RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Defending President Trump over the past four years has sometimes felt like being caught in a whirlwind. No matter which way I turned, something or somebody was coming at me. While most comments I receive are supportive, I have been accused of being insensitive, stupid, a racist and, if not a Nazi, something akin to a storm trooper. 

Despite his obvious character flaws, I have defended Mr. Trump for five essential reasons: First, I believed (and still do) that Washington’s morass of arrogant and sanctimonious bureaucrats needed (and needs) disrupting. Second, his appointment of dozens of conservative judges and three justices. Third, his accomplishments in terms of the economy, particularly what he did for black and minority unemployment, and in world affairs, especially in the Middle East where, in 2020, he was instrumental in getting four Arab nations to recognize Israel. Fourth, he fought for public school choice and against undemocratic trends toward political correctness, identity politics, “cancel” culture and the prohibition of conservative speech on college campuses. And fifth, his courage in fending off attempts by Democrats to undo the 2016 election and their attempt to create roadblocks for his new administration in 2017 and beyond. And this he did while continuously being assaulted by a feckless mainstream media, and a social media industry intent on separating him from his followers. As well, I was impressed with Operation Warp Speed and how quickly, and against most expectations, the vaccine appeared.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/trump-supporters-take-stock-of-jan-6-feel-mischara

““People can go to Portland and Seattle and burn buildings down and take over police stations and everything else, and it’s called Summer of Love.”

WASHINGTON—Empty streets and a subdued atmosphere characterized Washington on Jan. 7 as Trump supporters processed the events of the previous day and the certification of the Electoral College votes by Congress overnight.

Many were packing up to go home, at the same time a fence was being erected around the Capitol; the National Guard presence was obvious.

Marine veteran Tony Good traveled from Florida and walked to the Ellipse to hear President Donald Trump speak in the morning. He said Trump didn’t incite violence in his speech.

“No, absolutely not. There’s a line between inciting to riot and standing on convictions,” Good told The Epoch Times. “He wasn’t telling anybody to riot, he was just telling them it’s our right to protest. That’s a right we have in America.”

Good became separated from his group and returned to his hotel to regroup after the speech. He didn’t go to the Capitol, but said he wishes he had.

“I call yesterday the first day in the 10-year war,” he said. “It’s going to be 10 years before this gets turned around. It’s going to take that long. War in the sense of … getting things to where they should be in America, as far as fair and free elections, election integrity.

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/294448

Hundreds of thousands of Trump supporters did what people do when they believe their government has abandoned them – they went to Washington to protest. Unfortunately, a small percentage, (whether or not there were a number of Antifa members among them) succeeded in spoiling the non-violent nature of the protest and attacked the American Congress building. No Senator or Congressman or police officer was hurt but one woman, a 14 years military veteran, who was unarmed, was shot by police and killed.

We cannot be too timid in our repudiation of political violence. Violence begets more violence, and those who participated in violence must be sanctioned by the legal system.

On the other hand, when Antifa and Black Lives Matter extended their violent riots to Washington steps from the White House, the anti-Trump media had nothing to say about violence. Republicans compete with how strong they can make their criticism of the violent part of the protest in Washington but Democratic politicians were mostly silent as violent protests went on all summer. People noticed that. They also notice that big Tech like Facebook, Twitter and Google censor conservative speech but not leftist speech.

Some say that President Trump incited violence, but his communications throughout the day made it clear that people should go home “in peace”.

Without tolerating violence in any way, we need to understand the context, the context of what Democratic Party power-brokers have done to them and their political choices, including the President, for four years
The worst mistake we make when analyzing critical events like this one, is to lose sight of the context. Here the context was that hundreds of thousands of peaceful American citizens from all over such a large country drove all night or otherwise found transportation to Washington. They came because they feel that the elites in government and media and the academy and the bureaucracy disdain them, care not for their human rights, and hate the man they voted for in 2016.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/01/remember_when_lefties_stormed_into_and_occupied_a_senate_office_building_in_2018_and_the_wisconsin_state_capitol_in_2011.html

Mobs breaking into and occupying government buildings are always bad, but when leftists are responsible, a memory hole soon opens and engulfs the media’s recollections.  True conservatives support law and order and peaceful protest for redress of grievances, a sacred constitutional right.  Rights bring with them responsibilities, and strict adherence to the law is a fundamental obligation of those who speak out in disapproval.

The U.S. Capitol is a sacred temple of our democratic republic and ought to be viewed as such, not a target for violence.  Period.  But a little historical perspective is in order in understanding how mob violence directed at official buildings is no monopoly of conservatives or Trump-supporters.

Just over two years ago, the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill was occupied by protestors seeking to block the confirmation of Justice Kavanaugh.  See this video from MSNBC:

JUST IN: Anti-Kavanaugh protesters take over the Hart Senate Office Bldg. atrium on Capitol Hill. https://t.co/jCIbxhTKeu pic.twitter.com/DkOgzngMh4

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) October 4, 2018

|

While a Senate office building is not the same as the Capitol itself, the occupants — senators and staffers — were just as intimidated as those who were caught in the Capitol yesterday.

And when it comes to a capitol building itself, the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison was taken over and occupied by protesters battling against right-to-work legislation opposed by government employee unions.

Photo credit: Joe Rowley, CC BY-SA 3.0 license.

The Wisconsin rioters did substantial damage to the state capitol, primarily with graffiti to the white marble.

