January 6 — What the American media will never tell you

Un an après l’attaque du Capitole, le parti Démocrate fait feu de tout bois pour accabler Trump et le camp républicain. Pourtant, les dégâts générés par les antifas ou le mouvement Black Lives Matter – soutenu par de nombreux démocrates – sont bien plus importants.

The head of Republicans in France, Paul Reen, has penned an article for the French readers of the Causeur magazine.  (Here is the French version.)

It’s been one year since the Trump rally of Jan 6 2021 ended with the attack and breach of the U.S. Capital Building.  We’ve all seen the horrifying videos and pictures in the media. This was not just a shocking and terrible day for the country but, speaking as a Republican, I can say that it was even more terrible for Republicans. This was the last thing Trump supporters wanted. Those responsible for the violence are criminals and should be held fully accountable and punished to the full extent of the law. I haven’t heard one Republican Politician, political pundit or patriotic Republican support the breach of the Capital.  But the acts of violence are so antithetical and uncharacteristic of Republican and MAGA principles of peaceful protests that it makes perfect sense for Republicans to question the media narrative of exactly what happened, why and especially what has happened afterwards in American politics.

The Democrat Leftists and their supporting media in the U.S. repeatedly call the breach on the Capital an “insurrection”, an attempted “coup d’état” by violent Trump supporting racist, white supremacist, domestic terrorists; the greatest attack on our democracy since the Civil War, worse than Pearl Harbor and even Sept 11 (an incredible insult to the 3000 Americans who lost their lives on 9/11) and that the violent attack was incited and supported by Trump himself.

But if this hysterical, hyperbolic rhetoric were true, why has the Left felt it necessary to lie so much about what did and did not happen? Yes, Trump did hold a rally not far from the Capital on Jan 6 with thousands of supporters, as the joint session in Congress was set to confirm the election results. The purpose of Trump’s rally was to convince Republicans in Congress to join those Republicans planning to contest the certification of certain states election results that were potentially based on fraudulent votes. This would force at least some discussion and debate on the Congressional floor which is lawful under the constitution. 

What the media won’t tell you is that many Democrats have also contested results of past Presidential elections including the recent 2016 election when Trump beat Hillary Clinton.  Democrats objected based on the now proven false accusations that Trump stole the election by colluding with Russia. A lie that Democrats continued for the entire Trump presidency and even today.  So Trump’s objective was simply to have Republicans see the support he had from the American people.  Any violence to disrupt this process on Jan 6 would serve no benefit to Trump. It is proven that Trump called for supporters to “peacefully and patriotically” march to the Capital. But the violence did disrupt the process. After Trump called for all rioters to leave the Capital and the senators and congressmen and women returned, they immediately called for a certification of all states votes with no discussions. Biden was confirmed.

I, as well as most Republicans, agree that Trump did fail to not speak forcefully enough and quick enough to the rioters to stop. But why spread lies about it? Anti Trumper Liz Cheney (R-WY) who is now Vice Chair of the Select Committee to investigate Jan 6, has been spreading the lie that Trump made no statement during the riot for 187 minutes (over 3 hours). The media won’t tell you that this is a provable lie. The timeline of events clearly shows that Trumps first statement via Twitter was 23 minutes after the initial break-in, to “stay peaceful and support our police”, he then sent a second tweet 35 minutes later. After another hour he sent out a video message telling everyone to leave. That’s 2 statements and a video message over 2 hrs.

Not a Government overthrow, more a disorganized protest

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-protests-idUSKBN29B24S
https://www.voanews.com/a/2020-usa-votes_thousands-storm-us-capitol-shameful-assault-our-democracy/6200429.html

The media told you that thousands of armed Republicans invaded the capital to kill politicians and overthrow the government. The media won’t tell you that it was actually hundreds of frustrated patriots that foolishly entered the Capital, following a group of violent instigators. Not one protester was found to be carrying a firearm. Many witnesses even say that some of the police allegedly opened the doors from the inside to let protesters in, as can be seen in many videos where police were actually escorting protesters through the hallways.

5 people killed but not by Republicans

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/06/politics/us-capitol-lockdown/index.html
The media then told you that violent, armed Republicans caused the death of 5 people on their way to trying to hang Vice President Pence. That one of the 5 was a Capital Police Officer who was attacked by the Republican mob and bludgeoned to death using a fire extinguisher.  The media won’t tell you the actual truth that came out much later that there never was an attack with a fire extinguisher and instead the police officer died the following day of natural causes, caused by multiple strokes and was confirmed by his family. 3 of the remaining 4 deaths were of Trump supporters who also died of natural causes such as heart attacks. The 5th and last person who died was also a Trump supporter who was the only victim shot and murdered that day, and by a Capital Police Officer. Her name was Ashli Babbitt. She was unarmed and draped in an American Flag. She was a veteran in the Air Force. The police officer was never convicted of a crime and set free.  The misguided Republicans who decided to follow the criminal instigators made poor decisions, they should not have been inside the Capital, but they were not trying to overthrow the government and Ashli Babbitt did not deserve to be shot in cold blood.

Americans deserve honest investigations and answers  

Over the past year there have been many investigations (primarily by Republicans) with videos and eye-witness statements claiming that some of the primary instigators were Anti -Trump imposters posing as MAGA supporters. Repeat, some not all.  In fact, these alleged imposters have been filmed shouting to break into the capital and these videos are readily available on right wing websites. What is surprising is that of all those charged and arrested by the FBI for participating in the Capital riot, these filmed instigators were allegedly never arrested. I am not saying it is fact or proven that these were anti-Trump imposters, but the American people deserve answers to the questions of who really instigated the break-in on the ground, why were police officers told to stand down and not intervene to prevent it and why weren’t the National Guard in place to support the police?  But anyone who raises these questions is immediately shamed and considered a dangerous, right wing conspiracy theorist.
725 arrested, none for sedition, insurrection or terrorism

According to the official U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Website, 725 people have been arrested and charged by the DOJ in connection with the Capital Building break-in. This required a massive nationwide man hunt in all 50 states by the FBI, as an attack on a Federal building is considered a federal crime. While over 600 have been charged with simple trespassing, per the DOJ website, “at least 225 defendants have also been charged with assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers, approximately 10 individuals have been arrested for assaulting a member of the media, or destroying their equipment, and at least 275 defendants have been charged with corruptly obstructing an official proceeding, or attempting to do so.”   A small detail – not one person has been charged with insurrection! To date, only 70 defendants have been sentenced receiving between probation and 5 years. More serious charges of obstruction face maximum sentences up to 20 years in prison.

unAmerican “Gulag” prison conditions

Another 80 defendants (approximately) are being in held in a “temporary” jail in Washington D.C.  awaiting their trials, many have been there for nearly one year. The media won’t tell you how they are being treated. It is being reported that this jail is extremely poorly maintained. Republican politicians recently demanded to see them and described their conditions as outrageous. “They have been beaten by the guards” said Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene on Dec 7. “They are called white supremacists. They are denied religious services, haircuts, shaving, and the ability to trim their fingernails. They’re denied time with their attorneys, they are denied the ability to even see their families and have their families visit there. They are denied bail and being held there without bail. Many of these people have never been charged for a crime before. Some of them are veterans. And the treatment is unbelievable.”

