In trying to fathom why the Democrats are embracing the far-left ideology and policies of kooks like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Rashida Talib, and countenancing ideas that would have been rejected outright as insane only a few years ago, I failed to come up with a charitable, reasonable explanation.
After all, how can one reasonably state that we “must get rid of police and prisons” and not be considered an absolute loon, or violent anarchist?
Unfortunately, because of the Left and its persistent perpetuation of lies and toxic ideology in academia, media, and politics, these kinds of crazy ideas have become somewhat mainstream and are infecting our body politic. Those in charge of the Democrats, who should know better, are allowing these ideas to fester and spread. Why? is my question.
The Democrats didn’t win the executive and legislative branches by much in the last election. Given the hatred toward Trump fostered by their allies in the media and the lies they’ve been telling about how horrible and racist our country is, you think they would’ve won decisively.
After all, if the U.S. were as terrible as Maxine Waters, CNN, MSNBC, and Hollywood portray it to be, especially under Trump, why wouldn’t the Democrats have won by a landslide instead of a trickle?
The reason is because their narrative is based on lies and ultimately doesn’t square up with reality. Sure, they cherry-pick and misrepresent isolated, statistically meaningless incidents — like what happened in Ferguson, MO, and Minneapolis — as anecdotal evidence of the dystopian present they want everyone to believe we’re in, all the while ignoring evidence of the actual event or statistical realities that roundly contradict their views.
But the hysteria they nevertheless are able to generate gives them power and mobilizes the extremes, which they need to force their agenda forward since it has no actual legitimacy on its own.
And so they were able to take power in government in 2020, albeit by a very slim margin.
And they know now that the fruits of their false and pernicious ideology will start bearing inevitable bad fruits, as we are seeing now. Record numbers of illegal immigrants, rising crime, societal decay, rampant homelesness, degradation of the rule of law, and general misery are all upon us.
So, the question is, how do the Democrats stave off the inevitable defeats they’re going to suffer in 2022 as people see what results from their version of one-party rule?
Simple. Mount a coup. Here is how it works.
First, you keep ginning up anger and resentment at the police and other institutions which have to deal with the dysfunction caused by liberal policies that have gutted the American family, especially in the poorer strata of American society. This keeps people thinking things are terribly bad and require the heroic figures of the Democratic Party to swoop in and right those wrongs.
Second, you allow in hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants, and then work to allow them to vote, either through amnesty or shoddy election law. We all know whom those immigrants will vote for if they get the chance, and I wouldn’t blame them one bit. (I blame the cynical Democrats for allowing coyotes to exploit and abuse people in order to ensure a new electoral group supports their agenda.)
Third, in order to remove constitutional barriers to your kleptocratic rule, you pack the court. Right now we are assured that this won’t really happen and that it’s merely a bald-faced attempt to threaten the SCOTUS into ruling in a way that Democrats prefer, which is in itself banana-republic-like thuggery.
But just you watch: what was once thought of as beyond the pale often becomes standard Democratic policy, and they have votes to do it.
Fourth, you eliminate the Senate filibuster, which requires a 60-vote approval to bring legislation to the floor. The Democrats have already side-stepped this hallowed piece of parliamentary process on several occasions by using “reconciliation,” which was cynically used to pass Obamacare and this last Covid bill. This would open the gates for pure majoritarian rule and rank partisanship in legislating new laws.
Fifth, you make the military into a wokeness-enforcing arm of the government by focusing on “equity” and distracting soldiers with issues such as gender ideology instead of actual national defense. You neuter it and make it incapable of resisting the soft coup you are preparing in other sectors.
Sixth, you cow American corporations into supporting wokism lest they be characterized as “racist” or “sexist,” knowing that the ninnies at the top will capitulate and the ideologues in HR will accomodate. You now have their tacit support for a full takeover.
Seventh, you grant Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., statehood status, thus ensuring 4 more Democratic senators because we know which way those places lean politically.
Once this is all done, you now have effective one-party rule for the foreseeable future. You can pass all the crazy laws you want because you will have an unbeatable majority and a SCOTUS that will rubber stamp your legislation because they will simply ignore constitutional limits on state power.
