Hellobee Boards

Big time. My husband works in the Capitol. He was safe at home but his colleagues were in the thick of this. I lived through a coup as a kid, and watching this unfold was horrifying. We were a mess yesterday and told our daughter a high level version of why because we don’t turn on TV news so she wouldn’t be aware otherwise. They talked about it during school today a bit and we had a good conversation about it all after. But yeah, this is heavy. As a manager, I had to help my people at work as well as they were processing it all and I take that responsibility very seriously so it’s been a lot.

I am disgusted by the domestic terrorist attack on our capitol yesterday. DH and I talked about it with DS (5) tonight at dinner. Basically we used this post from @parenting.littles as a starting point. We said “people were angry that they didn’t get their way” rather that saying “scared and angry”. He had a few questions and we finished up by talking about what we can do when we are angry, frustrated, disappointed, etc and made sure he knew that we would keep him safe and that we were here for any questions he might have

I also checked on here for a thread, but was so overwhelmed in my other channels I chose not to start one. It makes me so sick and depressed to watch the events happening yesterday and the responses from some. At first I thought, whatever, some idiots broke into the capitol building, but it has slowly become more real to me. I have no connections to DC, never even visited. But to realize the size of the protests, the scale of violence, Trump's statements, and the comparison to the police response to the BLM protests? Genuinely shocking.

I wish so hard that the Trump supporters I have in my family and extended family realize why I could not vote Republican this last election cycle. The party is unrecognizable to me. Claims of Antifa infiltrating the protests by people in my facebook feed demonstrate what a world of conspiracy theorists Trump has caused. I learned today about the 'Gish gallop' and it is exactly how I've seen them engage. Sheer quantity of conspiracies don't prove anything other than their desperation to not believe the group they identify with has done something deplorable.

My kids are too young to process, aren't in school, and I don't want to unload this uncertainty on them. I know I'm privileged to not live near protests that I would need to explain to them and I wish all of you that have to explain these events can stay safe.

I don't understand. So many people are saying they are shocked and surprised and can't imagine that this happened.

I'm not the least surprised or didn't imagine this would happen... this is the logical next step for conspiracy theorists and trump supporters. I expected this to happen on election day.

I'm an avid history buff, and we have just been living through the rise of Hitler to power, which culminated in destroying Germany's democracy through Kristallnacht and the burning of the Reichstag....
German democracy wasn't strong enough to get Hitler out, which obviously resulted in his facist dictatorship. The USA's democracy miraculously was strong enought to get him out (but only after trump killed over 300,000 people), but it has been SEVERELY damaged by trump and the republican party over and over again. Don't forget that trump and the republicans packed the courts with young incompetent prejudiced judges who have life terms. One ENTIRE branch of government has been weakened if not broken for the next 60 years. Congress has been hamstringed by republicans for YEARS, so lets hope that the Democrats and Progressives are ready to pass 30 years worth of legislation in 2 years. Its the only way forward.

If you consider yourself a republican in any way shape or form, I beg you to really think about what the fuck you are supporting when you vote for ANYONE in the republican party.

@jennlin821: I'm not surprised it happened, the environment has been ripe for a long time. I'm surprised by how far it was allowed to go at the Capitol. I really did think that Capitol police would have had a strong presence and they just basically let them run free. I am on Capitol Hill regularly (pre-pandemic) to pick up the car from my husband's office lot or to drop off something for him or for work related things, and you can't look left without someone demanding your ID. In 2013 a woman with significant mental issues ran a barrier and was bullet-sprayed to death, even though she hurt no one. And yet a mob that was not only expected but was publicly pledging violence was basically given carte blanche to destroy the Capitol. That's what I can't get past. And yes, I do think the treatment of white men vs POC and the political leanings of police are a factor here but I really wasn't expecting this kind of abdication of duty.

Thank you for starting this thread and for those contributing to it! What has been worrying me more than usual lately is what if he had won again? I know that he lost by 7 million votes, but it was still relatively close in terms of the electoral college, and the election wasn't the repudiation many of us were hoping for. It is terrifying to imagine four more years of this, what that would do to our country (I don't know that our country could survive it). I am also wondering, what more can I be doing to help support our democracy, since it seems so fragile lately. And how to repair some of the damage that's already been done.

@Mrs. Tiger: @Mrs. Carrot: i had completely the same reaction. i honestly did expect angry racists to be active at the capitol, i also fully expected them to be fairly handily shut down. which, seemingly they were -- at about 6pm, when enough police officers/guardsmen and others finally showed up. it is just frightening and appalling to contemplate what level of racism, incompetence, cockiness, and complicity, if not other factors, led leadership of the capitol police, and to some extent other law enforcement agencies, to leave the front line police so woefully unprotected, under-resourced and with absolutely no tactical strategy. right now i am just inhaling any piece of news that attempts to get at this question and the answers are deeply unsatisfying right now. it's a dark time for our country that's for sure.

