The events of last Wednesday will live down in history as a joke. Among the ranks of the people who
entered the Capitol were white supremacists and an organic-food-snob Viking. No one within the
Republican Party adheres to those beliefs, and even fewer supported their actions. What occurred was an embarrassment, dumb, and accomplished less than zero. However, the media has taken to calling this an attempted coup, labeling the perpetrators of this crime, insurrectionists. They have labeled their goals, despite dismissing their own label used for Antifa as “unorganized.” Thus far, no plans have been exposed, no tactics deployed, no directive was issued.
These moronic rioters rushed the Capitol to do what exactly? What would their endgame have been?
They acted like jacksasses, took some pictures, felt like they made Daddy Trump proud (they didn’t), and then left the Capitol without an occupation. Was this a stupid and violent reaction? 100%. Was it an attempted coup or insurrection? No way.
Let’s first talk about how not a single shot was fired by one of the protestors. Again, they were
absolutely where they should have been and of the 5 that died, 3 were medical emergencies that
occurred during the riot. One man collapsed outside the Capitol while walking with other protestors.
He did not engage in any of the riots and had otherwise been peaceful. The cause of death was a heart attack. A woman died in the Capitol Rotunda, again, absent any visible physical injury. Her cause of death at this time is unknown but some state she may have been trampled during the riot. Lastly, another man died of a stroke, likely unrelated to the riot itself. That leaves us with Capitol Hill Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who was struck in the head with a fire extinguisher and later succumbed to his injuries, and Ashli Babbit, an unarmed woman shot by Capitol Police as she attempted to gain access to the building. Both are horribly tragic and avoidable and those culpable should be prosecuted to the furthest extent of the law.
Again, none of these people were related. They were not on the front line of some battle, armed with
guns, attempting to violently alter the future of our country. They were a violent mob who decided that
since they were not getting their way, they were going to enter the Capitol building. Again, there were
no direct threats, only one know case of a member of the riot inside the Capitol with a firearm, which
again, was not discharged. This idea that somehow they had a goal or they were organized to
accomplish a specific task, is outright fantasy. They were throwing a temper tantrum. It neither makes it right nor justifies anything that they did. Anyone who entered the Capitol injured anyone or damaged any property should be arrested, face trial, and if convicted, sentenced to the maximum sentence allowable by law.
Let me be clear: I am not justifying a single part of their actions, but an insurrection it was not.
Let’s play it out. Let’s say they gained control of a portion of the Capitol or somehow made it into
the House Chambers and took hostages. And then what? Is there literally anyone on the left that wants to say that Republicans or anyone even conservative-leaning, that would have supported such an action? Sure, there would be those within the Trumper movement who would have cheered
something like that, however, from Trump on down, you could have expected a vehement rejection of
those people. As a means of comparison, Antifa and BLM took over large sections of major cities during the last several years. In Seattle, the occupation lasted weeks. They had a list of demands, their own “police force”, political manifestos, a leadership structure, and numerous other hallmarks of an insurrection. They were armed, numerous people died, and they threatened anyone that entered their “Autonomous Zones.” They declared themselves outside of the jurisdiction of any Constitutionally appointed body and refused to negotiate on any of their terms. They took control of Police Stations, government buildings, private property, and other violent (or under the threat of violence) actions. Eventually, through police action and help from the National Guard, those areas were returned to control of the cities from which they were taken.
In Los Angeles during the Occupy Wall Street occurrences, the city government allowed the occupation of Government property for weeks and months, in which numerous people were injured and died, and millions (over 2 million in just repairs to the outside) of dollars, yet the left didn’t call them insurrectionist or label it as a coup. Absent action from the government, those areas would still be lawless territories of the violent left. Why? Well, we all know why.
The left wants to label what happened at the Capitol as an insurrection because it sounds scary. They
want the average American to believe, through the formulation of a narrative, that there was some existential threat to the very survival of our nation, despite the evidence stating otherwise. Again, was it a violent riot? Yes. Is it justified? No. Should anyone who participated be prosecuted for doing so?
Absolutely. However, we can simultaneously accept those things AND reject the media narrative that it was an organized, Trump-encouraged, Republican-endorsed event. We aren’t asking for much, just the equal application of the standards by which they allowed the left the act for years.
Are they violent rioters? Yes. Stop calling them insurrectionists. It gives them too much credit.
