Media discussion of the Jan. 6 breach of the Capitol is fraught with hysterical exaggerations designed to foment the narrative that all those who supported Trump are White Supremacists looking to overthrow the U.S. Government. No one is exonerating the actions of those who clearly broke the law, but before putting Jan. 6 behind us and moving on to other issues, let us apply the balm of Reason to the open wounds the Left would seem to be so eager to prod and exploit.
Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows says Trump made it quite clear to those in charge of security at the Capitol that he was perfectly willing to make available to them as many as 10,000 National Guard Troops to defend their turf, an offer that was peremptorily rejected. Why would one who intended his followers to invade the Capitol make such an offer?
That Trump had insisted in his address of Jan. 6 that his supporters comport themselves “peacefully and lawfully” was frequently deleted on those TV stations seeking to justify his impeachment, while his invocation to “fight like hell” for a fair electoral result was repeated ad nauseam, the implication being that it was an open incitement to violence. Wonderfully, ironically, Donald Trump Jr. posted a video of several Democrats using the very same phrase in addressing their followers.
The notion that the President’s speech caused the violence of Jan. 6 is further compromised by the fact that intelligence agents knew that a few dozen right-wing radicals had been planning an assault on the Capitol well in advance of that day and had duly informed both the FBI as well as the Capitol Police. Black “conservative” Joel Patrick offered a telling chronology of the days events. Trump began addressing his supporters at the White House approximately 1 mile from the Capitol at 11.58 A.M., yet the assault there began 19 minutes before he finished speaking, meaning its perpetrators were on site well before he even began to speak.
In response to the failure of the attempt to impeach Trump wrought by the refusal of the majority of Republicans to support it, Kamala Harris commented: “white supremacy wins again.” As usual, it was all about Race! Ironically, several “conservatives” have opined that if inciting insurrection is an impeachable offense for an American politician, they could cite several Democrats who had overtly cheered on the assault of various Government buildings throughout the summer of 2020!
Among the more hysterical responses to Jan. 6 was Bette Midler’s comparison of Trump to Osama Bin Laden and the Capitol breach to 9/11! CNN, on the other hand, thought the Rwandan Genocide to be a more apt analogy. Almost 3000 Americans met their deaths in the Twin Towers while almost one million Tutsis died at the hands of Hutu extremists. Again, while not exonerating their violence, how many died at the hands of the protesters of Jan. 6?
The death of security officer Brian Sicknick who was apparently bludgeoned with a fire extinguisher was widely publicized as evidence of the lethal intentions of the insurrectionists. Sicknick went home on the night of the Sixth and died there the following day. But his autopsy showed no sign of cranial trauma, no sign that he had been struck over the head. The last I checked, the cause of his death remained unknown. The only other members of the Capitol security contingent to die were two officers who committed suicide in the days after the event. This is but to say that the insurrectionists killed no one on Jan 6.
Trump supporters Benjamin Philips and Rosanne Boyland both died as a result of the physical exertions of the march, he of a stroke, she, the media gleefully announced, trampled to death after her collapse. A video of the event does show some in the frenzied mob callously ignoring her fallen body even as others tried to resuscitate her. But it was a heart attack or some such event that killed her and not the mob.
So the only individual to die on Jan. 6 as the result of a willful intent to injure was Ashli Babbit, that unarmed young White woman who, having foolishly decided to defend her political beliefs by joining the assault, was shot in the neck as she was climbing through a window.
It seems to me the empirical evidence makes it more or less obvious that those who broke into the Capitol had no intention of capturing or killing anyone, but were merely expressing their contempt for a political class that has utterly lost touch with the average American citizen [i.e., “the silent majority”], indeed with Reality itself. Ironically, a Washington Post article re-printed in Canada’s National Post on Jan. 30 unintentionally seems to validate this opinion.
The Hughes brothers and Dominic Pezzola, all members of the Proud Boys, spearheaded the attack, according to the Post. On Pezzola’s computer, we are told, the FBI “found information on making homemade firearms, poisons and explosives.” Yet the Post’s own account offers no evidence of any attempts to shoot or bomb anyone or anything! The Hughes brothers have subsequently been charged “with felonies related to destruction of property, obstructing law enforcement and disrupting a government proceeding.” In their confrontation with Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman at the foot of a staircase, the latter accused them of “advancing ….. in a menacing manner.” Horrific! The security contingent being outnumbered by the insurrectionists, an FBI agent testified they tried to “de-escalate the situation by talking with individuals in an attempt to calm them down.” Clearly the “individuals” in question were not firing weapons, tossing molotov cocktails or recklessly wielding baseball bats. Indeed, the FBI agent affirmed, the crowd merely shouted back “this is our house,” “this is our America,” and “we’re here for the corrupt government.” There is perhaps no better example of the ill-defined, less than revolutionary fervor of the “insurrectionists” than the fact that the Hughes brothers ultimately “made their way onto the Senate floor, where they sat in lawmaker’s chairs and rifled through their desks.” They rifled through their desks! My god, the horror! Meanwhile, according to the last brief paragraph of the Post article, “Pezzola filmed himself smoking a “victory cigar” in another part of the building.”
Clearly the siege of the Capitol was not an atrocity of the same moral status as the Rwandan Genocide and the slaughter of 3000 innocent human beings on 9/11. Clearly the Democrats and their media lapdogs are grossly exaggerating its significance in an attempt to exploit Jan. 6 for crassly political purposes!
[Just discovered through an Epoch Times’ report that Republican Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin recently stated in a radio interview that the attack on the Capitol hardly seemed to qualify as an “armed insurrection.” “How many shots were fired?” he wryly asked. The answer, of course, is NONE.]