The following article was found in the Atlantic Magazine. It was written as an indictment on the GOP for fomenting the violent asault on the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Paul. (Bold) Our response is inset.
“January 6 was not an outlier.”
FALSE: It was an outlier. Of
the arrests related to the "breach" on January 6th, most of the
arrests were for "trespassing". https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/capitol-breach-cases
According to the DOJ, 883 People were charged with crimes relating to the
January 6th, breach.
Of the listed individuals shown on
the DOJ website as having been charged with a crime, Zero people were
charged with murder. Arson. Zero. Robbery. Five. Assault. One-hundred
and four. Charges relating to violence. Ninety-two.
If the breach really involved this
massive conspiracy towards an insurrection, then to take over one of the most
well protected spaces on the planet, you would need thousands of people to get
it all planned out, organized and acted upon. Yet here is to DOJ’s list of
conspirtors:
·
Conspiracy to commit ______. 47
·
Sedition. 11
·
Insurrection. 0
·
Treason. 0
·
Of the ones charged with sedition, only 2
plead guilty.
The writer of this article
completely ignores the years of political violence perpetrated by the political
left and characterized as “mostly peaceful protests” by CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, The
Washington Post and the New York Times. The most egregious being the attempted
murder of nearly a dozen police officers during the riot in Portland, where rioters
set fire to a police station knowing there were people still inside.
In addition, compared to the four
years of political violence, by BLM, Code Pink, ANTIFA, and other leftist cause-de-jur’s;
January 6th was a Sunday picknick. Specifically, the DOJ published
that over 300 arrests were made, stemming from the riots in the US
Capital from May 29th through June 23rd , 2021. The DOJ
wrote:
“To date, of the 94 U.S.
Attorneys’ Offices (USAOs), more than 40 USAOs have filed federal charges
alleging crimes ranging from attempted
murder, assaulting a law enforcement officer, arson, burglary of a federally-licensed
firearms dealer, damaging federal property, malicious destruction of
property using fire or explosives, felon in possession of a
firearm and ammunition, unlawful
possession of a destructive device, inciting a riot, felony civil disorder, and others. Violent opportunists (not “extremists”)
have exploited these demonstrations in various ways.”
“Laughing over a hammer attack on an old man…”
This is incredible. There is not
one “GOP” representative who “laughed” at an 80+ year old man being violently
assaulted with a hammer. Lots of trolls on social media are laughing. Because
that’s what trolls do. They laugh at tragedy. Mocking and ridiculing your
ideological opponents is nothing new to either side. To pretend that this is
unique to the “conservative trolls” is also laughable.
, the GOP has completed its transition from a political
party to a brutal mob.
This is pure hyperbolic rhetoric
and it just makes the above absurdity, even more absurd. What I read in this
article is a classic false dilemma argument. Because some trolls are
laughing at what happened to Paul Pelosi, absolutely means that the Republican
Party began and will continue the process of becoming a “brutal mob”.
In the words of the
“bestschools.com” writers: “The false dilemma fallacy is a manipulative tool
designed to polarize the audience, promoting one side and demonizing another.
It's common in political discourse as a way of strong-arming the public into
supporting controversial legislation or policies.”
In this case, the writer wants you
to hate Republicans. Which leads me to the next part of the article.
A Spreading Cancer…
Characterizing each other as
malignancies on our country is nothing new. It’s exaggerative and illustrates
the intensity of the sentiment, but has nothing to do with reality.
Conservatives in the GOP have a very positive contribution level to what makes
this country great. The fact that the left says over 70 million Americans are a
“cancer” to our society isn’t even provable with ANY objective measure.
Is it the GOP that’s destroying
Chicago, LA, San Fran, Denver, Austin, San Diego, New York, St. Louis, and
about 20 other large US cities? Is it the GOP who’s wrecking California, New
York and Michigan? Nope. All Democrat controlled states.
It might seem late in the game to point to any one event
as a final or conclusive moment in the decline of the
Republican Party.
I agree with this statement. The
Establishment GOP is the “rot” of the Republican Party just like the Democratic
Socialists and the Ultra Liberal “Anything Goes” arms of the Democrats are a “rot”.
Most of the extremes in both parties can be seen as the zealots turning the
rest of the party members off. As for “decline” in a general sense, I don’t
believe 20% of either party can inject so much radicalism that the whole party descends
into irrelevance. Although they are trying.
