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Political Persecution in the United States
Joseph Bolanos, a New Yorker, met a friend who had flown in from California to watch the Trump speech on January 6, but Bolanos had nothing to do with the Capitol incursion…he has video proving that he was elsewhere. Read this article to see what the FBI did to him…and how his neighbors have responded.
Plenty to be concerned about here: the arrest without apparent evidence, the excessive use of force (TEN police, one pointing his rifle at Bolanos’ head), and the attitude of many of his neighbors after they discovered that he had unapproved political ideas and affiliations. (“I hope Antifa gets you,” said one woman who had previously been a friend.)
There was a recent post here by @jennastocker titled Consider the Possibility We Are Ruled By Cowards. Even worse, I think, is the possibility that we have become to a considerable degree a population of cowards, ready to turn against friends and colleagues at any time those individuals should dare to oppose The Authorities in any way.
If you approve of the kind of thing that was done to Bolanos…and if you also approve of the breaking of the American spirit…then a vote for just about any Democrat should help to continue and accelerate these trends.
Published in General
This isn’t new. It’s why government has always existed – to protect us from our neighbors.
America developed a system designed to protect us from our government. But that only works if the neighbors are United against government.
They are not.
Depressing.
Depressing yes but remember this is the NYC that elected de Blasio twice. So surprising, no. If this happened somewhere else I would be much more depressed.
And a deafening silence from the former civil liberties advocates on the left.
The communists couldn’t do what they did with just their police force. They had citizens do their work for them by sowing distrust among neighbors. Nobody wanted to be branded a Kulak, but the definition of Kulak was constantly shifting. It’s eerily similar to how “white supremacist” is used to describe almost anything today.
If you can get someone persecuted for their beliefs, then you are not oppressed. You are the oppressor.
People turn to institutions for guidance. Our institutions (churches, schools, …) have dropped the ball on courage establishing principles. If you don’t stand for something, you will fall for anything.
The article says “Joseph Bolanos”.
It would be interesting to see the warrant application.
Thanks…will fix…seems I need to get the editors to do that on a main feed post.
Even among conservatives, teaching future generations obedience to the state is more important than teaching risk assessment, discernment, and exercising courage in pursuit of what is right.
It’s not that individuals have changed drastically, people don’t change that much. As power drifts upward and away from most folks, those who gather it have to accommodate fewer and different people with different interests, only remotely related to the “most folks”. That’s just the way it works and power continues to concentrate until it becomes disfuctional. The US was unique and it won’t be fixed unless we dissolve and start over which isn’t going to happen.
Well it will. Just not anytime soon. The best we can hope for at this point is benevolent emperors until tyranny so becomes unbearable, corrupt, and dysfunctional that we collapse. I don’t think the will to fight exists in our population. We’ll have spotty rebellions and likely sacking from our southern barbarians. Perhaps we’ll be threatened by the Chinese Hannibal allied with our northern friends of Canada.
But for the most part, 1776 (or 1787, whichever reference you like) America is over. It was questionable since the Civil War. It was controversial since the CRA. But at this point, I don’t think it exists anymore.
There is no such thing as starting over. We didn’t start from scratch when we first started, and we wouldn’t start from scratch if the country were to dissolve.
Or as I say when someone says the way to go forward with a software system is to start over from scratch: If you don’t know how to get there by making incremental changes to the working system, you don’t know how to rebuild it from scratch. I’ve seen high-level people lose their jobs by not understanding this.
I agree with the sentiment, but not the analogy. If we could be build an entire separate nation and gracefully swap it into place, then I like the software analogy. Sticking with software analogy, the nation is like a solid data center with many elements having a buggy install of the OS and are infected with one or more viruses (WOKe, Marx3, RedThr34t,..). We just need to put in the effort to clean and upgrade the OS on all the “unhealthy” systems. We also need a process to continually clean each component to rid it of all those Lefty viruses.
Well, that linked story opens with a blatant falsehood and mischaracterization of the events of January 6. There was a riot, and it was quite bad. The Wokeist media, and a bunch of NeverTrumpers, beat a hysterical drum and conveyed a false narrative of insurrection and coup. The linked article conveys a false narrative of a peaceful protest. Specifically, the opening paragraph says:
This is quite a lie, though like most cleverly crafted lies, it is true in part. It’s been a long time, but I do recall seeing videos of people peacefully entering the Capitol on one side, and peacefully walking around the Capitol looking around. I also recall seeing videos of rioting, the beating of a cop by a crowd outside, rioters entering through a broken exterior window, rioters trying to force their way in through an exterior door (with a cop trapped in the door at one point), a crowd led by a guy in a Q shirt chasing a cop up stairwells, and rioting (including breaking windows) at the very entrance to the Speaker’s Lobby, where Ashli Babbitt was shot.
This was not some peaceful event. Parts of it were peaceful and calm, and parts of it were riotous. An article that opens like the linked article is peddling a lie.
The FBI is correct to investigate these crimes. The FBI, and local authorities, should also have investigated the BLM/Antifa rioting.
I have no idea whether Mr. Bolanos was innocent or guilty. I have no idea what information the FBI might have connecting him to criminal activity. I am very doubtful of a claim that he has video evidence of himself, during the entire event, demonstrating that he never entered the Capitol. This seems possible, but unlikely. Frankly, if someone was careful to keep himself under video surveillance during the entirety of an event that lasted several hours, it would make me more suspicious, as it would suggest to me that he was building an alibi.
I would expect that the FBI would seize Mr. Bolanos’ devices if they had some evidence suggesting that he was in electronic communications with other people who participated in the event, and perhaps with some who rioted. They did get a search warrant, reportedly, which is proper procedure. It is not wrongful for the cops to execute a search warrant on a person who turns out to be innocent, as long as they had probable cause.
So this does not seem like a credible or accurate narrative, to me.
If he’s been held for four months without being charged (which I thought was illegal in this country) I will give this man the benefit of the doubt over the government.
How can a riot include only one building? Name me one riot ever that included only one building.
If you follow the further link to the Miranda Devine story:
Trump’s speech was boring, and the day was cold and blustery, said Bolanos, so at about 12:40 p.m., he and his friends left early and made the eight-minute trek back to the Marriott.
That’s where they were when the Capitol barricades were breached at 12:57 p.m. Bolanos has time stamps on photographs he took in the hotel to prove it. One inside the room was taken at 1:41 p.m. Another out the window of the street below was taken at 1:45 p.m. Another photo was taken at 2:04 p.m. inside a hotel elevator. He says that is when they decided to head back to the Capitol to see what had happened with the Electoral College count.
Bolanos videotaped the scene as they walked slowly down Pennsylvania Avenue. They were still about a mile away at 2:12 p.m., when invaders smashed windows and stormed the Capitol.
So the time stamps on the video would indeed seem to indicate that he wasn’t involved in the riot.