Terrorists are terrifying, scary people. Kind of built into the name, terror-ist, one who works with terror.
People will flock to call the Capitol casuals "terrorists" because they're not scary. Not terrifying. People desperately don't want to be scared, and will buy any product, eat any narrative, believe any cult, that says they don't need to be, that their fears are fools.
Terrorists, REAL terrorists, regularly have kill counts in the 10:1 through 30:1 range. Can you believe if, instead of cheeseburger-induced heart failure and a depressed cop committing suicide at the realization he was attacking innocent civilians, there were ACTUALLY terrorists in the numbers quotes at the Capitol?
America would literally be a desolate wasteland.
Luckily for THE WORLD, they were "bemused-ists" and not "terror-ists", because America falling would screw the entire world. Because if even a FRACTION of the people they're using to market their cult, were ACTUALLY terrorists, America WOULD fall.
The American Revolution involved only about a tenth of the USA population, which is certainly more than appeared at the Capitol, but that was against a formalized external force, AS a formalized internal force. We learned (those of us who read history, at least) in Vietnam that the force multipliers of "fuck you at all costs" and "we don't need to play by YOUR rules of engagement" are tenfold multipliers.
Those are my thoughts as an informed center, but the uninformed center-left likely will be that 2nd paragraph, desperately joining any cult they can. The person who speaks loudest and most confidently, regardless of the truth of their words, will gain their loyalty. A newscaster shouting "Nazi!" at a jewish gay man will be believed over said man, if the man replied timidly and meekly "but... my optics!".
In Britain, it is a criminal offense to call one of your glorious overlords "nazi", but it is entirely legal for them to call you one, because shouting mean words DOES work, and they need to deprive that weapon from their victims.
Terrorists are terrifying, scary people. Kind of built into the name, terror-ist, one who works with terror.
People will flock to call the Capitol casuals "terrorists" because they're not scary. Not terrifying. People desperately don't want to be scared, and will buy any product, eat any narrative, believe any cult, that says they don't need to be, that their fears are fools.
Terrorists, REAL terrorists, regularly have kill counts in the 10:1 through 30:1 range. Can you believe if, instead of cheeseburger-induced heart failure and a depressed cop committing suicide at the realization he was attacking innocent civilians, there were ACTUALLY terrorists in the numbers quotes at the Capitol?
America would literally be a desolate wasteland.
Luckily for THE WORLD, they were "bemused-ists" and not "terror-ists", because America falling would screw the entire world. Because if even a FRACTION of the people they're using to market their cult, were ACTUALLY terrorists, America WOULD fall.
The American Revolution involved only about a tenth of the USA population, which is certainly more than appeared at the Capitol, but that was against a formalized external force, AS a formalized internal force. We learned (those of us who read history, at least) in Vietnam that the force multipliers of "fuck you at all costs" and "we don't need to play by YOUR rules of engagement" are tenfold multipliers.