I said from the very beginning, the effort to overturn the Electoral College outcome was a foolish one. President Trump and his allies have been trying to sell something they could not sell, and it was never going to happen. I also said Eric Trump’s promise to support primary challenges to Republicans who did not support this foolish endeavour was obnoxious. It was obnoxious watching that rally yesterday, and hearing what President Trump said, what Rudy Giuliani said, what Donald Trump, Jr and others had to say about it.
I was really surprised at how many people actually believed that Vice President Pence and the US Congress were going to overthrow the 2020 election. That was never going to happen, ever, but they kept selling that idea, and that is dangerous in and of itself. It was dangerous for people to believe that Pence had an authority he did not have.
There are a lot of big words being thrown around now, and these words actually have pretty simple meanings. “Sedition” is conduct or speech inciting people to rebel against the authority of the state or the monarch. “Insurrection” is a violent uprising against an authority or government. Rebellions, uprisings and insurrections are simply refusals to obedience and order, referring to the open resistance to the orders of an established authority. “Treason” is the crime of betraying one’s country, especially by trying to kill the sovereign or overthrow the government. “Domestic terrorism” is the form of terrorism in which the victims and the attackers are citizens of the same country.
I said throughout the summer - the rule of law is absolute. There are no exceptions, exemptions or asterisks. The moment we start trying to distinguish criminal behavior according to the perpetrators’ ideology, we are in trouble. I said that then, I say it again now. So the incidents yesterday, horrendous as they were, evocative of a third-world banana republic, are shameless. But to look at these events in a vacuum is equally shameless.
We have promoted civil disobedience to the point where it tips into criminal behavior and made excuses for it all summer long. Why should we be surprised that any rally or protest will walk right up to that boundary, dip their toe in the water, and then cross it?
Some police experts today are saying that Federal authorities had planned to deal with these protests with a relatively small “minimally visible” presence, according to officials, hoping to avoid inflaming tensions, as a show of force was said to do in Portland last summer. There it is, folks! That’s the problem. We talked about the villainization of the police, the villainization of law and order, and now you’re surprised there weren’t enough cops at the Capitol? That was intentional! That is the strategy that is being deployed by police departments across the country, because we have pitted law and order against those who want to engage in civil disobedience. The importance of that disobedience, in many parts of this country, outweigh the importance of the rule of law.
The solution is simple! Never allow people to violate other people’s peaceable possession of their property, nor allow any government-owned building to become the target of violence or destruction. There are those who will attack me, saying I am making excuses for what happened yesterday, but there is no excuse. Every single person that walked up the steps of the Capitol yesterday had malintent, and should be identified, arrested, and prosecuted. But so should all the others that engaged in similar conduct across this country for months on end! I call it “disobedience, disruption and destruction.” It’s what we saw yesterday, and it’s what we saw all summer long.
There can be no duality of approach here. It doesn’t matter what the crowd’s goal is, we should never be willing to accept anything less than peaceable possession of our private property and the ability of our government’s ability to engage in their authority to keep employees safe in government buildings, and never should individuals in government be subjected to criminal damage at their own property or otherwise. It happened here to Mayor Cantrell and I said the same thing then, that’s not right! The same goes for Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell or anyone else, it doesn’t matter their ideology, it’s wrong!
When we start making excuses for this behavior and don’t prosecute every single last one of these people to the fullest extent of the law, we are all guilty. But we’ve seen it before. We’ve seen prosecutors say, “hmm, we aren’t going to prosecute for battery on an officer any more.” That officer is a representative of your government, of your law and order! We should not be making excuses for people destroying property or putting hands on our representatives, but we did that all summer long, and then we act surprised?
We had a Congresswoman who talked about getting in the face of Cabinet members because they disagreed about immigration. Disrupt their families at restaurants! Get in their face when you see them in public! And Donald Trump did exactly the same thing. These were the seminal acts that set the foundation for where we find ourselves today.
Mutual respect for each and every one of us as human beings does not exist. If we are going to hold and cherish this 1st Amendment right that we have talked about ad nauseam, we have to understand what needs to be done to each and every day to uphold it. We can’t wink every now and again when someone trounces on that right by engaging in conduct that is violative of our laws, whether they be municipal, state, or Federal.
What happened at the US Capitol yesterday is something completely out of the ordinary. Unprecedented. Horrible. Horrific. One of the worst things I’ve ever seen, on par with September 11th. I’m not trying to downplay it by any stretch. But we cannot look at this event in a vacuum.
Why is it that now law enforcement has to be “minimally visible” for the safety and security of our country? I think that’s a legitimate question to ask. Do you?