I too have been inhaling the news cycle. I'm not surprised but was angry and upset by it and the lack of reaction from the police/DoD/Pentagon, etc. My DH has a degree in WWII studies and we spent the first month of T's term discussing the similarities and were so deeply horrified then, and are scared and angry to see it coming full circle like this. The 1st, 2nd, and 3rd in line for the presidency were in that building, and T did nothing. That level of abdication from his oath of office...just astounding how anyone can stand by him.

How Congress responds to this will determine the course of the country for our children. Healing is needed, but one can only heal after taking responsibility, and that includes the consequences of these actions. Without it, we open ourselves up to another term for T, more extremist violence, and a greater possibility for fascism to become a reality.

On a note closer to home, T's term has destroyed my relationship with my mother, who has gone from being a life-long Dem to deeply indoctrinated in far-right conspiracies. We can barely hold a conversation now. I'm not even sure we have the same morals anymore. She finally texted me last night, our first communication since all of this went down, and told me she still supports him and what he's doing. I don't know how I have a relationship with her knowing that.

@foodiebee: what is it with older people? Maybe they've got more time on their hands to consume all the lies? I don't understand it. FWIW I think the Democratic party has also lost a lot of credibility lately, but still. Trump has never made a secret of being a dictator wannabe, and supporting that is miles beyond the pale for me. I want to go and shake everyone I asked not to vote for him in 2016 and yell I told you so! but what's the point now...

@Mama Bird: I'm growing more convinced that this is true. My parents are very active, both still work full time, so they were never overly political because they watched local news in the evening and moved on, my mom especially. They had opinions here and there on things that they were closest to (ie, for my mom Israel is a big thing because she's worked for the Jewish community for 20+ years) but never really political. In 2020 being home more and having the TV on all the time, my mother suddenly started having conspiracy opinions on BLM, Covid, the vaccine, you name it. She's a pretty educated, intelligent human being, but I'm convinced the news consumption out of boredom is the cause for this sudden flareup in all these opinions.

@karenbme: We shouldn't politicize it? Wow, that's wild. I'm not sure I can think of something more political!

@Mama Bird: @Mrs. Carrot: My mom, too, is retired now and has so much time on her hands, and my dad has passed, and I think he was a guidepost for her in many ways. She has stopped watching/consuming mainstream media because she is convinced it's corrupt and now only gets her news from people's podcasts or YouTube streams, and no matter how I try to explain to her why she shouldn't do that, I can't make a dent in it. I feel like she's joined a cult and there's nothing I can do to stop it. It's not even that she's conservative, as I have conservative friends and such who are equally as disgusted by what's going on. She's at a whole other conspiracy level. What's equally sad about it is how scared she is by everything these sources tell her, and I can't comfort her either, and she just goes right back down the rabbit hole. It's like an addiction.

I used to check HB probably a dozen times a day (years ago), but now I can easily go a week or more without looking here since the boards are so slow— but rest assured, I have been obsessively reading news and doing a deep dive on Reddit and Instagram and Twitter threads trying to identify all these crazies. I was not at all shocked that this happened—all the signs are there, we have a completely inept White House that has total blinders on.

On a related note: I have an FB acquaintance who has always been conservative but in the last 4 years, has been turned off from what the Republican Party is turning into. But she has a family member (a 40ish male) who chimes in on her threads ALL THE TIME, and he comes off as one of these “siege the capitol” types—guns all over his profile, he always says on her threads he thinks we “need a civil war so people like him can be free from Democrats”, and all kind of inflammatory stuff. But he stops short of saying he would be involved in this civil war. Anyway, I feel like he should be on a watch list or something (seriously), but not sure I have the grounds to report him. Also, I don’t know him at all. All I know/see are his inflammatory posts on her page.

Anything I could/should be doing?

@Anagram: Gosh, that's scary, and I'm not sure what you can do other than perhaps reporting the civil war comments. It's really your friend who needs to nip that and not allow him to keep saying that kind of thing by either muting him/unfriending him/etc. I know it's scary to confront people, but keeping this kind of mindset on the margins instead of in the mainstream, as it has become over the past 4 years, is imperative. I hope others who think of more advice will chime in here for you.

@smuckers: this is exactly the challenge for me. I can debate with people all day long but it seems like the approach is "you don't agree with me so I'm going to dismiss all evidence you share by claiming the evidence is false." Facts have become subjective and it's maddening. And I'm assuming she wasn't there either but she can claim she knows but no one else does,

@Chuckles: This article is exactly how my mother got sucked in. I haven't yet identified how far sucked in she is, but natural medicine was her in road. She has long followed this doctor who *SELLS* vitamins and tells her all the vitamins she needs so she can avoid big pharma. I sniffed out his platforms this morning and can easily tell that's how she dipped her toes in the water. I don't even know where to start with her. I'm baffled that she doesn't get he is monetizing his advice.