No comparison to Black Lives Matter and Antifa damage and deaths of 2020

There will be hundreds of defendants in court starting in 2022 and certainly throughout 2024. It’s important to detail what many of these defendants are being charged with – trespassing, assaulting police officers and media, and obstructing an official proceeding. Quite remarkable when you think back to the 3 months of riots in 2020 by Black Lives Matter and Antifa who committed the identical crimes,  and worse,  but were often not imprisoned and released under bail funded by Democrat politicians and even V.P. Kamala Harris. During 3 months in 2020, BLM and Antifa caused nearly 570 violent riots, in 220 locations around the US, causing the death of over 30 American citizens including at least one retired police officer and injuring over 2000 other officers. 

In terms of property damage comparison, the Capital Building caused $1.5Million of damage while the BLM/Antifa riots caused $2 Billion worth (most costly riots in US history according to a Princeton University study). Often overlooked is that these BLM/Antifa riots included a 4 month sustained attack on a Federal Building in Portland, OR. This was the Federal Courthouse that was burned and damaged. Like the Federal Capital Building attack, shouldn’t this be a Federal crime? When the Democrat Governor finally allowed Trump to send in the National Guard, the rioters attacked them and tried to set fire to the building while the Guard were still inside. Democrat politicians criticized the National Guard and compared them to Nazi “Stormtroopers”.  Never during the 3-4 month riots on ordinary Americans and a Federal Courthouse did Democrats say that our Democracy was under attack. No, they and their media simply repeated the lie that these were mainly “peaceful protests”. The importance is not to minimize the unacceptable violent break-in at the Capital but to point out the blatant hypocrisy of the Left, their egregious lies and exaggerations of Jan 6 to not only blame Trump as a domestic terrorist but also all Trump supporters.

Politically biased Committee set to smear all Republicans as “insurrectionists”

So now we wait to hear from the House Select Committee on the Jan 6 “insurrection”, led by Democrats.  I, and most Americans, would be happy to see a bipartisan, transparent and thorough investigation of the Jan 6 events. Unfortunately in today’s politically polarized congress and Democrats in the majority, that is not possible. This select Committee is nothing but a politically biased committee against Trump and Republicans, with a pre-determined outcome – convict Trump (once again) and try to put him in jail. 

The evidence of this is overwhelming. When the committee was formed in June 2021, Leader Pelosi was to choose 8 Democrats and the Republican Minority leader, Kevin McCarthy was to choose 5 Republicans. When McCarthy submitted his 5 names, Pelosi took the unprecedented step of denying 2 of them. These were two outspoken Trump supporters. She refused them for spreading alleged “misinformation” as of course only Nancy Pelosi is the arbiter of truth. Basically she refused any Republican who she thought would disagree with the Democrats findings. So McCarthy removed all 5 Republicans in protest saying he wanted no part of a political sham committee. 

Pelosi then made another unprecedented step of asking two famously anti-Trump Republicans to join her Committee, Lynn Cheney (R-WY) and Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), so she could call it “bi-partisan”. Both Cheney and Kinzinger voted to impeach Trump. They naturally accepted and Cheney was even appointed as Vice Chair. Both have been shunned by the Republican Party as a whole and especially in their respective states.  

So the Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans will stretch this political sham masking as a bi-partisan committee throughout 2022 and beyond, in the hopes it will help them in the Nov 2022 elections. McCarthy has vowed to conduct his own investigation in parallel. Sadly the many questions that the Americans deserve to be honestly and transparently answered may never be. The Democrats will continue to smear all Trump supporters as “insurrectionists” to try and deflect and distract from the catastrophe that is the Biden/Harris Administration. But no political propaganda, no false committees, no lies and smears by the media will ever be able to distract Americans from such a colossal failure as Joe Biden.

Let’s take actions to never allow a breach of the Capital again, penalize those that are truly responsible, and begin to focus on reducing inflation, protecting our borders, reducing crime and supporting our police, ending COVID and returning to global leadership. Now there’s a New Year’s resolution!

Mountie: What Is Called a "Vaccine" Is—Literally—Nothing of the Sort; in Fact, it is a Large-Scale Drug Trial with Gene Therapy

When you hear some brain dead parrot repeat the talking point “trust the science,” politely ask them to provide a definition of science. They never can because they don’t know. What they are really saying, but are too stupid to realize, is that they are saying “trust authority and don’t ask questions.” This, my friends, is the antithesis of science. 

When a suspect is arrested, he is told that he has the right to remain silent. With the development of the Coronavirus “vaccine”, that no longer seems to be the case — and that, for common citizens. Easton Spectator publishes an extraordinary letter from an RCMP Mountie (obrigado to Sarah Hoyt) that is essential for the debate. And without further ado, here is 'Corporal Richard Mehner, your “vaccine” free Minotaur': 

The low T wannabe tyrants in Ottawa have decided that I can no longer serve as a police officer because I refuse to tell them if I have submitted to their “vaccine” edict. I’ve served in the RCMP for 21 years and one of the first things I said to any person I ever arrested was “you don’t have to say anything to me.” Unfortunately, our government has told me that I have to tell them what’s in my body, and if the right drug is not inside me, I have to get it as condition of my continuing employment, human rights be damned. Why did I put vaccine in quotations above you ask? More on that later. Buckle up and tighten the straps on your government mandated shame muzzle, this goodbye email will likely ruffle some feathers.

 … Since the pandemic began, until now, I was in a position to see every single sudden death file that came through our detachment area. What did I notice in this position? Nothing. No upwards trend whatsoever. Funny enough, I didn’t see people dropping dead in my neighbourhood either.

This was a very stark contrast to what I saw in media. A non-stop chorus on TV, radio, and internet, of case counts, hospitalizations and deaths. At no time in my life had I seen anything like it. A complete disconnect between my observed reality and that which was portrayed by my government and the government subsidized mainstream media. And they were reporting deaths in care homes. Care homes? When did the media ever report deaths in care homes unless it was some sort of instance of gross negligence? It’s called end of life care for a reason. People go to care homes at the end of their life. Death is the natural consequence, and this fact used to be understood as common sense.

When the statistics started showing that the vast majority of anyone dying from Covid, either had one or more co-morbidities, or was older than the average life expectancy, my skepticism of the pandemic narrative only grew. Then in the summer of 2020, I got Covid. For a few days I was really tired and shivered a lot. Then it was over. I survived the “deadly” disease like the vast majority of anyone else who caught it. To be honest, I’ve had worse Flus, and worse hangovers.

 … Since I was already skeptical of the pandemic, I was naturally skeptical of the need for a “vaccine”. Oh look, vaccine is in quotations again. Why am I doing that?

Because it’s not a f^#king vaccine!!!

A vaccine is created when a virus from nature is made harmless in a lab and then cultivated there. The vaccine, created from the neutered virus, is then injected into a person. The body then reacts to the vaccine just like it would to the unaltered, dangerous virus. However, because the vaccine is a modified harmless version of the virus, it doesn’t cause disease and the body’s natural immunity is able to “learn” how to cope with the virus. This “learning” is lifelong and is why people develop an immunity to whatever they were inoculated against. People who have been vaccinated against Measles do not get Measles, and the same with mumps etc etc. None of the so called Covid “vaccines” meet this definition. If you were wondering why “vaccinated” people are still getting Covid, and spreading it, this is why. The fact that “vaccinated” people still get Covid and spread it should tell you that this madness will never end as long as you buy into the official narrative.