That is the direction we are going, and that is the only reason I can see why formerly sane people would allow our country to be so thoroughly damaged by false ideology and narratives.
Doing so ensures their power by creating the kind of crisis situation which allows for extreme measures to be first proposed, and then implemented, almost as if in a time of actual warfare, where civil liberties are curtailed to ensure victory over an insidious enemy.
For the Left, we — conservatives, Christians, Republicans — are that enemy.
And so they are working harder than ever to achieve their Marxist goal of destroying traditional societal morals and values, Christianity, and the family. By doing this, they will achieve their version of utopia, where all people are truly equal in their dependence on and allegiance to the state.
I know I sound like a conspiracy theorist, but these moves (packing the court, allowing a flood of illegal immigrants, dismantling election safeguards, adding states, abolishing the police, etc.) are not whispers heard only in dark corners. They are mainstream ideas in the modern Democratic Party and have as their goal only one thing: domination.
God help us all.
Trey Hoffman
Peachtree City, Ga.
In response to PTCitizen–
I think what Jax and I were trying to say is that it was not US
who made an asinine statement and then expect to be taken seriously. That was YOU with, “January 6th was a mostly peaceful protest.” That is simply outlandish. How we view other
protests is irrelevent.
PTCitizen, have you heard of “whataboutism”? That’s when we don’t like someone calling us out on our specious commentary, so we quickly deflect their criticism by responding, “Oh yeah? Well what about _____?” You’ve probably seen this in play when, for instance, someone complained about President Trump’s immigration policy putting kids in cages on the border, and then someone else (instead of speaking to the problem itself, kids in cages) responded with, “Oh yeah? Well, what about the fact that Obama built the cages?!”
It feels like it should mean something because it takes the heat of the original argument and tries to shunt it in a different direction, but it doesn’t actually address the argument. Whataboutism is not an actual dialectic for defending your views. In fact, it’s a demonstration that your view is weak at a certain point that you feel you have to protect by deflecting the criticism elsewhere.
And you, PTCitizen, have given us a beautiful illustration of this non-defense of a flawed point as you say:
“An objective comparison of media reporting over the riots nationwide in the 18 months prior to the January 6th protest demonstrates that even widespread acts of vandalism, assault, arson, looting, and mayhem do not exceed a standard by which such events can be referred to as mostly peaceful. So there is no other credible way to categorize the January 6th protest unless you’re wiling to state on the record that every BLM riot in 2020 was a mass criminal action.”
–“You don’t like my insurrection and actual coup attempt on the US government? Well what about BLM?!”–
This is not an argument, just a deflection, and as it happens, a poor one. Despite what you may think, the protests over racial inequality since the murder of George Floyd have indeed been mostly peaceful — there were so many of them, for so long, throughout so much of the nation and the world, that if they had all been violent, the destruction would have been much more widespread. Look it up: Time, The Washington Post, Harvard-Radcliffe, USA Today, The Guardian, CNN, all report the protests were overwhelmingly peaceful; some estimates are 93% peaceful?
And of course, you can’t forget the truism that the police decide when there will be a riot. It is often the mindset of law enforcement going into the situation that makes the difference. When you tell the police they are going into a riot and kit them out with military hardware and riot gear, of course they go in spoiling for a fight, and of course violence results. So please, consider your “whataboutism” not only an illogical response to the criticism of your previous assertion (coup was peaceful!), but also completely unfounded.
I agree with Suz. When you declare that a violent coup attempt we all watched in real time was in fact a peaceful protest, we cannot be expected to take anything else you say seriously.
oops! The response above belongs way down this chain — look for it after a comment from PTCitizen. Sorry for the confusion!
The antichrist is an embodiment of sin, and he lives at Mar A Lago. This Trump is an unholy deceiver who has proven the words of Jesus in Matthew 7:13, to paraphrase: The gate to Heaven and only a few will ever find it. The road to Hell is wide and is filled with multitudes. Jesus goes on to say Judge not, lest ye be judged. The good are known by their fruit. Those trees producing bad fruit are cut down and burned. SO… with Trump, US Christianity has shown its true face, even continuing to support this demon when he scams the bank accounts of his poor and elderly followers, who live in fear of their own racism, fear of the evil homosexuals and extreme minority of transgender people who simply want to live without fear. Finally, about lynching. The decadent evil of lynching never went away, the joyful cruelty of torturing black people, this is the spirit behind ISIS and Al Qaeda, not decent ordinary Americans. This is the dark spirit that Donald Trump so successfully summoned and he will be meeting justice and accountability soon on this earth.
