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Originally Posted by TheNoGod2
Also, in Portland there was an "insurrection" specifically against the federal govt that lasted for months on end that the local authorities refused to cooperate in combating. You couldn't get more federal than that jurisdiction wise. And the relevant federal prosecutors very quietly dropped the vast majority of charges stemming from said insurrection, even against insurrectionists that were convicted of violent crimes against federal officers. And this is in very stark contrast to their treatment of Jan 6th insurrectionists.
I live in Portland and know well what happened here. I don't support the actions of protestors against the federal courthouse, but it is nowhere near the magnitude or goals of the Jan 6 insurrection. Basically protestors threw things at the courthouse building, and unsuccessfully tried to set it on fire a few times, and then fought the federal agents who were there to defend the building. It is also true that after an original minor effort, the Portland government officials didn't offer backup to the federal agents, but I don't know what that has to do with anything.
Regardless, even if the Portland violent protestors / rioters would have been successful, the most that could have happened would have been that one federal courthouse building, which was currently seeing very little use due to Covid-related shutdowns (with most employees working from home) would have been completely shut down for awhile. If the Jan 6 whoevers had been successful, the clear loser of the Presidential election would have been illegitimately installed, and the Vice President and members of Congress would have likely been killed. One of these results would have been orders of magnitude worse for the country as a whole than the other.
I do believe that the federal prosecutors went too easy on the Portland rioters, but I also think they have gone way too easy on the Jan 6 participants.
Personally I think that every one of the violent mob who entered the Capitol should have been convicted of high treason and executed. Instead, I see that the woman who stole Nancy Pelosi's laptop and bragged about it live on the internet has "home arrest" for punishment, but is still allowed to go to her job, and this weekend was allowed to go the local Renaissance Faire. Yep, they've sure been treating those people hashly, huh?