  … How these new Covid “vaccines” work is based on a brand new technology never used on a massive scale. … Make no mistake here. This is a large scale drug trial and whoever was jabbed is taking part. … 

As I was already skeptical about the entire pandemic narrative, I decided a long time ago that I was not going to take any of these “vaccines”. So as I had decided to sit back and watch how the so called pandemic unfolded, I decided to observe the vaccination campaign. One of the first things I noticed is that people like me were completely ignored and never talked about. What do I mean by people by like me? I mean people who had Covid and recovered. Suddenly, natural immunity didn’t exist anymore. Everyone had to get the vaccine regardless of whether they had natural immunity or not. Wait….. what? No one would ever suggest someone who had measles or polio should get vaccinated against those diseases. Why was natural immunity suddenly not talked about anymore? But if you knew where and how to look, it was talked about, and studied. The largest study was in Israel where the researchers concluded that natural immunity conveyed 27 times more protection than vaccination. Not double, not triple, 27 times! 

 … And now we are able to see much of the results of this mass vaccination campaign. And despite what you’ve been told, it’s not good.

 … Don’t be afraid. The government, and their mouthpieces in the mainstream media, have promoted a nonstop campaign of fear for almost 2 years now. Turn off your television and radios. Do your own research and question everything. Knowledge begins with asking questions. With each new variant they will try and frighten you, despite the fact that never in the history of virology has a virus ever mutated to become more deadly. Selective pressures always favour a more contagious, but less deadly mutation. The new “scariant” is Omicron.

 … When you hear some brain dead parrot repeat the talking point “trust the science,” politely ask them to provide a definition of science. They never can because they don’t know. What they are really saying, but are too stupid to realize, is that they are saying “trust authority and don’t ask questions.” This, my friends, is the antithesis of science.

Related: Here Is the Key Question Regarding the Coronavirus
• And here are the 7 Basic Points about Covid-19 that You Need to Know
• Is the Yellow Star Really an Inappropriate Reference for the Vaccine Passport?
And from the March 2020 and April 2020 archives:
• Is There 100% Irrefutable Proof that the Covid19 Pandemic Is Overstated?
• Anti-Americanism in the Age of the Coronavirus, the NBA, and 1619

Plea Bargaining: Punishing people for exercising their constitutional rights is entirely incompatible with the very idea of a constitutional right

Good evidence suggests that the people who founded this country thought that plea bargaining should be prohibited

writes Carissa Byrne Hessick, the author of Punishment Without Trial: Why Plea Bargaining Is a Bad Deal (which is reminiscent of Instapundit law professor Glenn Reynolds's The Judiciary's Class War and Ham Sandwich Nation [Due Process When Everything is a Crime]), in The Atlantic. 

"Nearly every aspect of our criminal justice system encourages defendants—whether they're innocent or guilty—to take a plea deal." Punishment Without Trial "showcases how plea bargaining has undermined justice at every turn[, forcing] the hand of lawyers, judges, and defendants, turning our legal system into a ruthlessly efficient mass incarceration machine that is dogging our jails and pun­ishing citizens because it's the path of least resistance."

Instead of protecting defendants’ right to have their guilt or innocence decided by their peers, judges routinely punish defendants for exercising that right. Specifically, judges regularly impose longer sentences on those defendants who insist on going to trial than on those defendants who plead guilty. A 2018 report shows that, on average, defendants who insist on a trial receive sentences three times longer than those of defendants who plead guilty.

 … The reason that the Supreme Court gives for carving out the jury-trial right from its ordinary constitutional rules is simple: resources. The Court doesn’t think that the criminal-justice system could handle granting every criminal defendant a trial. Without plea bargaining, the Court said, “the States and the Federal Government would need to multiply by many times the number of judges and court facilities.”

 … On some level, the resources argument is convincing. It is certainly true that our courts could not possibly hold trials for all of the criminal cases that come through the justice system. But this lack of capacity does not explain how few trials we have now. In 1990, more than 7,800 criminal trials were held in federal court. By 2016, that number fell to fewer than 1,900. In other words, we have made it so easy for prosecutors to pressure defendants into pleading guilty that we have less than a quarter of the criminal trials that we had 30 years ago, even though we have more judges and more prosecutors now than we did then. So resources can’t explain the policies that we have adopted to pressure nearly every defendant to plead guilty. Even if we accept the resources-argument logic, we could still protect the constitutional rights of thousands more Americans each year.

But is the resources argument right to begin with? Of course, many Americans want government to be efficient and keep costs down. But efficiency in the criminal-justice system has a serious downside: The more easily and cheaply it can be run, the more people end up in it. Unfortunately, the United States has been incredibly efficient at locking people up. As a result, we are the world’s leader in imprisoning our citizens. … So maybe we should be thinking about how we can make our system less efficient.

It isn’t too late for the country to change its course. The rise of originalism—the theory that the Constitution should be interpreted as it was understood when it was first written—could hold the solution to plea bargaining and mass incarceration. Good evidence suggests that the people who founded this country thought that plea bargaining should be prohibited.

 … But adopting an originalist view of the Constitution isn’t necessary to reject the constitutionality of plea bargaining and the trial penalty. No matter what your constitutional theory of interpretation, punishing people for exercising their constitutional rights is entirely incompatible with the very idea of a constitutional right.

America's Kulak Class: Horrific Prison Conditions for January 6 Republicans "Treated as Subhuman" Predicted by Abe Lincoln in 1860

After you read the inhumane treatment that the January 6 political prisoners have been undergoing for nearly a year "as subhuman", see if Abraham Lincoln did not predict the opposition's condescending (and, frankly, hateful) attitude as far back as 1860.

Some two weeks before Christmas, writes PJ Media's Kevin Downey Jr (thanks to Stephen Green + (update) to Ed Driscoll for the instalink), Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene 

released “Unusually Cruel — An Eyewitness Report From Inside The DC Jail,” her report about what she saw when she was finally allowed to meet the January 6 political prisoners.

Reps. Greene, Gohmert, Gaetz, and Gosar tried, unsuccessfully, to visit the January 6 political prisoners twice earlier this year. … Greene and Gohmert (and their respective staffs) finally got to tour the D.C. jail where the J6 inmates are held, though the jail staff DID try to end the tour of the jail before the reps got to meet the political prisoners.

“What is there to hide?” Gohmert pressed. “The complaint has been that they’ve been treated
differently than the other detainees. I thought tonight we were going to find out.”

At that point, the tour had already lasted two hours and Greene and Gohmert hadn’t yet met a single J6 inmate. After an 11-minute discussion, the tour went forward.

Greene and Gohmert met with roughly 40 J6 inmates, in what Greene described as a noticeably older part of the prison, which appeared to have not been updated recently, unlike the rest of the prison.

 … Greene’s report is disturbing and damning. It highlights the brutal and unconstitutional treatment of J6 prisoners at the hands of Biden’s legal system. J6 inmates have been beaten. The prisoners complain of chemicals and pubic hair in their food.

The conclusion to her report starts with the following,

The congressional visit to the D.C. jail on November 4 unquestionably proved that there is a twotrack justice system in the United States. This two-tiered system is not based on race, violence, or conviction of crime, but politics.