Mostly peaceful. Puh-leez.
Just because you got gaslit by Dear Leader for four years and came to love the smell of pancake makeup, hair glue, Diet Coke, and a desperate need to be worshipped, doesn’t mean that the rest of us don’t believe our own eyes.
What a painful jeremiad from the eternally aggrieved and victimized Trey Hoffman. Repeated without deviation from the aslant Fox News sources, one can easily envision Tucker Carlson ejaculating these auguries, then pausing to cross his eyes and strike the “I’m stupidly confused” pose.
Perhaps sympathetic readers might establish a “Go Fund Me” account for poor Trey so he may store up some staples for when the inevitable cataclysm of his many political tormentors inexorably renders him dominated. Perchance some funding for psychotherapy might assist him in overcoming his constant fears of the almighty Left. Obviously, his deity is powerless to intervene.
Trey, you might try sackcloth and ashes in the public square to deliver the point dramatically. The Fox News crew could broadcast your lamentations, and then you can attain the spotlight you endlessly crave with doomsday letters each week to The Citizen. The sky might someday really fall, and how completely you will be vindicated.
I’m sure you won’t mind if the rest of us merely enjoy our lives while you cower.
Trey Hoffman–
There was a very brief period after the general election, back in
November, when your letters were reasonable and lucid. You
actually called for peace and hope, even though the results were
disappointing to you. In contrast, your last several letters have
gone beyond angry to bitter to simply ugly.
Your opening salvo, “…kooks like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and
Rashida Talib” set the tone. Let’s have a bit of charity for intelligent, idealistic, well-intentioned young leaders who dare to
dream of a better life for all. “Absolute loons”? “Violent anarchists’? No, Trey. They are your fellow Americans who love our country as you do; but they are honest enough to acknowledge that we can do better.
From there, your accusations descended further into ugliness–
“liberal policies that have gutted the American family”?
“…you neuter it (the military) and make it incapable of resisting”?
“…destroying traditional societal morals and values, Christianity,
and the family”?
Honestly.
Please, please stop speaking for progressive Democrats.
Alas, you don’t seem to actually know us very well at all.
Your outlandish assertions reflect badly on you.
And even sadder, your vitriol also reflects badly on the God you so frequently invoke. If you can’t bring yourself to believe your
fellow men and women are working to build a just. equitable, and peaceable country…then believe the Universal Christ will
accomplish it.
Either way, take a deep breath, Trey. We’ll get there.
“Please, please stop speaking for progressive Democrats.”
Histrionics aside, Trey gets you very right. To Wit:
1. Progressive Democrats are pushing the far left mantra of “defund the police” and slandering the law enforcement profession as inherently racist. Even mainline Democrat Party officials have rejected these calls. “Moderate Democrats squirm as ‘defund the police’ rhetoric returns”, John Levine, NY Post. (17-Apr-2021)
2. Progressive Democrats have long called for “no borders, no wall, no racist U S A at all”. Their policy is to completely eliminate barriers to immigration, and to grant full rights to immigrants immediately upon entry. “Do Democrats really believe in open borders? It’s starting to look that way”, Robert Robb, Arizona Republic. (17-Jul-2019).