And I have no doubt that if the GOP returns to power this
winter, its worst members will find new ways to appall decent people while
gamboling about in jester’s bells for its base.
This is laughable. Trans drag-shows
where a full grown man in his 40’s, lifts up his “dress” and shakes his wang in
front of school children, is NOT a GOP exhibition of appalling behavior.
Setting fire to a police station with officers still inside is NOT a GOP
exhibition of appalling behavior. Setting up a Chaz or CHAPS Zone in Seattle,
where no police were allowed and attacks on women, business owners, and even
murder were dismissed as “political action”, was NOT a GOP exhibition of
appalling behavior. The only reason why “appalling” is used, is because the
author is trying to ridicule his way to a moral high-ground. People who
understand facts vs imagination, reject this ploy.
The list of appalling behavior, to a leftist:
“The cruelty is the point.” …the reaction among
Republican elected officials and their conservative-media life-support system
to the beating of Paul Pelosi—by a man named David DePape, who was charged with
attempting to kidnap Speaker Nancy Pelosi and admitted to planning to torture
her—feels different.
Nothing of what was just said, is
true. Here’s why; the published reports by the police, to both Paul Pelosi’s
DUI case, and the incident where the police had to respond to the Pelosi’s
home are repleat with glaring omissions. His DUI report, prior to the video footage, said "Minor accident..." The "home invasion" story said nothing about David DePape’s motive for being at the home, or the
reason Paul Pelosi let him in.
The fact that the police don’t know
why DePape was there that night, means exactly what it means. We don’t know. It’s
not like the left has a history of distorting the truth for the short term
public relations gains… Right?
Look up how Nicholas Sandman (CNN
lawsuit winner) and Kyle Rittenhouse (currently involved in suing several news
organizations for jumping to conclusions and defaming them) were reported to be
these GOP extremists, yet later on, were shown to be nothing of the sort.
Look up how Jussie Smallie faked
his own hate crime just to popularize the notion that Trump supporters were
beating up gay black men. Gretchen Whitmer’s fake kidnapping hoax. Hillary’s
fake Pee Pee tape. Hillary’s fake Muslim video. The list goes on!
I am not alone; my friend Mona Charen, among others, also
senses that this event marks a new level of depravity in the GOP.
Mona Charen wrote this: “Meet the ‘Useful Idiots’ Al Gore, Ted Kennedy,
Jimmy Carter, Jesse Jackson, Madeleine Albright, Katie Couric, Jane Fonda,
Martin Sheen, and all the other liberals who were -- and are -- always willing
to blame America first and defend its enemies as simply ‘misunderstood.’”
She also wrote this: "A people deluded and propagandized cannot be trusted to uphold the pillars of the democratic process. Trump failed at his improvised coup, but he succeeded in warping enough of the electorate to make another attempt — and even success — all too possible."
It’s hard to appear as a consistent apologist for causes you believe in, when those causes can be purchased.
I have struggled for a few days to decide why, exactly,
this moment seems like an inflection point. In terms of actual damage, January
6 was far worse than one violent crime in San Francisco.
Especially for Ashli Babbitt.
Republican leaders—and here I will leave aside Donald
Trump, who is in a class of hideousness all by himself—have said far worse
things over the past five years. But a parade of Republicans somehow think that
an unhinged, hammer-wielding intruder putting an old man in the ICU is funny.
The writer is an opinion peddler.
His views on Donald Trump are clear and I respect him for his well timed
ridicule. I have been critical of Donald Trump for many reasons myself. However,
I agree, lets set Trump aside for a moment.
What GOP leaders are laughing about
Paul being in the ICU for what is being made out to be a home invasion by a
crazed lunatic? Setting aside the Trumps… I'll wait.
We might expect such inanity from pathetic attention
hounds such as Donald Trump Jr. and the usual conservative troll-pundits. Some
of them tried to get a rumor about Paul Pelosi trending and briefly succeeded,
especially when Twitter’s new boss, Elon Musk, characteristically decided that
he just had to get involved in something he knows nothing about and amplified a
dodgy story about it on Twitter. (He later deleted the tweet.) GOP leaders,
however, stayed silent.
No Republican leaders trolling Paul
in this paragraph… Lets read on.
