No actually, from an outsider view the comment you replied to is exactly right. For a lot of non-americans it's borderline hilarious to see how cheesy and hyperbolic the narrative around the riots that happened on that day is (I remember it got to the point where "this is worse than 9/11" was an unironic take). I guess it's fine and it works for internal consumption for political rhetoric, but that's it.

By the way your comment is exactly proving their point. It's a bit amazing actually, you literally repeated the same tired hyperbolic talking points. And the claim that the riots killed 4 people has been debunked repeatedly.

I have an outsider view actually.

You might think it’s cheesy to warn about autocrats and attacks on democracy but I happen to think that’s very important.

I wasn’t aware that there weren’t actually 4 deaths so my bad. I guess the whole episode is a nothingburger since only one person got actually killed there?

Or would you care to respond to any of the other points?

I think you misread my comment. The cheesy part isn't to talk about the events, or what trump did. It's the insane hyperbole, and the never ending exaggeration in the words used to describe what happened.

A good example of that is the death count: we got to the point where some people were so desperate to turn the whole situation into an iconic, unprecedented historical attack that they counted a cop who died the day after from a stroke in the death count. The "insurrection" narrative does not sound credible without deaths or violence, so the fact that the only death was a rioter killed by cops was a pretty inconvenient plot hole.

I assume you are pretty informed and even then, you still had in mind the spurious death count. That goes to show just how much the early hyperbole poisoned the entire discussion around the events and spread disinformation.

Another example of disingenuous reality bending is the claim that the rioters were "armed so they came here to overthrow the government". When I think they found one or two person with a firearm. To me it's simple, if the riots were actually that bad, the huge disinformation push and extremely disingenuous rhetoric wouldn't have been needed.

You're clearly trying to minimize what happened. Alone, the amount of effort you are making to discount the words and actions of the President of the United States is damaging to the country. The real damage isn't in the people who died but in the damage to our democracy, our institutions, and our credibility in the world.

What am I discounting? If I got any facts wrong, let me know. Otherwise it's just that your interpretation is different. I know some americans have a very "you are either with us or with the terrorist" outlook to... everything but I can assure you that I'm not making any particular effort. Your hyperbole is duly noted though.

I agree that the damage isn't in the people that died (because they didn't) and that the damage is more towards the institution. The problem is that the narrative for a year has been to make martyrs out of the 4 deaths (not the fifth, for obvious reasons). Sure, now that it's untenable to do that I hear that the "deaths didn't even matter!" but that just makes the entire thing even more blatant.

For all I care, trump could've been arrested for what he did. Again that's not my point, my argument was mostly that the borderline hysterical bend to every single detail of that day is a bit embarrassing. You can say that the president caused an illegal riot to influence or interfere with the electoral process and should be arrested, without going into "it's an insurrection and a coup attempt by armed militias trying to kill congress members and also etc etc."

It reminds me of when the conservatives were trying to do everything to make the black lives matter protests sound like an insanely violent anarchist civil war.

I guess I deeply disagree that it’s hyperbole to keep reminding people of the fact that the sitting president of the US did not commit to a peaceful transition of power and encouraged his supporters to storm the Capitol to “stop the steal” and went so far to tell them he’d be right there with them.

A strongman who loses and sends a mob to the legislature is a staple in the history of democracy. It isn't a sign of stability. It made me update some priors.

No, actually, from an outsider view the person replying is exactly right.

"cheesy and hyperbolic"? What would have happened if the coup was successful? Or what would have happened just if those quick thinking staffers didn't grab the ballot box while taking shelter before the legislature was breached? There was nothing "cheesy" about it. It was deadly serious; literally, people died.

What coup?

The party of gun ownership showing up to protest without their guns is not a coup attempt. And it's ridiculous to say that it was. There were like 100,000 people there, and they counted a guy who died of a stroke the next day as a death. There's literally videos of them casually walking around and obeying the velvet ropes cordoning things off. There's also videos of them being let in. One guy was recently just acquitted for exactly that reason.

The real reason it's being overblown is the protesters accidentally showed the nation that you can just show up en masse at congress and demand change. They really don't want that idea spreading. They might have to actually represent their constituency instead of their oligarch donors. That would be very bad for campaign funding.

Wikipedia mentions "5 deaths (1 from gunshot, 1 from drug overdose, 3 from natural causes)".

First, the fact that deaths from a drug overdose and natural causes are included in the casualty list is in and of itself ridiculous. Should the casualty list for WW2 include everyone who died of natural causes from 1939 to 1945?

Second, the one death from gunshot is of an unarmed rioter, shot by the Capitol Police. I have no problem whatsoever with the death; if the Capitol Police had actually used their weapons and training immediately, as opposed to letting rioters run rampant inside the Capitol, a tremendous amount of trouble would have been avoided. But the death is not of a lawmaker or someone else otherwise uninvolved.

Third, the death from gunshot is also not a police officer. In particular, it is not Officer Sicknick, who was lauded by one and all for weeks as a martyr to the TrumpNaziKKK forces ... only for the autopsy to find that he died of a stroke that had nothing to do with the riot (the autopsy specifically checked for blunt force trauma (i.e., "hit by a fire extinguisher") and exposure to tear gas). And yet the claims made after the riot, of many cops being killed by the rioters, were never widely disavowe and continue to be believed, as can be seen elsewhere in this very discussion.

I'm barely an hour outside of DC and nobody cares about 1/6. Partly because Americans are pretty used to nutjobs storming public buildings, and partly because they're also used to extreme rhetoric from politicians.