It would be too much of a stretch to compare Andersonville (to use another Civil War-era image) to "the DC Gulag", but still, when you hear how rights are being violated by Democrats or leftists, check out if the portrait of one of the wardens isn't at least partly reminiscent of the CSA's Commandant Henry Wirz… 

Especially while reading Kathleen Landerkin's tweets calling Trump and/or his supporters — i.e., the warden's current prisoners — "morons," "people who conspired with the traitors," and persons who are worse than "foreign terrorists." 

No wonder the demands for Maoist self-denunciations. No wonder the abusive treatment of January 6 protestors and the unrighteous sentences handed down on the heads of such political prisoners as Jacob Chansley (a non-violent, harmless eccentric and U.S. veteran). No wonder that, during the Terror in the Capitol Tunnel on January 6, the usual Drama Queens went berserk with batons on the protesters. Julie Kelly:

Future court filings, interviews, and security footage will slowly reveal to the public how law enforcement, beginning at around 1 p.m. that day and continuing for hours, attacked and beat American citizens who dared to protest the election of Joe Biden.

As The Hill's Brad Dress reports,

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and 13 other Republicans are calling for the immediate termination of the deputy warden in charge of inmates connected to the Jan. 6 riot, who are being held inside a Washington, D.C. jail.

In a letter to D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser shared on Twitter, Greene accused D.C. Central Detention Facility (CDF) Deputy Warden Kathleen Landerkin of "displaying animus toward anyone who supports Donald J. Trump" and of a perceived bias against Trump supporters.

"While most of these inmates have no prior criminal history and have yet to be convicted of any crime, Landerkin is allowing them to be treated as subhuman," Greene wrote in the letter Thursday signed by fellow Republican Reps. Paul Gosar (Ariz.), Matt Gaetz (Fla.), Andy Harris (Md.) and Lauren Boebert (Colo.).

Deputy Warden Kathleen Landerkin, the person in charge of J6 pre-trial detainees is an unhinged left-wing ideologue who despises President Trump, his supporters, and Republicans.

Today, 13 of my colleagues and I sent a letter to @MayorBowser demanding her immediate termination. pic.twitter.com/XdE4IhZCbf

— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (@RepMTG) December 16, 2021

… The letter criticized Landerkin for tweets it said she had sent calling Trump a "pig," and "equating Christians to the Ku Klux Klan," as well as saying Ashli Babbit, a rioter who was killed on Jan. 6, "was responsible for being shot.

So where does Abraham Lincoln and his 1860 speech fit into all this?

Only a dozen years ago, James Carville referred to (modern-day) Republicans as "reptiles".

And 160 years ago, when an Illinois Republican felt the necessity to address himself to Southerners and Democrats (during his Cooper Union speech in February 1860), guess which term Abe Lincoln reached for:

…when you speak of us Republicans, you do so only to denounce us as reptiles [!], or, at the best, as no better than outlaws. You will grant a hearing to pirates or murderers, but nothing like it to [Republicans]. In all your contentions with one another, each of you deems an unconditional condemnation of [Republicanism] as the first thing to be attended to. Indeed, such condemnation of us seems to be an indispensable prerequisite — license, so to speak — among you to be admitted or permitted to speak at all. Now, can you, or not, be prevailed upon to pause and to consider whether this is quite just to us, or even to yourselves? Bring forward your charges and specifications, and then be patient long enough to hear us deny or justify.

"Reptiles, outlaws, pirates, murderers"… How often have Republicans been called (domestic) terrorists in the past seven years?  (And in the years, in the decades, before that?)

Who would want to be patient long enough to hear such heinous beings deny or justify? (Ain't that true, MainStream Media?) Who wouldn't want to punish such monsters?

Related: What Caused Secession and Ergo the Civil War? Was It Slavery and/or States' Rights? Or Wasn't It Rather Something Else — the Election of a Ghastly Republican to the White House?

Let's let Tucker Carlson have the final word. Although the Fox anchor is talking about a different subject — Biden’s COVID policies — he points out that we are witnessing the muscle spasms of a dying political party: 

 … the people in charge of diverting your attention are working overtime right now

 … political parties, like markets, often seem the strongest right before they collapsed. The problem is, at this moment, the Democratic Party is still in power, and that's a very bad combination for the rest of us. Regimes in decline tend to become dangerous. As they weaken, they get increasingly desperate and ruthless. They've been rejected by voters. Democracy doesn't work for them anymore. That means they can no longer operate within democratic boundaries and hope to stay in power. So inevitably, they swerve outside those boundaries. Instead of trying to convince the public to support them, that's a democracy, they invent domestic enemies and national panics to keep themselves in charge. And that's exactly what we're watching happen right now. 

 … CNN and its masters in the Democratic Party have identified the real villain to blame for [the latest COVID outbreak]. And you'll know, even before we tell you that it's not Pfizer, it's not the government of China. It's America's working class, a group now known as "The Unvaccinated." On Thursday, Joe Biden informed us that these people will die for what they've done. 

 … Biden's advisers want you looking elsewhere. And to get you looking elsewhere, they are working to create a kulak class — a group of reviled subhumans at the rest of us are free to hate and mock and whose deaths were allowed to root for. That's the unvaccinated. 

When David Frum tells you we should let the unvaccinated just die, he's not alone. That is not the official position of the Democratic Party. If you get COVID in you’re unvaccinated, it is immoral for you to go to the hospital, you're overcrowding it. And we need that space for the many people who've taken the COVID vaccine and are now sick from COVID. That's what the president United States just said on Thursday. 

 … whatever personal decisions about the vaccine or COVID or how many masks you wear, if any, know what you're watching here. This is not a public health campaign designed to save you from a variant that has not killed a single confirmed American. Sorry, it has not. No. So, what is this? These are the muscle spasms of a dying political party. The people in charge are on their way out. Unfortunately, they can still hurt you.

America has no enemies, we are told. All of humanity could easily live as brethren. With one exception. America's conservatives and, on a larger scale, the American people. 

They hate you.

And they want you dead.

“We’re in a war, and it’s a war to the death. Now they [the Left] actually admit it. They used to pretend. Not anymore.”

— Norman Podhoretz in The New Criterion

Related History Posts:
• What Caused Secession and Ergo the Civil War? Was It Slavery and/or States' Rights? Or Wasn't It Rather Something Else — the Election of a Ghastly Republican to the White House?
• During the Winter of 1860-1861, Did the South's Democrats Obtain Their Aim — the Secession of 7 Slave States — Thanks to Elections Filled with Stealth, Lies, Voter Fraud, Intimidation, Violence, and Murder? (Wait 'til You Hear About… Georgia's Dark Secret)
• Abraham Lincoln and the Founding Fathers' Supposed Embrace of Slavery Along with Their Alleged Rejection of Women's Rights • Wondering Why Slavery Persisted for Almost 75 Years After the Founding of the USA? According to Lincoln, the Democrat Party's "Principled" Opposition to "Hate Speech"
• The Greatest Myth in U.S. History: Yes, the Civil War Era Did Feature Champions of States' Rights, But No, They Were Not in the South (Au Contraire)
• Harry Jaffa on the Civil War Era: For Democrats of the 21st Century as of the 19th, "the emancipation from morality was/is itself seen as moral progress"
• Why Does Nobody Ever Fret About Scandinavia's — Dreadful — 19th-C Slavery Conditions?
• A Century and Half of Apartheid Policies: From Its 1828 Foundation, the Democrat Party Has Never Shed Its Racist Past
• The Confederate Flag: Another Brick in the Leftwing Activists' (Self-Serving) Demonization of America and Rewriting of History
• How to Prevent America from Becoming a Totalitarian State
• Inside of a month, Democrats have redefined riots and election challenges from the highest form of patriotism to an attack on democracy — And by “democracy”, they mean the Democrat Party
• Why They Don't Tell You the Whole Truth: The 1619 Project Summarized in One Single Sentence

