Here's the military oath:
"I, ____________________,
do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic;
that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.”
1 in 5 defendants (not rioters, actual defendants that were arrested for committing crimes that day) had served in the military and pledged that oath.
These are people that had sworn to protect our country and constitution against all enemies that made a deliberate decision to betray that oath and become a domestic enemy to prevent the peaceful transfer of power we had successfully done for 250 years. Not sure in what world that is not being a traitor.
You think it's overblown and that's been the MO since it happened. It was a "peaceful protest", which anyone who saw the videos knows it absolutely wasn't. And as the convictions are proving out, there were a number of people that did plan to overthrow the government and attempted to do it.
There's something really cowardly about the undermining fallacy of "they only had zip ties" for two reasons. First, you do not need to have actual results to be convicted of a crime. You need two components: intent and some action even if it's ineffectual. If you plan on murdering your ex-wife (intent) and show up at her house, even if it's with a plastic spoon (action of going there and bringing something to cause injury), you are considered a criminal. The fact that some of these idiots were (thankfully) ineffective absolutely doesn't absolve them of a crime. Second, the zip ties part hides the actual truth, the oath keepers had prepared a massive weapons cash to help in their efforts:
"I had not seen that many weapons in one location since I was in the military,” recalled Terry Cummings, a Florida resident who said he joined the Oath Keepers in 2020 amid concerns about left-wing violence in Portland, Ore. and joined the group leaders’ private chats in advance of their Jan. 6 trip to D.C"
The group’s founder, Stewart Rhodes, and several regional leaders are charged with conspiring to disrupt the transfer of power and preparing for violence to enforce their will.
www.politico.com
Edit: more info on weapons on site. People are leveraging the fact that most arrests were made weeks later and not on site to undercount the number of weapons available that day:
https://www.statesman.com/story/new...earms-other-weapons-capitol-jan-6/7621149001/
Was everyone there an absolute enemy of the state? Of course not. They were a number of idiotic MAGA followers going along for the ride and just there to stir up shit and send a message. You know what though, they could have done that ANYWHERE. They could have held protests, been on TV, heck they could have damaged property (like the BLM riots) and nobody would be accusing them of being an enemy of the state.
But when you deliberately choose to interfere with the transfer of power to a new president by illegally breaking into the building where the electoral college vote count is supposed to happen and prevent that process from happening, you lose the ability to say you were simply expressing your thoughts. The vote was delayed till early the next morning, you can't deny that, through emergency procedures the VP had to be escorted to a safe/secure location, you can't deny that, a couple of thousand national guards had to be called in to restore order, you can't deny that. You think it's overblown??? How many examples do you have of anything like that happening in France, Germany, the U.K., Sweden, Japan, Norway, etc. over the past 50 years??? The center of government, with all the elected officials in it, brought to a halt, on total lockdown and you are like "meh." Really? If that happened to any other country in the world we would absolute mock the shit out of them.
I'll give you one thing though. It's not a one size fits all. There were different levels of engagement in this shit show, so maybe moving forwards I should have a better gradient of traitors / criminals / pieces of shit to refer to the various people that entered the building that day.