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A Comment About Mob Violence
Let me lay out my assumptions right up front, before making the point I want to make.
- The President didn’t incite violence. His comments were within the boundaries of appropriate political discourse, whether or not he was correct in the views he expressed about the election. (In fact, I’m sure he was partially, though not wholly, correct.)
- I categorically condemn mob violence, and this instance is no exception: everyone who broke the law should be charged, tried, and, if convicted, punished. Whatever the motives of the lawbreakers (and I don’t know who they are or why they did what they did), I reject any claim they might have to legitimacy in their actions. Lock them up.
There. I hope that’s sufficiently clear. Now here’s the point of this post.
For months, businesses have been destroyed by lawless mobs. Billions of dollars of damage have been done to the private property of American citizens as shops were burned, windows smashed, stores looted. Through it all, the President called for a restoration of law and order, and offered federal support in that effort. In each instance he was rebuffed.
Because the destruction of private property and livelihoods doesn’t matter to folks on the left.
The Capitol break-in didn’t endanger anyone’s livelihood: no one will go out of business because of it, no Senator or Congressman will miss a paycheck or lose his life’s savings because thugs broke in to the building and damaged the nation’s property. Democracy, the Constitution, and the nation were not at risk.
The optics were terrible. But the optics were also terrible when Mainstreet USA was burning; the difference is that we didn’t see that, because the left didn’t care, and so didn’t want us to care either.
By all means prosecute the thugs who broke the law in D.C. this week, and good riddance. But remember that, when it came to demanding justice for regular American citizens faced with the loss of their jobs, businesses, incomes, and savings in the hundreds of Antifa and BLM riots this past year, it was the President who was calling for an end to the violence and the protection of regular American citizens. And the left fought that at every turn, choosing to side with lawlessness and the mob.
So to anyone who couldn’t be bothered to stand up for regular American citizens all summer long — and that’s essentially everyone in mainstream news and every Democratic politician at the state and federal level: go back and report on the tragedy of all those shuttered businesses and destroyed lives before expressing your faux outrage over this most recent event. And explain to me why all those people didn’t matter while they watched their hopes and futures burn.
Published in General
What have you been smoking? Not a chance in Hell this will happen.
It’s also worth remembering that the 2020 riots and vandalism persisted for 3 months before Biden finally condemned it publicly.
Media like to play an opportunistic game by which failure to immediately condemn something one only just learned about is tantamount to endorsing it. That’s false and wicked.
But how does a presidential candidate not use his fame to encourage peace and ressponsibility for 3 months of rampant arson, vandalism, and attacks on police? Biden’s silence coincided with general cover and expressed approval of the riots by Democrats across the country. It coincided with leftist corporations organizing millions of dollars in donations for Black Lives Matter the anti-American hate group.
By echoing the racial divisiveness of his Democrat predecessors and colleagues this week, he has proven again that he is not a peacemaker. Like Obama, he seeks to motivate people by bitterness, envy, and disdain.
Here’s a new term everyone needs to learn: “Fifth-generation warfare”.
Also:
The Prescient Alex Jones just called it “info wars”.
Oh, I think it’s way worse than you make it out to be, Hank. The outrage now is because government was “threatened.” You know, those all-important institutions of power and prestige. The place where important things are done and important people do them.
It’s the protected class against everyone else. Main Street only matters when it’s time to “count” (fabricate) the votes from those addresses — or lay blame for the failures of government.
As always, you’re much too logical, Henry…
WC, I get your point, but I don’t think that the folks in Congress feel threatened. I think this is just good political theater for folks on the left, and they’re exploiting it. (And for a few on the right, it’s an opportunity to justify distancing themselves from the President without appearing disloyal.)
Oh, I agree with you on the Left exploiting this. Exploitation is in its DNA. But, the protected class has been outraged ever since the election of November 2016. It has seen Donald Trump and his supporters as a threat to “norms,” at minimum, and to their protected positions at the worst.
This election is the swamp fighting back and crushing the opposition. Those poor idiots in the Capitol never learned their place in the order of things. When Congress is called the seat of representative government, it didn’t mean them!