3. Progressive Democrats have vacillated their positions on when and how Justices be appointed to the Supreme Court, and now after a series of losses which have effectively swung the entire judiciary to the right (or back to the center as some scholars have suggested), the mantra among Democrats now is that we need reform in the Federal Courts. “JOE BIDEN WAS RIGHT ABOUT PACKING THE SUPREME COURT.”, David Kraydon, Human Events (20-Apr-2021)
4. Progressive Democrats (and Democrats in general) have had a positively schizophrenic regard for the filibuster, a procedural tactic arising entirely from rules the Senate itself has created. When Democrats lose power, they argue that the filibuster is a time honored institution that helps maintain the neutrality of that August Body, the Senate. But the minute they’re back in power, they shriek that it’s an undemocratic barrier to their “progressive reform agenda”. “97 House Democrats Call On Senate To End The Filibuster”, Paul Blumenthal, Huffington Post (22-Apr-2021)
5. Progressive Democrats and President Joe Biden have accused our military service members of being white supremacists, racists, and terrorists with no supporting evidence. Many active duty and reserve members were compelled to restate their Oath of Enlistment, which implies disloyalty to the oath they had previously sworn. They’ve threatened broader investigations of the military to root out people who fail to support the ideological agenda of the administration. “We must resist ideological tests for the US military”, Seth Cropsey, The Hill (21-Jan-21)
6. The Revolving door between the corporate C-Suite and Washington was back in motion on day 1 of Biden’s administration after being locked for four years. You cannot objectively deny that the free movement of persons between government posts and executive roles at fortune global 1000 companies is anything other than an ideological exchange between two of the greatest threats to a free society. “Democrats: The Party of Big Labor, Big Government…and Big Business”, Antonio Chavez, The Hill (17-Mar-2020)
If you’re ashamed of how you and your fellow far left Democrats are being portrayed, then the answer isn’t to attack Trey. The answer is to stop behaving as precisely the caricature he has drawn of you.
PTCitizen–
First of all, I don’t think I “attacked” Trey
Hoffman. I have always tried to be kindly
toward him.
As to opinions and positions of progressive
Dems–it’s a large tent, I should think. We
all don’t agree 100% on every issue. But
our aim is true.
For example, as to the immigration challenge at the border, I do indeed know
a few who champion open borders, as you
suggest. Most feel our current immigration policy is broken and requires
fixing (by adding personnel to assist asylum seekers in preparing their appeals
and to hear those cases in a prompt way,
for instance). Others feel we should attempt addressing the situation in the
countries from which refugees flee. I
daresay there are as many opinions as there are those holding them.
My point is, all of those progressive thinkers are motivated by a commitment to humanitarian treatment of our neighbors. Not as Trey proposes, as a
part of some nefarious coup.
Ditto for the remainder of your list–
some things need to change, and it is just
and right to call for it.
I only ask that you don’t speak for us,
especially to our motive. Ask us. You will
probably hear some version of “What’s so
funny about peace, love, and understanding?”
I think Suz is being extremely kind and generous in asking Trey to re-evaluate the way he talks about progressive Democrats, especially as he seems to believe he knows their motivations and clearly he does not.
Trey, if you are with us, you say:
“And so they are working harder than ever to achieve their Marxist goal of destroying traditional societal morals and values, Christianity, and the family.”
I don’t know upon what you base this conclusion, but as Suz said, you clearly have not just asked progressive Democrats what their end game is, because this isn’t it. You intuit we want the destruction of:
* “traditional societal morals and values” — I suppose this depends on what you are calling traditional value … If to you traditional values represent a society where LGBTQ people (or any other minority) must remain closeted, are not allowed to marry, are prevented from holding ordinary jobs, are at risk of hate crimes or are bullied by law enforcement, etc. Then yes, we want to destroy those values. But in place of those values, we envision societal values that lift up every person, regardless of their race, gender, sexual orientation, country of origin. While your values may have been “traditional” in the past, in the future we foresee a just and equitable society where no one is held back simply by virtue of who they are or how they look. That’s not so scary, is it?
*”Christianity.” Dear Trey, isn’t it obvious we love and embrace Christianity in its truest sense, the Christianity where Jesus says, “Come unto me all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest” where the Apostle Paul says at last it will be a world where “Christ is all, and Christ is in all,” where we truly see the reign of heaven on this earth, the peaceable kingdom where the wolf and the lamb play together because “they shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain, says the Lord”? This is the end of a just and equitable society, the one progressive Democrats foresee. It’s just up to the Christians to act like Christians and embrace our fellow man. Destroy Christianity? No! Carry it to its logical conclusion of embracing all humankind in the love of the Divine Mystery? Yes. Not all progressive Democrats would put that spiritual spin on it, but certainly some would, and the aims of the others are the same: justice and equity, as God prescribes.