But that didn’t stop people in both right-wing politics and
media from laughing it up over the Pelosi attack, including the Arizona
gubernatorial contender Kari Lake…
What did
Kari Lake have to say about it? Here it is:
"Nancy Pelosi, well,
she’s got protection when she’s in D.C. — apparently her house doesn’t have a
lot of protection," Lake said at a campaign event in Scottsdale, Arizona,
sparking laughter from many in attendance.
I say, FAIR GAME. Why? Because the
500lb gorilla in the room is this: THE SPEAKER’S RESIDENCES ARE PROTECTED BY
THE United States Capital Hill Police and the Federal Protection Agency. Ever
since vandals spray painted her garage door, they’ve had cameras up and running
on all her residences. However, the notion that the “cameras weren’t working”
at the time of the home invasion, with no alarm sounding or repair order
created, yet THAT’s the time the homeless man decided to pay Paul a visit, is
kind of unbelievable.
Lake then said, "If our
lawmakers can have protection, if our politicians can have protection, if our
athletes, then certainly the most important people in our lives — our children
— should have protection."
This isn’t anything like how the
author portrayed her remarks.
…Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin…
I wonder what Governor Youngkin had
to say?
From a Politico Article: “Youngkin,
a Republican, had infuriated Democrats by saying at a campaign event that took
place the same day as the Oct. 28 attack on Paul Pelosi: ‘there’s no room for
violence anywhere, but we’re going to send her back to be with him in
California.’”
This could be taken to mean, “Lets
send Nancy back to her own district, where she could experience violence like
her husband.” Which is exactly how it was taken by Democrats. Gov. Youngkin sent
a letter apologizing to the House Speaker, which she accepted.
Hardly a “shift” in GOP, descending
into calls for violence against elderly spouses of prominent Democrats.
…and sitting Representative Clay Higgins.
From Politico: “Former
Republican President Donald Trump has so far remained silent online about the
Pelosi home invasion, but his son Donald Trump Jr. retweeted a proposed ‘Paul
Pelosi’ Halloween costume featuring men’s underwear and a hammer, saying ‘The
Internet remains undefeated.’ Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.), who sits on the House
Homeland Security Committee, embraced a false anti-LGBTQ conspiracy surrounding
the attack, tweeting and then deleting a post suggesting the perpetrator was a ‘male
nudist hippie prostitute.’”
The offending meme described in the
article continues to further the possibility that the attack was staged and the
injury to Paul Pelosi was actually an accident, due to the fact that the hammer
blow didn’t come until the police arrived. It was also widely reported and has
yet to be refuted, that both men were clothed only in their underwear.
The meme isn’t making fun of the
injury. The meme was sarcastically suggesting that the whole thing seems a bit dubious.
Not a celebration of violence, more a mocking salute to the possibility that
once again, Democrats are manipulating the narrative to generate public
sympathy.
Others have joined in trying to obfuscate or deflect attention
from the intent of the attack; Senator John Cornyn of Texas even lamely tried
to raise immigration as an issue. (DePape is here on a long-expired visa from
Canada.)
The fact that DePape over-stayed
his visa is a fact. The correlation between his being in the United States
Illegally and him attacking Paul Pelosi can be directly linked to a cause. Had
he been deported and not safely residing in a sanctuary city, is a valid concern.
Crimes committed by illegals in this country are 100% preventable, by enforcing
our border laws.
I remember Chuck Schumer saying, “Not
one life…” when it came to the topic of enforcing a simple “mask policy”.
One might think that it would be easy for America, as one
nation, to condemn an attempt to kidnap the woman second in line to the
presidency that resulted in the beating of her husband with a hammer.
I agree. While the author ignores
the fact that this Nation has been condemning violence for centuries. (That’s
why we have laws, pay for cops, lawyers, judges and prisons.) He insinuates
that the GOP has been willing to look the other way, when it comes to violence
against their political opposition.
This seems a bit disingenuous; Democrats
in at least 14 of our most populous states run the criminal justice system in
their largest US cities where violence is measurably on the rise. Why? Because,
it is the Democrats who don’t think that being tough on crime is the solution.
Besides, I seem to recall what the
Democrat leadership and their “trolls” were saying in 2017 when on June 14,
2017, a mass shooting occurred during a practice session for the annual
Congressional Baseball Game for Charity in Alexandria, Virginia. Six people
were shot, including U.S. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, U.S. Capitol
police officer Crystal Griner, congressional aide Zack Barth, and lobbyist Matt
Mika, by 66-year-old James Hodgkinson. Scalise and Mika were taken to nearby
hospitals, needing lifesaving surgeries.
