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Larping? Larpers don't have to wear real armor against real knives and real guns. We are ALL lucky this didn't blow all the way up. The fighting of last year culminated 4 years of Trumpist terror, as like fascists everywhere Trump reached out for absolute power after being defeated in the 2020 election.

This was real fighting for real objectives: the fash were fighting to keep Trump in office, we were fighting both to oppose Trump and to directly defend DC residents from physical (and in some cases armed) assault by fascists MAGAts. I had to wear body armor all over town five days in a row because adding 14 pounds of steel to my loaded weight was a lot better than getting stabbed or shot. Problem was my helmet turned out to be incompatable with my goggles, so those were not usable, causing problems on Jan 6.

On Nov 14 the Proud Boys stabbed three people, one of whom was saved from a serious chest wound by body armor. Dec 12 someone got cornered, and outnumbered 100 to 1 paid back the Proud Boys in cold steel. They were arrested but charges were dropped after video evidence showed a clear case of self-defense.

I took an injury fighting the fash on Nov 14 that is still not all the way healed, yet managed to deploy on Dec 12 and even to BLM Plaza on Jan 6, where I had to withdraw after the wind turned mace fired at the Proud Boys into a nasty yellow cloud of friendly fire that blew back on us and temporarily put my right eye out of action. Shortly therafter one of our SE DC residents knocked out a Proud Boy with a single stout punch. We went nowhere near the Capitol as that part of the day wasn't our responsability, though if the Fash had held it and taken state power we might have regretted that.

This is a lot more than "live action roleplaying" and could so easily have been the opening battles of a brutal civil war that for the moment seems to have been postponed if not necessarily avoided.