try and tell this story some other way and see how far you get

Challenge accepted. I will post my reply tomorrow morning.

On January 6th, I (like everybody else) heard about the angry mob breaking in to the Capitol and roughing the place up, and I was angry about the whole deal. A dangerous man, faced with the prospect of losing his power, was seen to lash out using the people he had so thoroughly deceived for so long as a weapon against his colleagues who were, at that moment, meeting to ceremonially confirm the turning of the governmental wheels and the end of his term in office. Two days later, I saw this post and some anger rose up all over again for those events.

"We Witness Now..." is, indeed, alarmist. As Impassionata wrote, "I am sounding an alarm"! But they also wrote, "try and tell this story some other way", and for some reason that stuck with me. There is another way to tell this story; probably many other ways. To be clear, I don't think Impassionata is wrong, exactly. The response we've seen from members of the state in the last couple of days since the event has varied between silence and indifference and outrage. A hunt has been called to find anybody who was involved and punish them for their crimes. And they are criminals! These people are unquestionably guilty of a variety of crimes like B&E, entering a restricted area, vandalism, and probably many other words that all mean that they broke into a place and did a little damage. A small number of people got killed and a slightly larger number got hurt, and each and every individual who participated in that mob bears a portion of the responsibility. If there are no consequences, we will see more of this type of behavior in the future.

I thought these things for two days.

Then I remembered something important: the people Trump used as weapons (and, indeed, Trump himself) are still people. They are the same as us in so many ways that, if we had experienced their lives we would be them. There must be consequences, yes, and those consequences must be balanced to respect the lives of those who, in a fit of delusion and anger-barely-concealing-fear, acted to defend themselves from an imaginary threat.

Here [LW · GW] is another way to tell the story.

Yesterday, I almost joined the crowd in down-voting this post. Today, I up-vote in gratitude for the value I found. Thank you, Impassionata, for helping me think these thoughts.