"Working with information from online sleuths who style themselves as 'Sedition Hunters,' the authorities have made more than 700 arrests — with little sign of slowing down."

I'm trying to read "Prosecutors Move Quickly on Jan. 6 Cases, but Big Questions Remain/In the year since the assault on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob, more than 700 people have been arrested, with little public indication from the Justice Department of how high the investigation might reach" in The New York Times. 

"Sedition Hunters"?! That stopped me. What is sedition? If you Google, the top article you'll see is "‘Sedition’: A Complicated History/As a mob stormed the Capitol, the word 'sedition' was on many people’s lips. Its force is clear, but its echoes across American history are more complex and ambiguous" in the NYT, from January 7, 2021, one day after the mob scene in the Capitol. 

The word "sedition" was on many people’s lips — You know the "many people" and how they talk — how they talk and how they've hunted, assiduously, for a big revolutionary movement among the Trumpsters of America. They've been saying "sedition" for a year, and what have they found? 

Yes, 700+ people have been arrested for the things we saw happening before our eyes on January 6th, but that didn't take a sophisticated investigation to discover. A big outdoor protest turned into an indoor event. They broke in where they weren't allowed. That was as bad as it was, but it ended that day. What else was there? Apparently there's "little indication" of anything else, but who knows "how high the investigation might reach"? 

Today's NYT article is a big slog, because it won't simply say the hunt for some higher level offense has come up empty. There's "no public indication of the degree to which" the Justice Department might have something more. 

There is an admission that the government is struggling in processing the existing cases:

Overworked courts have tried to balance the laborious exchange of discovery materials with speedy trial protections and to manage the bleak conditions at Washington’s local jails where some defendants are being held without bail. They have also faced a fundamental, underlying tension: how to mete out justice on an individual level to hundreds of defendants who together helped form a violent mob.

In other words, the usual criminal procedure is followed. What's the "tension"? That in the United States, criminal defendants are individuals, with individual rights? What is that in tension with? The desire for a mass trial, a kangaroo court, a lynching? 

Or is it just frustration that these cases — seen at the individual level — are just so small?

[B]ricklayers, grandmothers, college students, artists, church leaders and long-haul truckers who, by and large, have admitted to little more than illegally entering the Capitol... have [mostly] avoided incarceration, sentenced to probation or stints of home confinement. Others have received only modest sentences, ranging from a few weeks to a few months. In court, those accused of minor crimes have almost always expressed remorse, saying their behavior was foolish, embarrassing or out of character. Some have broken into tears or, in one case, physically collapsed. Others have vowed never to attend a political rally again.