I want to address the way we use words to describe our political differences, in contemporary America. Specifically, I want to discuss the deep asymetry of how we use these words, depending on which side of the political spectrum is being discussed. There have always been some differences, related to the spectrum itself: words such as "liberal", "conservative", "radical", "reactionary", even "left" and "right", are obviously aimed in particular directions, and that's useful, because it's nice to have the ability to indicate political leanings. These words are generalizations, of course: not all conservatives have exactly the same political views. Not all liberals have exactly the same political views. But the terms are useful anyway.
But those are not the terminology differences I'm talking about.
One group (or part of a group) of protesters this year went beyond the original peaceful protest activity, siezed control of several blocks in the downtown area of a major city, and held it for more than a week. Another group (or, again, part of a group) of protesters elsewhere in the country, later in the year, went beyond the original peaceful protest activity, siezed control of a government building, and held it for a couple of hours. These are in many ways remarkably similar events. But we describe them with very different terminology. In the one case, we mostly call the participants "demonstrators", "protesters", and only occasionally say "rioters", perhaps because we're afraid that if we call them rioters, we'll be labeled as racists. In the other case, we rarely call the participants anything so downplayed as "rioters", instead reaching for breathless hyperbole: they are "domestic terrorists", and it's "insurrection" and possibly even "treason".
I want to be clear that I'm not excusing what was done in either case: both groups of rioters should be prosecuted for rioting, for the destruction of property that they caused, and for the disruption to public life. (In both cases here, I'm talking only about the persons who participated in the violent siezing and occupation of areas. The peaceful protest marches, in both cases, would've been fine, if things hadn't gone so much further; and of course we cannot prosecute anyone for peacefully marching down a street carrying a sign: that's a constitutionally protected freedom. Even if what's written on the sign is wrong, it's still a constitutionally protected freedom.)
In cases where people were harmed (which did happen: mostly it was the rioters themselves, and at least in the second case some of the responding police officers), the rioters should be held accountable for that as well. If there were deliberate killings, I'm not aware of it; but if there were, then murder charges would be appropriate. For accidental killings, there's another charge, manslaughter; when it happens during the commmission of another crime, such as rioting, that may be aggravated manslaughter. Criminals should be prosecuted for the crimes they committed.
But it's not right to just pick out random (or perhaps not so random) other crimes, crimes that were not in fact committed or even contemplated, and attempt to apply them arbitrarily. "Treason", to pick out one particularly egregious example, has a fairly particular definition under US law. Treason is when a person who owes allegiance to the United States (for example, by virtue of having sworn an oath to defend it, or by being a member of the US armed forces; merely being a citizen is not the standard here) gives material comfort or aid to an enemy nation, i.e., a foreign country with which we are at war. Note that acting against the government, or against current political officers of the United States, is not treason. Assasinating the President, for example, would not be treason. It'd be a very serious crime, but it wouldn't be treason. Treason is when you act not against individuals or the government, but against the entire nation, betraying your country to an enemy power, when you are supposed to be defending it. At least, that's what it is under US law. So for example if a high-ranking military or government official sells military secrets to the commies, that's treason. If some loon shoots the President, that's not treason. It's a different crime and, legally speaking, a less serious one, though still plenty serious enough to warrant the death penalty. Let me be perfectly clear: if the rioters had somehow managed to get an assault rifle into an active session of Congress and shot a bunch of Senators and Representatives, that would be on the one hand a much, much more serious crime than what they did; but on the other hand, it *still* wouldn't qualify as treason under US law. It would be mass murder among other things, and the people who did it would be in some very serious legal trouble; but it would not be treason.
The definition of terrorism is not quite so narrow, but fundamentally terrorism is about terror: mailing out envelopes of anthrax so that people are afraid to get the mail; crashing planes into buildings so that people are afraid to fly in a plane or work in a tall building; blowing up truck bombs in public places so that people are afraid to go out in public; setting fire to elementary schools so that people are afraid to send their kinds to school; these are all examples of terrorism, and they all have one thing in common: they scare not just the people who are directly involved, but people all over the country who are worried something similar might happen to them. That's what terrorism is. If you aren't at least attempting to frighten the population, then whatever you're doing isn't terrorism. Forcing your way past a police barrier and into a government building, isn't terrorism. It's tresspassing and destruction of property, and if you do it as part of an unruly mob it's rioting, and when the police try to stop you and you keep going that adds several additional charges, and if some people in the mob and/or some of the police officers involved become injured or killed, that adds yet more (increasingly serious) charges. But none of those charges are the same as terrorism.
When you call ordinary rioters "terrorists" or "insurrectionists" or call their actions "treason", you are ignoring the actual meanings of words and making up random claptrap; and you are accusing people of various serious capital offenses (markedly more serious than mere first degree murder), who are in fact guilty only of various non-capital offenses, with maximum sentences involving prison time. Maybe you're doing it to be dramatic, or maybe you're doing it to be persuasive, but whatever the reason is, what you're doing is wrong. You're slandering (or in print committing libel against) the criminals, by accusing them of much more serious crimes than they've actually committed. Whatever political point you're trying to make does not give you the right to just accuse people of things you know perfectly well they did not actually do. It's deceptive, dishonest, disingenuous, wrong, and illegal (or at least legally actionable in civil court, i.e., you can be sued for a lot of money for doing it). It also turns the criminals into victims, which is really unfortunate; I don't like to be in the position of defending criminals. I know there are people whose whole job is defending criminals, but I didn't sign up for that. Please stop making me do it.
