A democracy can not survive if people do not trust its institutions – the law enforcment, courts, voting systems, education, and the media that is ostensibly charged with keeping government accountable.
Hold that thought.
On March 4, 2017 – six or so weeks after Donald Trump’s inauguration – a Republican event in the rotunda at the Capitol in Saint Paul was crashed, literally, by a group of “Anti”-Fa. They hit an elderly woman in the head with a smoke bomb, one of the “men” in the group punched a seventeen-year-old girl in the face, and they pepper sprayed a group of Republicans who had the termerity to fight back.
It was low-grade terrorism – trying to shut down one’s opposition with violence.
The offenders – including “Woody” Kane, son of Hillary Clinton’s VP nominee, Tim Kane – got off too lightly for it to be called a slap on the wrist. More like DFL loyalist John Choi whispering “slap” at Kane’s wrist while giving him a back rub.
Think a Republican would have gotten off so lightly maliciously attacking Democrats?
Jacob Frey all but gave “Anti”-Fa an engraved invitation to attack Republicans at the various Trump rallies in Minnesota; the hospitality apparently convinced them to stay around and burn the place in the bargain.
In the meantime, utterly peaceful groups like the GOP National Convention and the Tea Party were actively oppressed.
It’s not just the Twin Cities, of course; while there’s a broad sense of disquiet at Trump’s post-election behavior, the same people who insist Trump ordered the riot at the Capitol (hint: give us a pointer to the time-mark in a video. We’ll wait) are utterly silent about Nancy Pelosi’s ongoing, onanistic fantasies about violence about Republicans, uppermost among those of many, many other Democrats.
Bring this up in the context of law week’s Capitol riot, and you’re accused of “whataboutism”.
False.
The point isn’t “Democrat do it too”.
The point is, if we can’t trust our institutions to hold everyone accountable, by the merits of the case rather than their politics, how is a free society supposed to survive?
Jenn at Redhead Rambling comments along similar lines:
The left hasn’t bothered to look into why 73 million people cast their vote for Donald Trump this election. I don’t know if they don’t care, or they don’t want to know the answer or if they assume deplorables are so beneath them it’s simply not worth the effort. Not all 73 million of those votes came from people like the ones who breached the Capitol. Most of them came from regular people, even if they won’t admit it to you.
It would behoove the left to figure out why because the midterms are fast approaching and shit like this ^ will impact that vote.
In the USA we govern by laws, laws meant for everyone to follow, not just the deplorables and the peons. We actually expect people like Nancy Pelosi and Chris Cuomo to follow the same rules and laws they expect us to follow. It’s actually one the things that makes this a pretty awesome country.
One would logically suspect that even the most blinkered Blue-stater would realize that without a nation, they really have no meaningful power.
here’s a list of Trump Purge-Partners
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/victoria-taft/2021/01/12/heres-the-list-of-powerful-companies-cutting-off-trump-and-his-supporters-after-capitol-siege-n1333729
Here’s a quote from David Horowitz’s “Hating Whitey”:
The Louisiana demagogue Huey Long was once asked whether he thought Fascism would ever come to America. His answer was “Yeah, but it will come calling itself anti-fascism.”
“Whataboutism” is an attempt to deflect an argument by bringing up an unrelated point.
A good example is given in an old Soviet-era joke.
An American is being given a tour of the Moscow subway by his Soviet handler. The Soviet goes on and on about the beauty and cleanliness of the subway station. After some time the American says that while the subway station is all the Soviet says that it is, he hasn’t seen any actual subway trains with commuters, yet.
The Soviet furiously responds “What about your lynchings in the South?”
That is “whataboutism.”
It is not “whataboutism” to argue that if the DC riots on January 6th were “domestic teorrorism,” and the rioters “domestic terrorists,” democrats spent a good deal of last summer acting as apologists for “domestic terrorism.”
Americans are one people. We have one set of laws for everyone, they apply to the president as well as to political activists.
This frustrates democrat and politicians (like MN’s Keith Ellison) who believe that equality under the law is a barrier to his fanciful ideals of “justice.” Unequal enforcement of the law is not a legitimate form of implementing public policy, no matter how much you want to do it.
MO, the reprobates have thoroughly destroyed American traditions and institutions, and have just about finished our rule of law.
When people no longer either have faith in, or fear the system of justice, it quickly devolves into anarchy.
As much as the reprobates like to say “power to the people”, they will quickly find that in practice its not an environment favorable to trannies, feminized, noodle armed manlets, drug addicts, debauched sluts, 90 IQ public school dropouts, Doctors of Cultural Studies, drag queens, pedophiles, fapmonsters or degenerates….in other words, them.
They’ll also quickly learn that the Marxist, black supremacists they’ve been supporting don’t really care what a wipipul say. Once it kicks off, they’ll curb stomp a white, gender fluid wymens studies major just as quick as they will a 65 year old Trump supporter.
Crakas is crackas.
Just ask David Horowitz.
We could say “tu quoque” is our fallacy. My take here is that what’s going on is not tu quoque at all, but rather the cynical use of a tactic (rioting) to benefit one party’s interests, and that party then denies the use of the same tactic to their opponents.
It is the political equivalent of the East Block boxing referees that would consistently look the other way when “their” boxer consistently landed a low blow. You can’t run a democracy that way. So when Democrats want to punish Trump for riling up a crowd, some of whom decided to become violent, my response is “sauce for the goose”. Apply the same rule to Democrats who encouraged riots with the appointment of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, and for those who encouraged the BLM protests that very often became riots.
The difference between September 11 and January 6 is the number of Americans rooting for the terrorists.
Certainly it isn’t that over 600 times more people were killed on 9/11, and just as certainly it isn’t that ten million square feet of prime Manhattan office space was reduced to rubble, versus broken windows and doors.
Honestly, Emery, can’t you think better than that?
bike, surely you jest!
Stupid me, JPA. I guess I owe you an IPA (a kosher one?) next time I see you in Texas for all that idiocy I’ve regaled you with. :^)
Nah, I’m buying. We have scoped a lot of local breweries around here (at least a dozen if not more in the 30mi radius) and if it is IPA you wish, we have some really outstanding ones. Better yet, we can actually, physically, in-person, visit them and sample wares. Imagine that! Some breweries also serve exceptional food as well. You can ask Mitch how to reach me.
Emery just blathers, it’s like he thinks about what he writes, or cut-n-pastes it – before he posts.
My response is “the difference between September 11 and the George Floyd riots in Minneapolis is the number of Americans rooting for the terrorists.”
Leftists think like children.