From my and Dan Greenberg's upcoming graphic novel on The Life & Times of Abraham Lincoln:

"All the well-worn tactics of rising totalitarianism": From the beginning of Covid-19 the Democrat-Media Complex has gone all-in on apocalyptic hysteria

From the beginning the Democrat-Media Complex has gone all-in on apocalyptic hysteria

writes Michael Walsh in the Epoch Times (thanks to Ed Driscoll). Of course it has. That is why I say that we live in The Era of the Drama Queens in which Every Crisis Is a Triumph.

Here we are, coming up on the second anniversary of “two weeks to slow the spread” of a flu-like virus most likely hatched in a Chinese Communist laboratory in Wuhan, with a little help from Dr. Anthony Fauci and the American taxpayer, and the dreaded COVID-19 chest cold has conquered the planet, instilling fear and loathing in weak minds whenever and wherever it appears in any of its Transformers-like, constantly mutating configurations.

 … The irony is, had the novel coronavirus been treated the same way as its immediate predecessors, including SARS, the H1N1 pandemic of 2009, and the Hong Kong flu of 1968, no one would be talking about it, there would have been no lockdowns, no masks, no ruination of the economy, no destruction of the travel industry, no stealth takeover of private medicine and, most important, no unconstitutional loss of personal liberty.

But the very act of neurotically obsessing over it has triggered and weaponized the critter and, a la Heisenberg, transformed it from a bug that preyed on old people into the Thing that Devoured the Planet.

Ever since the politically conveniently timed appearance of the CCP virus early in 2020, Fauci and his coevals at various government “health” agencies have whipsawed the American public with their erratic, contradictory, and wholly unscientific pronouncements, all in the interest of aggrandizing more power.

These [Transformers-like] Decepticons managed to take down the gullible Trump administration, institutionalize their priorities for controlling the population by nullifying the Bill of Rights, helping to install Joe Biden, and giving a big fat Christmas present to the pharmaceutical companies—which have profited handsomely from the pandemic.

 … A “disease” that is in many cases strikingly asymptomatic, whose lethality (such as it was and depending on who’s counting and how) is counted by “cases” (a meaningless statistic), whose survival rate has always been near 99 percent for the vast majority of the world’s population doesn’t seem like much of a threat in the cosmic scheme of things.

Nor does a “vaccine” that not only doesn’t prevent you from getting the bug but permits “breakthrough” infections and also has significant side effects seem like much of a vaccine.

But from the beginning the Democrat-Media Complex has gone all-in on apocalyptic hysteria as governments around the globe have vowed to “defeat” the virus, and some—like the newly formed police states of Australia and New Zealand—even articulating an impossible “zero COVID” policy.

 … As it happens, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has addressed these issues and more in a new book, “The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health,” a no-holds barred, full-frontal attack on Fauci & Co. It’s a bracing read.

“Suddenly, trusted institutions seemed to be acting in concert to generate fear, promote obedience, discourage critical thinking, and herd seven billion people to march to a single tune, culminating in mass public health experiments with a novel, shoddily tested and improperly licensed technology so risky that manufacturers refused to produce it unless every government on Earth shielded them from liability.

“Across Western nations, shell-shocked citizens experienced all the well-worn tactics of rising totalitarianism—mass propaganda and censorship, the orchestrated promotion of terror, the manipulation of science, the suppression of debate, the vilification of dissent, and use of force to prevent protest. Conscientious objectors who resisted these unwanted, experimental, zero-liability medical interventions faced orchestrated gaslighting, marginalization, and scapegoating.

 … Enough is enough. After two years of poisonous squid ink regarding the origins of the disease and its dangers, it’s time to put away the electron microscope, back away from the Petri dish, and just ignore Omicron

Related: Here Is the Key Question Regarding the Coronavirus
• And here are the 7 Basic Points about Covid-19 that You Need to Know
• Is the Yellow Star Really an Inappropriate Reference for the Vaccine Passport?
And from the March 2020 and April 2020 archives:
• Is There 100% Irrefutable Proof that the Covid19 Pandemic Is Overstated?
• Anti-Americanism in the Age of the Coronavirus, the NBA, and 1619

Racial Obsession at the NYT: The 1619 Project’s historical illiteracy is not innocent ignorance, writes George Will; rather, it is maliciousness

The New York Times has the history completely backwards

Fury erupted among the Left's Drama Queens, notes Legal Insurrection's Stacey Matthews (obrigado to Sarah Hoyt), when the Washington Post, which is supposed to be one of the "leftists' safe space[s]", allowed George Will to pen a column on "Nikole Hannah-Jones’ flagrant rewriting of history", i.e., The malicious, historically illiterate 1619 Project.

This December's column is even stronger than the one that George Will penned a year and a half ago, The ‘1619 Project’ is filled with slovenliness and ideological ax-grinding. Excerpts from May 2020:

  … trust evaporates when journalistic entities embrace political projects

 … Because the [New York] Times ignored today’s most eminent relevant scholars — e.g., Brown University’s Gordon Wood, Princeton’s James McPherson and Sean Wilentz and Allen Guelzo, City University of New York’s James Oakes, Columbia’s Barbara Fields — the project’s hectoring tone and ideological ax-grinding are unsurprising.

 … The project’s purpose is to displace the nation’s actual 1776 founding, thereby draining from America’s story the moral majesty of the first modern nation’s Enlightenment precepts proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence and implemented by the Constitution. Although monomaniacally focused on slavery, the Times’s project completely misses the most salient point:

The phenomenon of slavery was millennia old in 1776, but as Gordon Wood says, “It’s the American Revolution that makes [slavery] a problem for the world.” Sean Wilentz (see his 2018 book “No Property in Man: Slavery and Antislavery at the Nation’s Founding”) correctly insists that what “originated in America” was “organized anti-slavery politics,” and it did so because of those Enlightenment precepts in the Declaration’s first two paragraphs.

 …  Has … the slogan of the party governing Oceania in George Orwell’s “1984” [“Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past”] supplanted “All the news that’s fit to print” as the Times’s credo?

What is stunning is that George Will can see through the 1619 Project, and that so clearly, while he is still blind-sided regarding Donald Trump, the January 6 "riots", and the like.

Still, on this, the shortest day in the year, let George and his December 2021 column have his/their time in the sunshine:

The [New York] Times’s original splashy assertion – slightly fudged after the splash garnered a Pulitzer Prize – was that the American Revolution, the most important event in our history, was shameful because a primary reason it was fought was to preserve slavery. The war was supposedly ignited by a November 1775 British offer of freedom to Blacks who fled slavery and joined British forces. Well.