This is a story about one town that is claimed by several governments. Exactly how many governments claim it is a matter of some debate -- the number could be as low as three (some people would even say two) or as high as four, depending on precisely how you count. (There are more than four, if you include historical claims, but that's true in a lot of places, so we'll only count current claims, and we'll say 3-4.)
The town itself is not very large. If it were in Ohio, it would be called a village
, because it is not large enough to qualify as a city
under Ohio's rules. (Of course, it's nowhere near Ohio.)
If you looked up the town on a political map that reflects the actual de facto situation, it would be in the country that I'm going to label as Blue. (I'm assigning these colors arbitrarily, as is traditional for political maps. I'm not going to try to pick them all from the respective national flags or anything.) However, it's very close to a three-way border. Just across the line in one direction is Green, and just across the line in another direction is Orange. Got that? Three-way border, Blue, Green, Orange, and the town is just barely in the Blue zone on our objective map.
Green, you may be surprised to learn, is not one of the governments involved in the dispute. They don't claim the town, and as far as I know they never have. It just happens to be close to their border.
Orange does claim the town. We'll come back to them presently.
Pink also claims the town. It's hundreds and hundreds of miles from any territory that they actually control, but they claim the town because they claim to be the successor state of White, which used to have a sort of mother/daughter or lord/vassal relationship with Red. Confused? Okay, we'll come back to Pink. In fact, we'll come back to the present day. Let's talk about the history of the situation.
The border question was originally raised between Yellow and Red. Yellow, a colonial power, had control of Blue at the time, and the town was near the border -- the poorly defined unclear fuzzy border -- between them and Red. So Yellow commissioned a study to iron out the details of exactly where the border with Red was. Yellow wanted everything to be precise and clear.
Now, the town was, and is, to this day, rather important to Red, for religious reasons. (There's an important building there, where somebody or another was born.) It's easily more important to Red than to everyone else involved combined. However, when working out the border treaty, Red was apparently not extremely careful with the implications and failed to realize, until after signing the thing, that the town is on the wrong side of the border. Oops.
Yellow, for its part, never really exerted effective control over the town. They did exert effective control over the (also disputed) surrounding area, but they mostly left the town alone. It had a trading post, but other than that it wasn't really critical, so as long as they were free to trade there (which Red didn't seem to have a problem with), it wasn't a big deal. Yellow never collected taxes from the town, and Red continued to do so, so in practice the town was de facto still part of Red's territory -- but on paper the treaty said it belonged to Yellow. Perhaps you can see how this might lead to a dispute later.
Now, a few years after Yellow and Red signed their treaty, White came along and forced Yellow and Brown to agree not to conduct negotiations directly with Red without involving White. (Too many colors? Don't worry about Brown. It doesn't come up in the story again.) The thing is, White at this point was a declining empire. The White government was overthrown not very much later. Other governments arose in the remnants of its territory. Pink was one of them.
Eventually, Blue gained independence from Yellow. So now the town was theoretically in Blue territory, but in practice still controlled by Red.
Orange, meanwhile, had gained de facto control over most of the old White territory. Looking to expand, Orange decided that since White used to have a bit of a protectorate relationship with Red, they should now have it. So Orange made plans to invade Red. The fact that they were doing so became known to Blue. Not wanting to lose any of the territory that Yellow had negotiated for with Red, Blue got out the treaty documents and moved its troops to wherever the treaty said the borders were. This is why the town is now in Blue territory -- the treaty that Yellow made has the town on the Yellow side, which is now the Blue side. Orange doesn't recognize the treaty, because it was never signed by White.
Pink also doesn't recognize the treaty, for the same reason Orange doesn't: it was never signed by White. So Pink also claims all of the territory that was formerly Red, including the small part that Blue now controls, where the town is. (Pink and Orange both claim to be the only really legitimate government for all of the territory White ever held, and they define held
so loosely that it pretty much includes anything White ever looked at twice. This is nonsense, but they're both extremely serious about it. They both have extensive territorial disputes, with each other as well as with pretty much every other country in the region.)
So Blue, Orange, and Pink all claim the town. Just to clarify, Blue doesn't claim all of the red territory. They only claim the part Yellow negotiated for.
The Red government sort of kind of still exist in exile. They have de facto sovereignty over exactly zero square inches of territory, but they claim the territory that used to be Red. Until relatively recently, that included the small now-Blue region where the town is. They would still dearly love to claim that, because as noted the town has religious significance for them. But Red has now given up their claim to the town, because they are unwilling to deny the validity of the treaty they had with Yellow. You see, their evil invading enemy Orange claims that the treaty is invalid because it was not signed by White, and Red had no right, so Orange says, to give away territory without consulting with White. Red doesn't want any part of that, because White's supposed authority in Red affairs is the basis of Orange's claim to all of the Red territory. Red still wants Orange out of its former territory (which Red still claims) and out of its affairs entirely, and so although letting Blue have the piece with the town in it burns and chafes, it's better than admitting that Orange can have everything.
Yellow, of course, no longer claims the area, because they have acknowledge Blue independence. Blue and Yellow are actually allies now.
Green still doesn't claim the town because they never did. They're just nearby.
So the town is formally claimed by Blue, Orange, and Pink; and it is highly desired by Red. Orange and Pink have copious additional territorial disputes, with one another and with others. Actually, if you look up territorial dispute
in the dictionary, you (figuratively, metaphorically, proverbially) see a picture of Orange and Pink.
Do you recognize these countries? The whole story can be found on Wikipedia, albeit not necessarily all in any one article. (I'll post the answers in a comment eventually, unless someone beats me to it.)