Nancy Pelosi was famously quoted as
saying that the shooting was all Trump’s fault, choosing the occasion to attack
her political opposition rather than condemn the violence.
Pelosi quoted Trump joking at a
campaign rally, “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody
and I wouldn’t lose voters.”
As Ernest Hemingway would say: Pretty to think so.
Instead, we have seen the dark heart of the Republican Party, with a reaction
so callous, so flippantly sadistic, so hateful, that it all feels irredeemable.
Let’s not forget former Governor of
Ohio Ted Strickland’s comments about the tragic death of Justice Scalia “…The
death of Scalia saved labor from a terrible decision,” he said, according to a
recording issued by the NTK Network, which calls itself a news aggregation
site. “And I don’t wish anyone ill, but it happened at a good time. Because
once that decision had been made, it would have been tough to reverse it.” He
later apologized.
Of course, Republicans have put on a master class in
whataboutism over the past few days. What about the people who laughed at Rand
Paul’s neighbor giving the Kentucky senator a beatdown?
If you’re going to level attacks against
the whole GOP based on individual gaffs and poorly chosen comments, then you
have to condemn it all, or none of what you say is credible. It’s not “what-about-ism”.
It’s more along the lines of “fair is fair”.
What about Kathy Griffin’s ugly photograph of her holding
up a mask representing Trump’s severed head?
Everyone discounts Kathy Griffin.
She’s a comedian. She was unwise to do such a thing. It bothered people. She paid
for her mistake. She’s bouncing back. Good for her.
And, most of all, what about James Hodgkinson, who shot
at a group of GOP political officials and nearly killed Representative Steve
Scalise? These are all said with triumph, as if the transformation of the GOP
into a violent mob is rendered moot by these examples.
The fact that the author uses the
attempted MURDER of conservatives while they are playing baseball for charity,
as a “whataboutism” is the POT calling the kettle black. No words here.
I disapproved of laughing off the attack on Rand Paul and
the Griffin photo shoot. (I am allergic to even the implication of violence
against any president.) But I also don’t think these are neatly comparable
cases; Paul, a middle-aged man, was attacked by a neighbor angry over a pile of
brush in Paul’s yard, and Griffin paid a significant career price for her
tasteless stunt.
I agree. We all get in these little
life-snits. We understand them. Even conservatives were making fun of Rand
Paul. I remember Rand Paul joking about the attack.
Hodgkinson and DePape, by contrast, do seem alike, a
similarity exploited by Republicans. Both were troubled and unstable men who
spent a lot of time on the internet and settled on political figures as their
intended target. That’s fair as far as it goes.
Why is it that when conservatives
point out flaws in the Democrat narrative, it’s “Republican’s Pounce” and “GOP
exploits” and “Conservatives Cash IN”; but when Democrats call out Republicans,
it’s a “threat to our Democracy”? Why is that?
The problem is that the GOP and their media footmen are
flooding the zone with hate, and creating more potential DePapes every day.
This is an unqualified lie.
Correlation does not mean causation. This is a logical fallacy. I will show
you.
There is no equivalence here;
…but there is!
· it’s
not liberals who are threatening election officials
o
(Unverified. In fact, criminals are calling
election officials with threats. Arrests are few, if any, so there’s no way of
knowing who they work for or what their political affiliation is. For
all we know, we could accuse democrats of paying operatives to call and
threaten election officials and blame it on Trump supporters. Like FBI agitators
at the JAN 6 breach.)
· stalking
ballot boxes with guns
o
(Certain communities did have people standing by
ballot boxes while armed. But that’s nothing new to Democrats. BLM activists
were at more than one polling place, armed as well. The point being, “police
your own before you come and knock on my door”.)
· or
barraging Congress’s phones and inboxes daily with threats.
o
(People call and leave all kinds of messages
voicing their anger. Lots of threats. A barrage! Yet how many Federal representatives
and Senators have been attacked in the last decade. Seems like we all know that
99.8% of those angry voters are just venting. GOP lawmakers get just as many as
the DNC does.)
January 6 should have been our warning that these
messages have real power, and yet that terrible day has already receded from
our collective memory.