That offer came after increasingly volcanic American reactions to various British provocations: After the 1765 Stamp Act. After the 1770 Boston Massacre. After the 1773 Boston Tea Party. After the 1774 Coercive Acts (including closure of Boston’s port) and other events of “The Long Year of Revolution” (the subtitle of Mary Beth Norton’s “1774”). And after, in 1775, the April 19 battles of Lexington and Concord, the June 17 battle of Bunker Hill and George Washington on July 3 assuming command of the Continental Army.

 … Addressing the American Council of Trustees and Alumni last month, Gordon S. Wood, today’s foremost scholar of America’s Founding, dissected the 1619 Project’s contentions. When the Revolution erupted, Britain “was not threatening to abolish slavery in its empire,” which included lucrative, slavery-dependent sugar-producing colonies in the Caribbean. Wood added:

“If the Virginian slaveholders had been frightened of British abolitionism, why only eight years after the war ended would the board of visitors or the trustees of the College of William & Mary, wealthy slaveholders all, award an honorary degree to Granville Sharp, the leading British abolitionist at the time? Had they changed their minds so quickly? ... The New York Times has no accurate knowledge of Virginia’s Revolutionary culture and cannot begin to answer these questions.” The Times’s political agenda requires ignoring what Wood knows:

“It was the American colonists who were interested in abolitionism in 1776. ... Not only were the northern states the first slaveholding governments in the world to abolish slavery, but the United States became the first nation in the world to begin actively suppressing the despicable international slave trade. The New York Times has the history completely backwards.”

Wood’s doctoral dissertation adviser in 1960 to 1964 was Bernard Bailyn, the title of whose best-known book, “The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution,” conveys a refutation of the 1619 Project’s premise that the Revolution originated from base economic motives.

 … The 1619 Project, which might already be embedded in school curricula near you, reinforces the racial monomania of those progressives who argue that the nation was founded on, and remains saturated by, “systemic racism.” This racial obsession is instrumental; it serves a radical agenda that sweeps beyond racial matters. It is the agenda of clearing away all impediments, intellectual and institutional, to — in progressivism’s vocabulary — the “transformation” of the nation. The United States will be built back better when it has been instructed to be ashamed of itself and is eager to discard its disreputable heritage.

The 1619 Project aims to erase (in Wood’s words) “the Revolution and the principles that it articulated – liberty, equality and the well-being of ordinary people.” These ideas are, as Wood says, the adhesives that bind our exceptional nation whose people have shared principles, not a shared ancestry.

The Times says “nearly everything that has truly made America exceptional” flows from “slavery and the anti-black racism it required.” So, the 1619 Project’s historical illiteracy is not innocent ignorance. Rather, it is maliciousness in the service of progressivism’s agenda, which is to construct a thoroughly different nation on the deconstructed rubble of what progressives hope will be the nation’s thoroughly discredited past.

As Glenn Reynolds reminds us, regularly (with good reason),

The 1619 Project is the kind of false history that a conqueror would impose on a defeated people to break its will.

Was There Ever a Better Vindication for the Death Penalty than This Bombshell Confession?!

What better justification for the death penalty than the last-minute bombshell announcement from a Death Row inmate who — after 11 years on Death Row and only hours before his execution — confesses to a second murder, clearing up the 14-year-old disappearance of a woman in the process?

In all future debates with leftists, forevermore the name David Neal Cox shall remain etched.

As you read the following news story, remember some of the arguments that leftists usually make: a life sentence is a better punishment, or at least just as good a punishment, as the death penalty is; indeed, the death penalty does not accomplish anything; society is better off when/if it shows compassion; etc etc etc…

Via the New York Post's Emily Crane and Fox News's Rebecca Rosenberg, we learn that

A Mississippi man who was executed [in November 2021] for fatally shooting his estranged wife [pictured in blue below] confessed to another killing just before he died, a prosecutor revealed …

 … David Neal Cox, 50, told his lawyers he killed his sister-in-law, Felicia Cox [pictured in white], in 2007 and provided detailed instructions on where her body could be found

 … Cox made the stunning admission to his lawyers before he received a lethal injection on Nov. 17 — marking the first execution in the state in nine years.

 … The state’s Office of Capital Post-Conviction Counsel, who represented Cox, said he "felt deep remorse and wanted to bring closure" to his victim’s family.

It seems pretty clear-cut that the disappearance of Felicia Cox would never have been solved, and her remains perhaps never found, had David Neal Cox been treated "compassionately," and received a "humane" sentence of life imprisonment.

His deep remorse came only after being sentenced to death, albeit not until hours — not days, not weeks, not months, not years — before his execution. I.e., only when, and only because (!), all hope was gone…

Of course, David Neal Cox is not the only argument in favor of the death penalty, far from it. Needless to say, there are not last-minute confessions at every execution, nor, probably, is there even the need for additional confessions for every prisoner on death row. Still, it turns out that the David Neal Cox case does not hold the most important jigsaw puzzle piece in favor of the death penalty.

A few years ago, Dennis Prager gave a rebuttal to every one of the left's arguments on the matter in a PragerU video titled Is the Death Penalty Ever Moral?

Here is part of the transcript (italics mine):

 … the gulf is unbridgeable between those of us who believe that some murderers – and I emphasize some murderers – should be put to death and those who believe that no murderer should ever be put to death.

 … Opponents of capital punishment … argue that keeping all murderers alive sanctifies the value of human life. But the opposite is true. Keeping every murderer alive cheapens human life because it belittles murder. That’s easily proven. Imagine that the punishment for murder were the same as the punishment for driving over the speed limit. Wouldn’t that belittle murder and thereby cheapen human life? Of course, it would. Society teaches how bad an action is by the punishment it metes out.

And what about the pain inflicted on the loved ones of those murdered? For most people, their suffering is immeasurably increased knowing that the person who murdered their family member or friend – and who, in many cases, inflicted unimaginable terror on that person – is alive and being cared for.

Of course, putting the murderer to death doesn’t bring back their loved one, but it sure does provide some sense of justice. That’s why Dr. [William] Petit, a physician whose life is devoted to saving lives, wants the murderers of his wife and daughters put to death. In his words, death "is really the only true just punishment for certain heinous and depraved murders." Is the doctor wrong? Is he immoral? Well, if you think capital punishment is immoral, then Dr. Petit is immoral.

And what about opponents’ argument that an innocent person may be executed? This argument may be sincerely held, but it’s not honest. Why? Because opponents of capital punishment oppose the death penalty even when there is absolute proof of the murderer’s guilt. If there were a video of a man burning a family alive, opponents of capital punishment would still oppose taking that man’s life.

Moreover, by keeping every murderer alive, many MORE people are murdered -– other prisoners, guards and people outside of prison in case of escape or early release -- than the infinitesimally small number of people who might be wrongly executed. And now, with DNA testing and other advanced forensic tools, it is virtually impossible to execute an innocent person.

Then there is the argument offered by some people in the name of religion that only God has the right to take human life. I always wonder what religion these people are referring to, since the holiest book of no religion of which I am aware ever made that claim. People just made that argument up. …

"Techniques that the Gestapo or NKVD could only dream about": When fascism lands in the West, it won't be the the Stalinist model; it will be with nudges, hugs, and smiley faces

 
When I warn that speed limits, for instance, are proof of a creeping totalitarianism in the West, a number of people reply that that sounds like an exaggeration.

