The anniversary of the Capitol Hill riot on January 6th was something the average media liberal celebrated more than the birth of their first child, and they probably love it more too. Wall-to-wall coverage on CNN and MSNBC, with a chunky Weeble Brian Stelter at CNN even complaining that Fox News had chosen to start every hour with actual current news, only later getting to the anniversary, because too much is never enough. When Democrats had a chance to cover an earlier riot, something closer to an actual insurrection, they chose not to. They didn’t even bother to draw an analogy to when Democrats tried to disrupt the “peaceful transition of power.”
It was a different time, hairstyles were different, fashion was different, and Democrats were different. Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) committed his first act as a freshman Member of Congress when he objected to the certification of the 2016 Electoral College vote. Raskin was hoping to stop Donald Trump from being certified as President of the United States.
This is terrorism, at least as the left defines it today. Since this was 2017 and it was action against Republicans, it didn’t matter. Raskin went on the lead the second coup/impeachment attempt against Trump because the left loves irony as much as they love double standards.
But it wasn’t just left-wing Members of Congress engaging in what they accuse Republicans of doing, it was their Brownshirt mob.
Remember the riot in DC on January 20, 2017? What would become BLM/ANTIFA took to the streets in a sort of rehearsal for the summer of trying to kill cops and tried to prevent Donald Trump from taking the oath of office. Street were blocked, business were smashed, people were attacked, all the things we’re used to Democrats doing now happened on that day. It got some coverage that day, but not much. This was, after all, the media’s team doing it. I doubt the sports media in Houston spent a lot of time rehashing how the Astros had cheated their way to a World Series victory after initially covering the story.
There was no 1 year anniversary commemoration of that insurrection. In fact, the only acknowledgement of the attack after it happened was about a year and a half later when all remaining charges against the domestic violent extremists who tried to overthrow the government were summarily dropped.
Unlike those arrested on January 6th, the Democrat Party and left-wing establishment circled the wagons to protect their rioters. NBC News reported on the failed push to prosecute the more than 200 goons arrested that day by saying, ” That effort saw the government facing off against an intensely coordinated grassroots political opposition network that made Washington the focus of a nationwide support campaign — offering free lodging for defendants, legal coordination and other support.”
In other words, this was a coordinated attack from concept to execution, with funding and lawyers at the ready. The anti-American coup attempt had lodging and a “nationwide support campaign.”
The left was as organized as al Qaeda with similar goals.
Democrats learned their lesson. “Two group trials ended in defeats for the U.S. Attorney's Office, which was hindered by the fact that most protesters wore similar black clothing and covered their faces,” NBC reported. “Activists credited a unified defense strategy with prevailing. This strategy included persuading defendants — sometimes over the objections of their lawyers — not to accept plea bargains.”
The mafia doesn’t have that much loyalty.
To this day, no Democrat bothered to condemn this “attack on our democracy.” Who knows, since these goons all wore masks, you have to wonder if the Democrats who refused to attend Trump’s inauguration were out there leading the way. There really wasn’t much of an investigation, so we’ll never know.
To put a fine point on the lesson here for the left, the NBC story concludes by quoting Sam Menefee-Libey, a member of something called the DC Legal Posse activist collective. “Solidarity was what won the case. I hope that organizers and people on the left study it,” he said.
A “riot” where more selfies were taken than punches were thrown, where the vast majority of “rioters” entered the Capitol building through doors opened for them by police, where they obeyed the velvet ropes in the Capitol Rotunda, was the greatest threat to democracy since 9/11. But a band of violent goons, explicitly in Washington, DC, to disrupt the peaceful transition of power, applauded and inspired by progressive Members of Congress, might as well not even happen.
January 6th, 2021, only lasted 3 hours, 1 shy of how long you’re supposed to wait before consulting your doctor if Viagra works too well. January 20, 2017, never stopped, spending the ensuing years rolling across the country bringing death and destruction that continue to this day. You can see why Democrats wouldn’t want to commemorate that, and why Republicans absolutely should.