“We got to stay on the street. And
we’ve got to get more active, we’ve got to get more confrontational. We’ve got
to make sure that they know that we mean business,” Yeah, I agree. I think speech
like this, needs to be curbed. Especially when it’s followed by several violent
riots and street confrontations. Did Donald Trump say this? No. Rep. Maxine
Waters. (D)
To see how the right wing is deranging more people every
day, consider the case of Scott Haven, a Utah insurance salesman. In a new
book, the journalist Robert Draper notes that Haven was convicted in 2019 of
making threats in many of the almost 4,000 calls he made over two years to
Democrats in Congress, singling out Maxine Waters, Dick Durbin, and Jerry
Nadler:
According to CNN, he is still in jail,
denied bail, on one count of making threats. According to a quote by the same
CNN report, Haven was interviewed by the FBI and in that interview, told the
FBI he didn’t mean any of the threats, and that he was just venting. Haven was
finally arrested after making more phone calls.
The GOP didn’t make this man crazy,
this man made this man crazy. The fact that his ire was against Democrats is as
random as any other loner looking for relevance. I don’t blame the DNC for Hodgkinson
or John Hinkley. I don’t even blame AC/DC and EA games for the Columbine
tragedy. However, I do blame the DNC and the liberal news media for turning
everything bad into Trumps fault and everything good as if it originated in the
minds of prominent Democrats. I blame the LEFT for looking the other way when
1000’s of rioters destroyed DC in June of 2020, where they injured over 100 law
enforcement officers. I blame the LEFT for calling the riots that occurred all
over the country “mostly peaceful protests”.
I don’t see where the author has
the moral high-ground, here.
Besides, the author inflates the number
of phone calls and the investigation has not released who was called – as it is
an ongoing investigation. Some speculate that GOP representatives were also on
Haven’s call list.
He focused his attention on them because Limbaugh and
Hannity had themselves done so—even going so far as to supply their Washington
office numbers while on the air. Haven dutifully jotted them down. Then he
began calling, sharing sentiments like the following:
“Tell the son of a bitch we are coming to hang the
fucker!”
This is pretty sad writing.
EVERYONE knows the congressional switchboard number. All representatives post
their phone numbers to their local and DC offices. That’s been that way since
the invention of the telephone book. The White House switch board number is also
public knowledge. To pretend that Limbaugh and Hannity outed congress members private
information so their supporters could call and threaten them is hyperbolic at
every level.
Later, as he pleaded guilty in court, Haven trembled with
regret. So did many of the insurrectionists of January 6.
According to the DOJ website, Scott
Haven was never arrested for participating in the Jan6 Breach. According to
Davis County Court and Davis County Jail records, Scott Haven is no longer an
inmate awaiting trial. According to Google, Yahoo, CNN, the AP, the Washington
Post, the New York Times and the Davis County News, Scott Haven is no longer in
jail. In fact, according to the “Utah State-wide Public Warrant Search”, Scott Haven
isn’t even listed.
Perhaps David DePape will do so as well one day. But the
members and staff on the Hill who lived in fear of Haven’s threats will not get
those years back;
Apparently, Scott Haven isn’t even
a defendant any more! We know he was accused, but for some odd reason, there is
zero information about him ever being convicted.
…the people killed and injured in the Capitol breach
cannot be made whole; Paul Pelosi’s body is no less shattered.
The ONLY person “killed” during the
Jan6th Breach was Ashli Babbitt, a protestor, who was shot and killed by the
Capital Hill Police LT. Byrd. Paul Pelosi, if proven to have staged this to
cover up a homosexual affair with a homeless male prostitute, may be somewhat
less of a victim than Ashli or the officer’s who were injured on January 6th.
Sadistic glee in harming others is a sin (at least in my
faith).
I agree.
But it is also a social cancer, a rot that can spread
quickly and kill the spirit of democracy.
No “buts” about it.
If all attempts at reason and all offers of friendship
fail, the rest of us should shun those whose dark hearts encourage them to
revel in such poison.
The author’s suggestion that
Democrats ever offered friendship to Conservatives is a convenient narrative,
but an outright lie.
Unfortunately, millions of our fellow citizens seem
poised to vote many such people into power.
Violent extremism is much more of a
Robert Byrd (KKK Legend) thing than a Donald Trump thing. Democrats seem to be
voting them in power more frequently than Republicans.
The darkness is spreading.
This is the kind of rhetoric that
leads to violence. The “darkness” that’s spreading is the real threat actors
behind the scenes, pitting Americans against one another. The fact that they
pick certain people to fan the flames of hatred in either direction is more
material than who they pick to do it.