But here is the place for quoting an American comedian. Before we do that, however, let us remember how, in his book The Road to Serfdom, Friedrich Hayek explains that it is rare that we lose any type of freedom in one single blow.

Let us now turn to George Carlin: when fascism, or communism, takes over in the USA and the rest of the West, the comedian explains, it won't be in the form of black uniforms and marching jackboots, but with a smiley face ("We're from the government and we're here to help").

It is something that Joel Kotkin calls The Great Nudge (thanks to Instapundit).

When we think of oppressive regimes, we immediately think of the Stalinist model portrayed in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, the heavy-handed thought control associated with Hitler’s Reich or Mao’s China

writes Joel Kotkin whose latest book is The Coming of Neo-Feudalism:

But where the old propaganda was loud, crude and often lethal, the contemporary style of thought control takes the form of a gentle nudging towards orthodoxy – a gentle push that gradually closes off one’s critical faculties and leads one to comply with gently given directives. Governments around the world, including in the UK, notes the Guardian, have been embracing this approach with growing enthusiasm.

 … nudging also has an authoritarian edge, employing techniques and technologies that the Gestapo or NKVD could only dream about to promote the ‘right behaviour’.

 … This situation is made worse because the people running our most powerful institutions, from the media to the government, increasingly share the same opinions and often have little tolerance for outliers. Their views on dissent and freedom of speech do not stem from Jefferson or Madison.

 … The nudgers focus on three areas: identity (ie, race / gender), the pandemic, and, most critically, climate. In terms of race issues, they rule out scepticism towards Black Lives Matter, including criticism of last year’s ‘mostly peaceful’ BLM demonstrations, which featured looting, arson and general mayhem. Many media outlets will also characterise anyone who does not embrace the new ‘anti-racist’ orthodoxy as a ‘white nationalist’. 

The pandemic has rained manna for nudgers. Across the high-income world, we now see a form of hygiene authoritarianism, promoted and enforced by nudgers in government and media. This goes beyond debunking clearly unhinged and unsupported claims. It also includes purging anyone opposed to particular government Covid policies, including recognised professionals. The most egregious example was the cancelling and marginalisation of the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, written by leading epidemiologists from Harvard, Oxford and Stanford – all for the ‘thoughtcrime’ of opposing lockdowns. 

 … No wonder so many nudgers see China as an ideal, a place without a nasty First Amendment that protects dissenters.

Read the whole thing, as the article is one of the most important in the past 21 years…

Comparing 3 Deadly Events: In Waukesha, Brooks killed twice as many people as Rittenhouse and the Charlottesville driver did combined

In order to explain why Americans — why reasonable Americans — no longer trust the mainstream media — or, indeed, liberals writ large — we need to compare three deadly events of the past four or five years

In reverse chronological order, they can be summarized by the names of the towns in which they occurred: Waukesha, Kinosha, and Charlottesville.

The case of Kyle Rittenhouse is made to overshadow the numerous concurrent court cases really involving blacks and multiple races that gives one (or that ought to give one, whatever the color of one's skin is) faith in the legal system, certainly from a leftist's perspective, or at least that gives the lie to the so-called second citizenship of blacks — were they not massively ignored by the mainstream media!

A black man who shot at policemen (presumably black cops as well as white, by the way), Andrew Coffee, was found not guilty on all counts of murder and attempted murder, thanks to the principle of defense (BUT, BUT, BUT! ONLY WHITE PEOPLE GET THIS! protests Sarah Hoyt, tongue firmly in cheek). 

And the white killers of Ahmaud Arbery, all three of them, were all convicted of murder. As for George Floyd, whether you are convinced his case was proof of racism or not, the white cop involved was, rightly or wrongly, sentenced to life in prison. So that ought to give one faith in the legal system, certainly from a leftist's perspective — if the MSM bothered to report (and compare, and contrast, and draw lessons from) them.

It reminds me somewhat of the debate in the presidential election of 2000, when Al Gore mentioned a hideous racial murder in Texas with a black man being pulled for miles behind a pickup truck. But, to the Democrat's horror, he charged Governor George W Bush was still against introducing hate crime legislation in the Lone Star state. Even though I was leaning left at the time (I was younger then plus I was upset at Bush's father not overthrowing Saddam Hussein), and supporting Gore, I had to admit that I (and that Al) could hardly argue with Dubya when he countered that "tougher laws" were hardly needed when the three killers of James Byrd had been convicted of capital murder with two of them sentenced to death (both since executed).

The Charlottesville gathering has been remembered, again and again and again, as a hideous event, which it no doubt was, even though one single death, offhand, hardly amounts to a massacre. (See also: January 6, aka the murderous insurrection against "our democracy." Incidentally, the conflation of "democracy" with the party founded by Andrew Jackson is far from new: during the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858, Abraham Lincoln certainly used "the democracy" while speaking of the Stephen Douglas's Democrat Party, and more than once)

This brings us full circle to Waukesha:

In Wisconsin, Darrell Brooks has killed twice as many people as Rittenhouse and the Charlottesville driver combined. And the number may rise. 

He also has wounded twice as many people as Rittenhouse and James Alex Fields put together, and far more seriously, at that.

But while the two were immediately described in the strongest terms possible, including "white supremacist" and "domestic terrorist", the media, social as well as mainstream, insists on calling the Christmas parade attack "a crash" or "an accident" or a "parade incident," while attributing the six deaths (instead of the six murders) not to a person (much less to a "domestic terrorist") but to "a car" or to "an SUV."

CNN wrote about the charges in an article titled "A sixth victim has died after the deadly Waukesha Christmas parade crash, prosecutors say." HuffPo’s coverage read "Suspect In Deadly Waukesha Parade Crash Charged With Intentional Homicide." The Associated Press also wrote, "Child is 6th death in Waukesha parade crash; suspect charged."

The pattern continued with ABC, Yahoo, and Time Magazine all referring to the horrific incident, even after Brooks’ charges were announced [intentional homicide], as a "crash."

In fact, let us quickly rewrite the sentences above:

In an accident in Waukesha, a car killed twice as many people as Rittenhouse and the Charlottesville driver put together. The SUV also wounded twice as many people…

By the way, it hardly matters whether Darrell Brooks is black or white, he seems to be a leftist — a warrior in the valiant struggle against Republican racists and "domestic terrorists" (now including parents railing against arrogant school boards) — so he gets a pass.

• This brings us full circle to a fourth deadly incident, the 2017 attempted assassination of Steve Scalise and a handful of other Republican baseball players at the hands of a Bernie bro, one James T. Hodgkinson, who, as Instapundit regularly reminds us (and rightly so), is Already Being Erased From History.

While Brooks was released from jail on just $1000 bail, after trying to murder his girlfriend (again with a car), the January "insurrectionists" who hoped to overthrow "our democracy" without the benefit of a single firearm (we all know how confronting Europeans with modern weapons turned out for various Indian tribes and for a number of native peoples in Africa and Asia), by contrast, have been in solitary confinement for almost a year, and with no bail. These "horrific" criminals, who had the gall to stroll through the halls of Congress taking selfies with (armed) Capitol policemen, are invariably called "insurrectionists" and "domestic terrorists."

