Imagine that you're riding your motorcycle one sunny day and four men throw you off the thing, push you on your side, and then start kicking and beating you with wooden batons. You get beat like that for a full two to three minutes. (Go ahead, if you wish, and start beating yourself with a club right now to see what that's like. Count to 15. Keep going. Count to 60. Keep going. Now imagine that the person doing that to you seriously wants to hurt you. I bet it's no fun, right?)
You scream and cry during the beating, and eventually, a crowd forms and the men leave. You've got bruises all over, but no broken bones. You go to the hospital, where you stay for two days. Eventually the bruises and pain go away, and you're not permanently crippled or anything like that.
Judge Bumatay would like you to know that you've suffered "no significant harm" from the beating.
Oh, and imagine that you're putting up political posters -- let's say for Trump, or Harris (or Kennedy, even; take your pick) -- in an area that's quite adverse to your particular political philosophy and four men with weapons come up to you, tear down your posters, approach you to attack you (and back off only when a crowd forms), and one of them threatens to kill you if you ever dare put up your political posters again. One month later, four men -- including some of the same men who had previously threatened you -- conduct the several-minute beating referred to above, and at the end of it, one of your assailants tells you that next time he sees you putting up posters like that, he'll shoot you.
Judge Bamatay would like you to know that those death threats are only "vague threats" that don't really count; after all, you never actually saw anyone with a gun.
Suffice it to say that I strongly doubt that anyone who was actually a victim of any of these events would agree with those particular assessments.