Listen to Jesse Watters’ commentary in its entirety:
Not Both sides-ism. I condemn the criminals and believe that President Trump contributed to the problem; however, at the end of the day. The last two months and yesterday’s frackus have done a lot less damage to the country and fabric of American society than the polarization of American on racial lines that the Democrats have propagated at all levels of society for the past 12 years.
Excellent. Spot on.
I disagree with you, WC. I dissent from your disrespect of our government.
Of course it’s flawed, and often a mess. But we’re talking about the Capitol of the greatest republican experiment in self-governance in human history. Daniel Webster and Henry Clay walked those halls, as did Abraham Lincoln. George Washington himself laid the cornerstone of that building. Construction of the glorious dome continued in the midst of the Civil War.
I am outraged when a small business is burned, like that used car dealership in Kenosha (if I’m remembering correctly). I am outraged when a police station is stormed or burned. Of course, these are terrible. But an assault on the Capitol is worse, just as blowing up the Lincoln Memorial would be worse than torching a Target.
“Where were you when…?” is a question often asked of people. I have asked both my Mother and Father where they were when Pearl Harbor was attacked. They remember exactly where they were and what they were doing, and they could recount it as if it were yesterday.
I can remember where I was when JFK was killed; I was in the Hopi School Cafeteria.
When 9/11 happened I was at home and had turned on my computer; I immediately called my mother and suggested that she turn on the TV.
When the United States Capitol was breached for the first time since the War of 1812, I was at home and say a group of hooligans walking through Statutory Hall. I started to alert others. Many were in tears. I felt the same resolve that I felt in 9/11; that this outrage must not and can not stand.
I disagree with this.
The lives of our Senators and Representatives and Vice President were threatened by this mob. This was an occupied building.
There are reports of bombs and guns in the crowd, though not details. I’ve heard that there was a pipe bomb at the RNC nearby, and another at the DNC, and that a third bomb was found on Capitol grounds (but not necessarily in the building). I’ve heard of dozens of arrests for firearm possession.
There was one officer who reportedly died from injuries sustained in the riot, though I do not have further details. I do not think that he was shot, as I’ve seen no reports of shooting by the rioters. The only gunshot that I’ve heard about is the single shot that killed Ashli Babbitt as she attempted to climb through a broken window, bypassing a barricaded door, apparently seeking entry into the Speaker’s Lobby that leads directly to the House Chamber itself.
I think you misunderstood what I meant by “worse.” Probably my fault. What’s worse is that the outrage was reserved for what happened yesterday. What happened to the common folk starting during the Obama administration with Occupy movements and working up to BLM and antifa last summer didn’t move the outrage needle in many of the protected class. It’s the disparate treatment under the law that’s worse.
Does anyone believe the Biden administration is going to sic the FBI and DOJ on this summer’s rioters? How about Viking man? You get the picture.
You said:
“The Capitol break-in didn’t endanger anyone’s livelihood: no one will go out of business because of it, no Senator or Congressman will miss a paycheck or lose his life’s savings because thugs broke in to the building and damaged the nation’s property. Democracy, the Constitution, and the nation were not at risk.”
I profoundly disagree. I have walked the hallowed halls of the Capitol. This is the symbol of a free people. The constitution even has a provision that no Member of Congress can be detained when they are en route to the Capitol. The offense here is grave. Members of Congress were trapped in the House Galleries. This is an absolute outrage. This was an overt attempt to disrupt Congress during the counting of the Electoral College votes.
People complain that a woman who was illegally trespassing and outside the Chambers of the House of Representatives was shot. She was part of a mob seeking to literally invade the House Chambers.
I hope that you take a look at Speaker Pelosi’s office. It was trashed. This is a flagrant outrage. I would suggest that all of the trespassers be tried for conspiracy and that all of the people who tried to break into the House Chambers be tried for felony murder for the death of the young woman.
And you’re wrong. “Absolute outrage” doesn’t translate to a threat to democracy. At no point was there any chance that the Constitution, the government, or American democracy would be endangered.
It was offensive. Yes. But you’re being as wildly hyperbolic as our President, and no more accurate.
It’s possible that my aversion to reading about the events of that day has led me to miss the extent to which the “lives” of the aforementioned were “threatened.” or perhaps we have different definitions of “threatened.” I wondering how close any of these miscreants actually go to an elected representative. There’s just so much fog surrounding these events.