This, incidentally, leads Stream's John Zmirak to mention American Greatness 's Julie Kelly:

American Greatness now publishes the best writers on the right. Victor Davis Hanson … publishes now at American Greatness. So does the erudite and scathing Roger Kimball. And the brilliant, fearless historian Paul Gottfried. Plus the sober analyst of our Machiavellian status quo, paleocon Pedro Gonzales.

Best of all is the reporting of the intrepid Julie Kelly. She has braved the naked hostility of prosecutors and judges to uncover the truth about the abusive treatment of January 6 protestors. And her piece on Jacob Chansley — a non-violent, harmless eccentric and U.S. veteran [the QAnon Shaman has spent over 10 months in solitary confinement] — was appropriately compassionate:

 … Joe Biden’s Justice Department accused Chansley — who committed no violent act and has no criminal record — of being a domestic terrorist and recommended a harsh jail sentence to “deter” future domestic terrorists. “The need to deter others especially in cases of domestic terrorism, which the breach of the Capitol certainly was,” assistant U.S. Attorney Kimberly Paschall wrote in the government’s sentencing memo. Biden’s Justice Department set the sentencing range between 41 and 51 months and asked for the maximum prison time.

Paschall admitted in court that Chansely did not destroy any property or assault a police officer but claimed his conduct was “not peaceful.” Contrary to allegations contained in the government’s filings, Chansley walked through an open door on the east side of the building and spoke with Capitol police, …

 … [Judge] Lamberth commended Chansley’s remarks—“the most remarkable I’ve ever heard”—but nonetheless sentenced Chansley to 41 months in prison. “What you did was horrific,” Lamberth lectured.

All this leads to Instapundit's Glenn H. Reynolds asking the following question in the New York Post:

When is a racial hate crime not a racial hate crime? When it doesn’t advance the left’s, and the Democrats’, narrative.

When white teenager Kyle Rittenhouse shot three white men who were violently assaulting him, it somehow got treated by the press and politicians as a racial hate crime. President Joe Biden (falsely) called Rittenhouse a white supremacist, and the discussion of his case was so focused on racial issues that many Americans mistakenly thought that the three men Rittenhouse shot were black.

But when a black man, Darrell Brooks, with a long history of posting hateful anti-white rhetoric on social media drove a car into a mostly white Christmas parade, killing six people and injuring dozens, the press was eager to wish the story away.

  … Were the races reversed, of course, we all know that the press would be turning its coverage up to 11, with deep dives into Darrell Brooks’ associations, beliefs, friends and family and more. But doing that here wouldn’t fit the narrative.

In fact, though, there is a thread connecting the Rittenhouse shootings and the Waukesha mass murder. But the thread isn’t so much racism as awful Democratic politicians.

 … Both the Kenosha shootings and the Waukesha mass murder happened because the government failed to do its job. Those are the wages of progressive politics.

Update: I am watching Dennis Prager's Fireside Chat, which is also comparing the two Wisconsin events, and in response to the Left's charge that a 17-year-old should not carry a gun, he makes the case that in the United States, 17-year-olds are allowed… to… join the military. Now the army, navy, and air force are a source of stability in the U.S. (although the Left is hard at work trying to change that) so, at this point, it is appropriate to recall the famous quote by G K Chesterton,

The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but the because he loves what is behind him.'

In that perspective, it is altogether proper to return to the Badger State and ask the following question:

Did Kyle Rittenhouse go to Kenosha with an AR-15 because he is a white supremacist who hates all Wisconsin rioters, and/or all leftists, and/or all blacks? 

Or did Kyle Rittenhouse go to Kenosha to protect the neighbors and the neighborhood where his loved ones lived (and worked)?

The answer, of course, is that initially, Kyle Rittenhouse did not fight, he did not threaten the rioters, he did not flaunt his rifle.

Only when the arsonists (several of them armed) became menacing, only when a mob started chasing him down, and only when the rioters tried to kill him (with a skateboard, which is perfectly capable of literally bashing a person's brains out, or with a gun) — in response to his extinguishing the fire in a dumpster they were pushing towards a gas station (more of a hateful act or more of a loving act? I ask you) — did he shoot back. 

But not before trying a peaceful solution, i.e., running away from the confrontation, crying "Friendly" to assure them of his non-violent intentions, and attempting to seek cover from the (present but non-operating) police force.

Speaking of which: In a way, there is a kernel of truth in the charge that Kyle Rittenhouse shouldn't have been there and shouldn't have been carrying a gun. Police officers should have been there! And police officers ought to have been doing their jobs — with their guns. But they were not! (Thanks to Democrat politicians.) Which is why civilians, young as well as old, took over their task…

Let the final word go to Ann Coulter, who explains that

Rittenhouse was not at a grade school, but in the middle of a riot that did $50 million in damage to the town of Kenosha

 … Name one "active shooter" in history who strolled about with a gun for hours, not shooting anyone -- until he was chased, cornered and assaulted. Rittenhouse had a gun not because he was violent, but because the "protesters" were, as the evidence abundantly demonstrated.

 … The same people who wanted to give Guantanamo war criminals civilian trials think an American who refused to acquiesce in his own murder didn't deserve legal representation.

Kyle Rittenhouse is on trial so that no one will dare stand in the way of the left's shock troops ever again.

Update 2: Over at Spiked, Brendan O'Neill makes some of the same points that I did:

Where is the anger over [the Waukesha massacre]? The social-media solidarity? The woke left’s ferociously tweeted concern about a rising tide of extremist violence? Even here in the UK the left and the Twitterati are able to rattle off the names of the three people shot by Kyle Rittenhouse – even while conveniently forgetting that one of them was a convicted paedophile – but I bet they couldn’t name a single victim of the far larger, seemingly more intentional act of violence carried out in Waukesha. The right-on remember and mourn the horrific killing of one woman by a far-right man who used his car as a weapon in Charlottesville in 2017, and yet already they’re staring awkwardly at the ground, virtually shrugging their shoulders, over the killing of six people by a man using his SUV as a weapon in Waukesha. Is this act of violence less important? Less horrific? Why?

 … Even the media coverage is radically different to the kind of reporting we see in the wake of other forms of violence. It is passive, treating the massacre almost as a natural disaster. Or as the evil handiwork of the SUV itself. ‘Here’s what we know so far on the sequence of events that led to the Waukesha tragedy caused by [an] SUV’, said the Washington Post. Caused by an SUV. The agency of the suspect is diminished. The problem, it seems, is killer SUVs. 

 … To see how perverse the woke set’s relative silence on Waukesha is, just do this simple thought experiment. Imagine if a white man drove a car into a crowd of mostly black Christmas revellers and killed six of them. Imagine if it was discovered that this white man had posted social-media comments saying we should knock black people the fuck out. Imagine if he had dabbled in white-nationalist thought experiments online. What do you think would be happening right now? It would be the only issue in media and political discussion – and rightly so. The left would galvanise itself. Marches would take place. There would be stern and frequent condemnations from the White House, rather than the quite perfunctory statements it has issued on Waukesha. It would be swiftly institutionalised as a turning-point act in modern America – proof of the existence of white supremacy, proof of the need for all-out change.

 … But after Waukesha? As I say, tumbleweed. The problem here, the cause of this selective outrage – of this racially selective outrage – is identity politics. The poisonous nature of the identitarian worldview has made itself crystal clear in the wake of Waukesha.

 … Truly, identity politics has rotted the soul of the new elites. It has corroded their humanity.