* “The family.” From where do you even get this idea? Destroy the family? We are about making families whole, making sure single moms and dads earn a living wage to provide for their families, making sure every child has the opportunity to attend a good school and reach for the stars, making sure minority and LGBTQ families have the same resources and chance for success that cis white families have. We are pro-family, Trey. We don’t want to destroy a single family. We want to lift them up.
You say, “By doing this [destroying family, values, Christianity], they will achieve their version of utopia, where all people are truly equal in their dependence on and allegiance to the state.” Again, I don’t know where you are getting this idea. Economic reforms are designed to help people achieve independence from hand to mouth living. Utopia, for realists, would be the place all are on equal footing to succeed. We just aren’t there yet in the USA, but we can get there. And then we can help lift up others, too.
Please believe me, we don’t think Christianity or conservatives are the enemy. Many of us are Christians, and we only think ignorance and ill-will are the enemy.
Trey, if you read all this, thank you. I hope it alleviates your fears. We Americans are all in this together, and it does no good to vilify each other. Let’s join hands and work together.
To Suz and Visionary – Your posts with appeals to the historical Jesus are thoughtful and laudatory, but they are irrelevant to Trey Hoffman and his acolytes. Trey is a Pharisee. He is invested only in perpetuating a very narrow interpretation of his holy book that limits redemption to a small swath of like-minded rule-observers and maintains power for his shrinking cohort. Quoting Jesus’ admonition to love one’s enemies, treat others as you wish to be treated, obey God rather than man, etc. not only fail to convince him, but rather, they fuel his disdain for the man who insisted upon them. Just like his first century pharisaical brethren, if the historical Jesus appeared today with his transformative notions of love and acceptance, Trey, no doubt, would incite the populace to prefer Barabbas.
Of course, you must observe your own ethical obligation to respond to others with respect and dignity and to focus upon verifiable facts. But please don’t expect the same from Mr. Hoffman. The goal of a pharisee is to maintain power and to bask in the adulation of the less erudite. Trey submits truth-challenged missives to this news outlet constantly to achieve these personal accolades.
The situation is not hopeless. St. Paul was an outspoken and murderous pharisee, but he was transformed when he met the real Jesus on the Damascus Road. Blinding lights could appear to any of us.
Stranger Than Truth–
Thank you for the thoughtful and encouraging comments.
In the event that Mr. Hoffman undergoes a Damascus Road experience (or for that matter, the beautiful vision of St. Peter on Divine inclusion–clean vs. unclean), I would rejoice.
Imagine Trey as a tireless,
sincere ally and advocate for the voiceless and marginalized groups he
currently disparages. Imagine his hopeful and inspiring epistles, rather than painful laments. In
short, imagine a better world for ALL.
C’mon, Trey!
These holier-than thou Trumplicans like Trey, seem to forget their one-term president managed to lose the House in ’18 and also lose the Senate in ’20. Trey don’t you think it’s time to re-evaluate and inspect these extreme far-right ideologies (and its candidates) that produce these poor results? If fear mongering is the best out of the Republican Party playbook these days (and in recent years), along with no real problem-solving ideas; then you should expect similar results. It’s all rather disappointing, for in a good democracy you do need a good counterweight to provide balance and stability.
I don’t know about stability, but you certainly provide balance. Your far-left ideology is the equal and opposite of Trey’s.
Speaking of disappointing, this is not a Democracy. You might want to research how a Constitutional Federal Republic works.
In the far-left corner of America’s boxing ring, weighing in at 420 pounds and 6.9 oz we have Bernard Sanders!! Publicly fighting for affordable healthcare and living wages but who will pay for such luxuries in the world’s wealthiest country??
Annnd in the far-right corner weighing in at 14 pounds and 8.8 oz we have Marjorie Taylor Greene. Fighting for “uniquely Anglo-Saxon political traditions” and ready to expose “false flag” operations such as 9/11 and Sandy Hook.