I think we need to calm down and step back. The people breaking into the Capitol should be charged appropriately. Breaking an Entry and vandalism for sure. Assault on a law enforcement officer for those involved. Disturbing the peace definitely. If it can be proven as has been asserted that there was planning and coordination involved people should be charged with Conspiracy. We want to make sure that all applicable laws are charged to the fullest extent possible. Overcharging someone is a popular technique by prosecutors; however, it is not justice and can backfire. This is a explosive situation we don’t want to make it worse acting outside the law and extra legally is what got us here in the first place.
Jerry, that might be true. I’d have to know more about what actually happened before I accept it as accurate. The rest of your post is a lot of unsourced I-heard-this and I-heard-that. Some of it is probably true. I’m going to wait to hear.
But I hope you understand the point I’m trying to make: this was an awful moment, symbolically, but not on a par with the chaos that has reined around the country in terms of its actual impact. Those who are treating this like a turning point for the nation are misunderstanding, or simply grandstanding.
This is a good point. I’m still not 100% certain myself, but the shooting of Ashli Babbitt appears to have happened as she tried to climb through a broken window into the Speaker’s Lobby (that’s the label over the barricaded door next to the window), and it appears that the Speaker’s Lobby is the main entrance to the House Chamber itself. It is not yet clear, to me, whether the House was actually inside the Chamber when the shooting occurred.
It matters. It’s part of the means to their end. That’s why the coming assault on suburbs will kick off under Harris/Biden. Live in a nice neighborhood? It’s that way because of systemic racism. Section 8 housing coming soon.
When I was in high school, a friend’s father was an executive at a manufacturing plant which was had a lot of problems on the assembly line, which they finally figured out was sabotage and traced to a particular worker. He was a Left revolutionary who intended to force the company to close the plant. The idea was that if you immiserate enough workers they will blame capitalism and rise in revolution.
Obamacare has the same intent: to make what remains of private medicine unsustainable and when the system collapses, Medicare for all will be there for the suffering masses.
Rinse, repeat in multiple arenas.
Hank, I agree that it’s early, and the events are not entirely clear. Here is a good press conference by the DC police chief, detailing some of the events, including discussion of several firearms violations and the bombs found at the DNC and RNC.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we had a reliable news outlet that would simply report the facts?
Check out today’s Daily Signal podcast, here on Ricochet, for the account of a brave young reporter who has also been covering the Antifa/BLM riots all last year.
Antifa invaded the Portland suburb of Tigard last night.
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Yes. And I feel a twinge of guilt when I realize that I’m specifically avoiding reading news about the incident right now. I don’t want to be willfully ignorant. But I have so little trust in early reporting, and am so confident that things will be stated as fact that later prove to be mistaken, that I’ve resolved to wait a few days and let the fog clear. By then, I hope that contemporaneous accounts, on-the-scene video, etc., will fill in the picture more accurately, and we’ll have a better chance of understanding what happened.
Having said that, I can’t imagine any plausible way in which this could have escalated out of control and become a national crisis, given what I’ve read so far and given that law enforcement was allowed to engage, rather than to stand down.
You shouldn’t feel guilt about distrusting the news. I think that you should feel a bit of outrage. Our media is astonishingly corrupt and deceptive.
About your second paragraph — perhaps I have a more active imagination. It looks like Ashli Babbitt was shot as she tried to climb through a window into the Speaker’s Lobby. It looks (to me) like this is the last room before the House Chamber itself, and the House may have been inside. She had a big backpack on. I could imagine a suicide bomber using the cover of this riot to blow up the House Chamber, and perhaps kill many of the House members.
That did cause me to think a bit more about the situation. Just taking a look back at the backpacks the Tsarnaev brothers were carrying, can a security guard take a chance?
They tried to literally stop the count of the electoral college. They weren’t meekly sitting in the galleries, they were trying to shut the count down, and they delayed the count for hours. This was a desecration of a sacred space. I hope that most of the mob are prosecuted to the full extent of the law. and I am glad that many of them have been fired from their jobs after posting selfies of themselves in the citadel of our nation.
There were several members of congress lying down on the floor of the house gallery while this was going down. They had been unable to escape in time.