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Maryah Haidery's avatar

No! That’s wrong! Had the Capitol police used deadly force, it would have invariably escalated the situation. Considering how badly the Metropolitan and DC police were outnumbered, that would have meant more dead police officers - who knows if Officer Fanone and Officer Gonnell and the others would have made it out alive.

Also we shouldn’t wish death on anyone. Some of the people rioting at the Capitol *did* horrible things yes, but they were not horrible people. They were regular people who were hurting or felt threatened. Their leaders and the people in charge of telling them the truth willfully lied to them. They pretended to care about them and their grievances in order to get them to do their dirty work and then sat back and watched. Those are the real villains here.

The people who were actually caught and prosecuted were patsies. They may have only been sentenced to a few years in jail but some (like the man who testified at the 1/6 hearings) also lost their jobs and families and their money and houses paying for lawyers and court fines and they will probably have a hard time finding work again.

Do they deserve it? Yes! They committed egregious acts of violence, vandalized our sacred institutions, injured and killed police officers and tried to overturn the results of a fair election by force. I’m not trying to excuse their behavior: They deserve to be punished according to the full extent of the law.

But two things can be true at the same time. We can condemn them while also feeling some compassion that they were used as pawns in a game orchestrated by powerful people who never paid any real price for the part they played in the events of that day. Those are the people who deserve the greatest part of your anger.

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