Who will come out on top?? These two fighters couldn’t be any more equal and opposite /s
Yes, a Federal Republic with a Constitution that was under siege on January 6 by a Trump mob that disrupted and attempted to overthrow a national election (Constitutional Democracy). You walked into that one Mr. Itizen. As far as my ideology, fiscal conservatism is one of them which this “new” GOP has not only forgotten, but abandoned.
January 6th was a mostly peaceful protest. And since the 1st amendment protects the right of people to peaceably assemble to petition government for redress of grievance, it’s not only histrionic to suggest the Constitution was under siege on January 6th, it is also contrary the spirit of the Constitution.
We do not have National Elections in this country. So it would be impossible for said mostly peaceful protest to in any way be an attempt to overthrow a national election.
There is nothing about the construction of the United States nor the States respectively which is in any way a democracy. You are free to refer to certain institutions of State and Local governments as “democratic”, but the mere democratic nature of an institution does not make it a democracy. And let us be thankful, for Democracy is a farce in which two wolves and a sheep argue about what’s for dinner.
You’re right about one thing. The “new” GOP, as well as whatever you think comprises the “old” GOP has abandoned fiscal conservatism, and frankly any form of conservatism. But then again, only a ideologue would believe that Conservatism is an appropriate philosophy for State.
PTCitizen–
“January 6th was a mostly peaceful protest.’
Frankly, that opening line was an assault on anyone’s credibility; and rendered the remainder of
your comments unworthy of consideration.
My apologies to the estimated 140 law enforcement officers who were injured in the insurrection.
“January 6th was a mostly peaceful protest,” originates from the same sources who routinely generate what Kellyanne Conway labeled “alternative facts” on Meet the Press in January 2017 as she accurately set the stage for the four years that followed of the Trump presidency. The onslaught of “alternative facts” from Ms. Conway’s (and PTCitizen’s) sources endures even after their misguided leader has left Washington. They believe these “facts” with religious zeal that eschew objective evidence. Indeed, the presentation of any counter narrative only entrenches their resolve to hold onto the fantasies.
This wholesale abandonment of rational consideration of evidence works just as well for Fox newscasters as it does for any religion. It makes the claims – no matter how unlikely – invulnerable to objective analysis, or even questioning.
Of course, the phenomenon works at all points on the political spectrum. Liberals who believe that every police officer is corrupt are a case in point. Fortunately, progressives are not as monolithic as conservatives, so their own internal dissensions prevent the wholesale embrace of a cataclysm as profound as Donald Trump. If that is a comfort, it is only a small one.
Would that facts, science, and reason could guide our republic rather than passions. Now I am delusional!
If one simple statement illustrating absurdity can trigger such a hyperbolic emesis, then you’re in no position to lecture anyone about rationality.
An objective comparison of media reporting over the riots nationwide in the 18 months prior to the January 6th protest demonstrates that even widespread acts of vandalism, assault, arson, looting, and mayhem do not exceed a standard by which such events can be referred to as mostly peaceful. So there is no other credible way to categorize the January 6th protest unless you’re wiling to state on the record that every BLM riot in 2020 was a mass criminal action.
The only real detail which explains the difference in viewpoints here is that instead of raging mobs attacking private property, the January 6th mob trespassed on a symbol of government power. And that’s where you show your ideological bent: Your religious reverence for the State holds that the Capitol Building is holy, and that the lives and property of citizens are merely sacrificial elements of your worship of State.
By the way… the statement “progressives are not as monolithic as conservatives” is likely one of the most arrogant, self-serving, and self-unaware statements I’ve ever seen. Progressives are the equal an opposite of ideological Conservatives in both the narrow scope of belief they hold, and their tremendous power for low resolution thinking. No greater example exists than your reflexive need to drag “Fox News”, “Trump”, and “Kelly Conway” into the conversation when they are completely irrelevant. But those are among the pantheon of your favorite bogeymen, so that’s what you do.
PTCitizen, have you heard of “whataboutism”? That’s when we don’t like someone calling us out on our specious commentary, so we quickly deflect their criticism by responding, “Oh yeah? Well what about _____?” You’ve probably seen this in play when, for instance, someone complained about President Trump’s immigration policy putting kids in cages on the border, and then someone else (instead of speaking to the problem itself, kids in cages) responded with, “Oh yeah? Well, what about the fact that Obama built the cages?!”
