commit to violence at demonstrations and in my contempt of leftists who try and justify said violence as anything but unproductive and lamentable but I don't see how an event as vast and spontaneous as the BLM protests could have prevented the destruction that ensued on its margins.

There is no connection with regard to the prosecutors. Local DAs and federal prosecutors have completely different concerns and motivations. Any rioter who thought that the federal authorities would let slide a riot in the Capitol is an idiot. But I honestly think that is a given (that they were idiots).

As for other direct evidence, no. If there was direct evidence, there wouldn't really need to be an argument.

Prove that the maga chuds would have been perfect, peaceful little angels without the BLM protests.

Sounds like being told to prove a negative, so... umm... no.

Also, what are you trying to argue with your counterpoints?

Ah, yes, that you for reminding me about all the white folks who protested and did not have the cops get all beaty on them. Those protests and the responses to them add to the mixed bag of responses in F1.

That arc kicks off with one of the jokes that sailed over my head when I was a kid and, as an adult, strikes me as laugh out loud funny.

It takes place between 1:38 and 1:44:

Holy cow, I'm realizing that the cartoon benefits from the very recent radio dominance. Rocky and Bullwinkle is a radio show with funny pictures.

Chip thinks a lot about race, so he assumes everyone thinks a lot about race.
And everybody is motivated by racial issues.
And everything has racism at it's core.

Hammer, nail...

There was a throwaway joke where Bullwinkle was calling the government and complained about "adding new states all the time".

"Wait, when did Alaska/Hawaii become states?", I asked. Both were made states in 1959. The episode in question aired in 1960.

This joke was funny in 2021. I can only imagine how funny it would have been in 1960.

I *LOVE* Rocky and Bullwinkle, and I agree with what you say here. I actually like the short things (Sherman and Peabody, Fractured Fairy Tales, etc.) better than the serial stories. I, too, watched it in syndication as a child and have, in my adult like, occasionally netflixed the dvd's. The humor is very adult (in a good way).

I read about how Facebook has all my data and knows everything about me and use this information to keep me trapped in an ideological bubble where everyone agrees with me and feed me ads that I'm powerless to resist, and then I go on Facebook and I see a bunch of posts about how great it would be if Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez could both be President at the same time, and ads for stuff I either just bought or have absolutely no desire for.

The area I work in tech is adjacent to "sentiment analysis" ... I hear it's come a long way in the past decade, but from what I hear, it still seems that sarcasm's a bitch. Should be using SarCaptcha.