An Example to All

The Orthosphere on a recent sentencing in the J6 case:

I believe John Derbyshire coined the phrase “cold civil war” as a name for the ever-worsening feud...[the phrase] came to mind when I read in this morning’s paper that... Enrique Tarrio has been sentenced to twenty-two years in prison for “inspiring followers with his charisma and penchant for propaganda.”  This was in connection with the 2021 Capital Hill protest, which Tarrio did not attend, but about which he appears not to have felt sufficiently sorry.

The judge in Tarrio’s case, one Timothy Kelly, told the court that the sentence was exemplary: “we need to make sure the consequences are abundantly clear to anyone who might be unhappy with the results of 2024, 2028, 2032 or any future election.”  I trust Judge Kelly did not mean that unhappiness with election results is now a crime punished by twenty-two years in prison, but prudent losers... should in future limit their expressions of disappointment to a quiet “darn it” or “shucks.”

I would think it would be grounds for appeal of a sentence if it was given on an 'exemplary' basis: that is, not out of considerations of justice for a particular act of which one had been found guilty, but out of concern for future acts that might (or might not!) be committed by someone else. 

Nevertheless the idea of punishing in this way is very old. In Plato's Protagoras, the title character argues the point to Socrates as a proof that virtue can be taught:

[If] you will think, Socrates, of the nature of punishment, you will see at once that in the opinion of mankind virtue may be acquired; no one punishes the evil-doer under the notion, or for the reason, that he has done wrong, only the unreasonable fury of a beast acts in that manner. But he who desires to inflict rational punishment does not retaliate for a past wrong which cannot be undone; he has regard to the future, and is desirous that the man who is punished, and he who sees him punished, may be deterred from doing wrong again. He punishes for the sake of prevention, thereby clearly implying that virtue is capable of being taught. 

On this argument punishment is really only defensible as a means of avoiding future harms, not of creating a sort of justice for past ones. This puts the Proud Boy in the position of the sacrificial animal: he suffers that we may benefit, and become better people by his suffering. 

So it is really we, you see, who are being sentenced to prison: it is a suspended sentence, for us, but we are meant to understand that anyone who 'might be unhappy with the results of 2024, 2028, 2032 or any future election' is the judge's target. Torres (who is widely reported to have been a Federal informant at least) is just the one who has to suffer for our conversion. 

UPDATE: Here's another exemplar. It's a much shorter sentence being sought, but he also didn't enter the Capitol; he's being prosecuted for exercising what is usually considered protected free speech outside.

The Biden DOJ claimed that Shroyer "spread election disinformation paired with violent rhetoric" to viewers in the months leading up to January 6, and that on the day, "Shroyer took to a megaphone before leading a crowd to the Capitol" and said "The Democrats are posing as communists, but we know what they really are: they’re just tyrants, they’re tyrants. And so today, on January 6, we declare death to tyranny! Death to tyrants!"

"Shroyer did not stop at the sight of tear gas or sounds of explosions on the west side of the Capitol. He continued marching around to the top of the east steps chanting '1776!,' where rioters would eventually violently breach the Capitol and its police line and halt the transfer of presidential power," the court document states.

The usual standard is that a threat isn't protected if and only if it's a real threat against an actual individual that you plausibly intend to carry out. Vague statements like "Death to Tyrants" are usually protected as political rhetoric; heck, people set up fake gallows and guillotines (depending on their own political orientation) to convey the same idea, but without any actual violence occurring.

Meanwhile, remember how the anti-police protests in Seattle and Portland actively protected arsonists and others physically attacking Federal buildings and personnel from arrest? The one-sided nature of these prosecutions is galling even to ordinary people who would never attend a protest of any kind.

Here as elsewhere, I get the sense that our system is so bent on destroying Trump and his movement that they're ripping up their own pillars. A political system is analogously like a building: it's built to withstand force, but only so much. The more force you apply, the more danger you'll rip out a supporting wall (and thus bring the whole thing down).