It feels like it should mean something because it takes the heat of the original argument and tries to shunt it in a different direction, but it doesn’t actually address the argument. Whataboutism is not an actual dialectic for defending your views. In fact, it’s a demonstration that your view is weak at a certain point that you feel you have to protect by deflecting the criticism elsewhere.
And you, PTCitizen, have given us a beautiful illustration of this non-defense of a flawed point as you say:
“An objective comparison of media reporting over the riots nationwide in the 18 months prior to the January 6th protest demonstrates that even widespread acts of vandalism, assault, arson, looting, and mayhem do not exceed a standard by which such events can be referred to as mostly peaceful. So there is no other credible way to categorize the January 6th protest unless you’re wiling to state on the record that every BLM riot in 2020 was a mass criminal action.”
–“You don’t like my insurrection and actual coup attempt on the US government? Well what about BLM?!”–
This is not an argument, just a deflection, and as it happens, a poor one. Despite what you may think, the protests over racial inequality since the murder of George Floyd have indeed been mostly peaceful — there were so many of them, for so long, throughout so much of the nation and the world, that if they had all been violent, the destruction would have been much more widespread. Look it up: Time, The Washington Post, Harvard-Radcliffe, USA Today, The Guardian, CNN, all report the protests were overwhelmingly peaceful; some estimates are 93% peaceful?
And of course, you can’t forget the truism that the police decide when there will be a riot. It is often the mindset of law enforcement going into the situation that makes the difference. When you tell the police they are going into a riot and kit them out with military hardware and riot gear, of course they go in spoiling for a fight, and of course violence results. So please, consider your “whataboutism” not only an illogical response to the criticism of your previous assertion (coup was peaceful!), but also completely unfounded.
I agree with Suz. When you declare that a violent coup attempt we all watched in real time was in fact a peaceful protest, we cannot be expected to take anything else you say seriously.
Five minutes at wikipedia would have prevented you from improperly using “whataboutism” in your unnecessarily long and poorly formulated attempt at argument. What’s ironic is that in the process of charging me with a tu quoque fallacy, you committed appeal to authority and appeal to popularity. Perhaps
The reality is that you’re simply not being honest nor are you being rational. Even the Department of Justice has admitted that there is no evidence to support charges of sedition against any of the 400 people who were arrested (“Amid setbacks, prosecutors abandon some claims in U.S. Capitol riot cases”, Sarah Lynch, Reuters. (24 Mar 2021)). The most serious charges to date are assault, and only 2 of those involve assaulting an officer. (“What we know about the “unprecedented” U.S. Capitol riot arrests”, Hymes/McDonald/Watson, CBS News. (26 April 2021)) And FBI spokeperson Jill Sanborn testifying before the Senate Homeland Security Committee stated that no weapons were recovered during or after the January 6th protest. (“FBI Official Says No Guns Were Recovered During Capitol Riot Arrests”, Chuck Ross, Daily Caller. (3 March 2021)). What is a coup without weapons? By the way… the math on this 10,000 people at the protest, and 400 sought by the FBI. 400 / 10,000 x 100% = 96% peaceful protest.
If you weren’t otherwise ideologically possessed, you might be capable of honesty and simply admitting that January 6th riot was consistent with a broader trend of social unrest. Until then, you and suz are the ones who can’t be taken seriously.
PTC – Keep watching Fox News and defending your orange god even after he incited a riot to overturn an honest election to oust him from power. Will your allegiance to this self-confessed sexual molester and insurrectionist every remit? Will you ever tire of the Kool-aid? He had someone murdered in our Capitol; must he shoot someone on 5th Avenue to dissuade you?
Truth is always stranger than fiction.
Mr. PT – here are some “current” facts. A member of the Oath Keepers militia group, pleaded guilty on April 16 to two charges – obstruction of an official proceeding and entering a restricted building with a dangerous weapon. Investigators have identified over 540 suspects, charged some 410 – including 35 using a deadly or dangerous weapon and 30 with conspiracy, all in connection with the siege. Officials are considering filing serious charges of seditious activity (against some) as the investigation continues.