I had not intended to write anything about the protest that took place at the Capitol a year ago, but I was on two radio shows today and both hosts asked about it. There seems to be a good bit of interest. So here, for what they are worth, are my thoughts on that event, one year later.
* My position on riots is simple and consistent. I am against them. There is no “My riot good, your riot bad.” Riots are bad, period.
* “January 6” is the most overhyped news story of our time. Kamala Harris’s suggestion that the Capitol riot was equivalent to Pearl Harbor is a historically ignorant joke. The fact is that the Capitol riot, while bad, was not one of the 50 most destructive riots of the last two years.
* The Democrats’ calling the riot an “insurrection” is another bad joke. This is the first insurrection (or “coup,” as the Democrats also say) where not a single person thought to bring a firearm. And I don’t think anyone would choose a “shaman” with horns and a fur hat to lead an actual insurrection.
* I have been called on to denounce the Capitol rioters of a year ago. I wouldn’t mind doing so–as stated above, I am opposed to rioting–but I ask Democrats to go first. Denounce the radical Democrats who illegally occupied the Capitol of Wisconsin for four months; denounce the Antifa rioters who have destroyed Portland; denounce the George Floyd rioters who burned down large sections of Minneapolis; denounce the Democrats who rioted in Washington when Donald Trump was inaugurated–a far worse riot than the one that occurred a year ago. Do that, and I will happily denounce the January 6 rioters. Until then, forget it.
* Law enforcement in many American cities has gotten ridiculously lax, and one sign of that is the fact that rioters are rarely punished. In fact, the same people tend to riot time after time, with impunity. The January 6 rioters are the one exception to that rule. They have had the book thrown at them, and I understand that many are still in jail with no charges against them having been heard, a year later. Is there some reason why this is not a scandal? At a minimum, can we have equal treatment of rioters?
* I have no idea who has been arrested and jailed, and what those particular individuals did. Figuring this out is made more difficult by the fact that the government has resisted releasing the many hours of video that it has in its possession. Why might that be? People who actually committed violent actions should be prosecuted; I have no idea how many such people there are. But videos show that many “rioters” were actually invited into the Capitol building by guards. The doors were open and the guards waved them in. They entered the building peacefully, staying between the rope lines and taking selfies. Did some of those people later commit criminal acts? Are some of them still languishing in jail? I have no idea. Does anyone know? I doubt it.
* Why are the Democrats trying to make “January 6” into the equivalent of Pearl Harbor or the September 11 terrorist attacks? On its face this is idiotic, yet there is a rational purpose at work. I think the Democrats have two motives.
* The first is to change the subject. The Biden administration has so far been a train wreck, and the Democrats know it. They need to deflect attention away from inflation, covid, their unpopular spending spree, the catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan, Joe Biden’s mental incapacity, and so on. Their carefully coordinated “January 6” campaign obviously is intended to distract.
* But I think there is a deeper purpose. Today Joe Biden violated all precedent by viciously attacking his predecessor, Donald Trump. This is outside the bounds of anything we have seen in our democracy, certainly in the modern era. Biden not only attacked Trump, he bragged about defeating him in the 2020 election, claiming that he won by 7 million votes.
* This is a key point. Biden’s statement is true if, and only if, you assume that all votes cast in the 2020 election were legal and proper. But they weren’t. Democrats went to great lengths, including collusive lawsuits in something like 15 states, locking Republican poll watchers out of the buildings where mail-in ballots were being authenticated in Philadelphia and Detroit, and much more, in order to facilitate voter fraud. One can only conclude that voter fraud is an important part of the Democrats’ electoral strategy.
* The January 6 rioters were goofballs, but the 100,000 or more who gathered to protest election irregularities were not. On the contrary, they were correct. Their concerns are well founded. The Democrats are trying to use the actions of a few to discredit the concerns of the many. Polls indicate that a large majority of Americans worry about ballot integrity and want elementary safeguards like voter ID. The Democrats, wholly out of sympathy with the overwhelming majority of Americans, are trying to make voter ID and other ballot integrity measures illegal.
* I think this is the core of what the Democratic Party is trying to achieve with its absurd inflation of the January 6 demonstration/riot. They want to discredit those who worry about election integrity, and to intimidate conservatives who otherwise would press for voter ID, sane mail-in ballot laws, an end to ballot harvesting, and so on.
Will this strategy work? I don’t think so. The consensus behind election integrity is strong, and the fact that the Democrats’ “reforms” are intended to facilitate voter fraud is obvious. Let’s fight this issue at the ballot box in 2022.
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