At the time, I was outraged (as I am outraged by the violation of the U.S. Capitol yesterday), but the mainstream media did not use it as a cudgel to attack unions or leftists.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2021/01/07/kamala-harris-called-riots-a-movement-last-summer-said-they-should-not-stop-n1310640

Violence is never the answer to resolving conflict, but it’s hard not to see the hypocrisy of the left when they act surprised or condemn what happened at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday.

In June 2020, in the aftermath of the nationwide rioting following the death of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer, Kamala Harris even gleefully predicted that the rioting wouldn’t end, telling Stephen Colbert, host of “The Late Show,” that they shouldn’t end.

“They’re not going to stop. They’re not going to stop,” she told him. “This is a movement, I’m telling you. They’re not gonna stop. And everyone beware because they’re not gonna stop. They’re not gonna stop before Election Day and they’re not going to stop after Election Day. And everyone should take note of that. They’re not gonna let up and they should not.”

http://americanthinker.com/blog

The soon-to-be minority leader of the Senate today lied to the American people when he said there was not sufficient evidence of fraud to overturn the election results or the certification votes of the Electoral College.  There are mountains of evidence, especially from the six contested states.  McConnell betrayed the president, his supporters, and his own constituents who only just re-elected him in November.  His recent re-election is probably why he felt comfortable breaking faith with the 74 million Trump-supporters.

He will never be re-elected again.  The same goes for each and every Republican in Congress who is afraid to stand up for what is right and true.  Those are the ones who go to Washington to get rich, not to represent their districts.  God forbid they ruffle the feathers of the media, the propaganda arms of the left.  God forbid they not be invited to the D.C. cocktail parties for swells.  They like being a member of the self-appointed elite.  Once there, they lose all allegiance to “the people.”  The same is now revealed, is true of Mike Pence, the V.P. we all thought was on the side of right.  We were wrong.

Trump was and is different.  He was and is the real deal, a man of and for the people.  Nothing enrages the D.C. elite more than a true believer.  He did things differently, better.  He showed them up.  He made the sick economy explode for everyone.  He secured the border despite the constant pushback from the left.  He engineered four peace deals in the Middle East.  He did rebuild the military and transform medical care for our veterans.  And he has the passionate support of the kind of people the left loathes.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2021/01/07/pelosi-threatens-to-do-something-drastic-if-pence-does-not-remove-trump-under-25th-amendment-n1322449?utm_source=piano&utm_medium=onsite&utm_campaign=582

On Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) threatened to launch into immediate impeachment if Vice President Mike Pence and Trump’s cabinet do not immediately invoke the 25th Amendment to remove the president.

“Yesterday, the president of the United States incited an armed insurrection against America,” Pelosi began, mentioning the pro-Trump mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, leading to the death of four people. “The gleeful desecration of the U.S. Capitol, which is the temple of American democracy, and the violence targeting Congress, are horrors that will forever stain our nation’s history, instigated by the president of the United States. That’s why it’s such a sting.”

“In calling for this seditious act, the president has committed an unspeakable assault on our nation and our people. I join the Senate Democratic leader [Chuck Schumer] in calling on the vice president to remove this president by immediately invoking the 25th Amendment,” Pelosi declared. “If the vice president and cabinet do not act, the Congress may be prepared to move forward with impeachment. That is the overwhelming sentiment of my caucus, and the American people, by the way.”

“Justice will be done to those who carried out these acts, which were acts of sedition and acts of cowardice,” she added.

https://asiatimes.com/author/spengler/

No Russian cyberspooks, no Chinese spies, no jihadi terrorists – no external enemies of any kind could have brought as much harm to the United States as its own self-inflicted wounds. I spent last evening taking calls from friends around the world, including a senior diplomat of an American ally who asked me what I thought of the first evacuation of Capitol Hill since the British invaded in 1812. “I’m horrified,” I said. “So is the entire free world,” the diplomat replied.

There are belly-laughs in Beijing this morning. The Chinese government daily Global Times taunted:

The riots taking place in Washington DC, the storming of the US Capitol by hundreds of President Donald Trump’s supporters which ended with four dead, 52 arrested and 14 police officers injured on Thursday shocked the world, and Chinese experts said this unprecedented incident will mark the fall of “the beacon of democracy,” and the beautiful rhetoric of “City upon a Hill” will perish.

The world is watching as US allies feel disappointed when they saw the country that they used to admire descend into a huge mess. Chinese observers said this is a “Waterloo to US international image,” and the US has totally lost legitimacy and qualification to interfere in other countries’ domestic affairs with the excuse of “democracy” in the future.    

It’s actually worse than the Global Times editors think.

If it were only a matter of Trump’s misbehavior, this disaster would be survivable. The trouble is that the popular belief in a vast and nefarious conspiracy has a foundation in fact: Starting before Trump’s term in office his political opponents abused the surveillance powers of the intelligence community to concoct a black legend of Russian collusion on the part of his campaign. The mainstream media, staffed overwhelmingly by Trump’s enemies, slavishly repeated this black legend until large parts of the population refused to believe anything it read in the newspapers or saw on television.

The leadership of the Democratic Party, its allied media, and the Bush-Romney wing of the Republican Party decided to play dirty to expunge an obstreperous, incalculable outsider from the political system. And in doing so, this combination, America’s establishment, destroyed public trust in the Congress and the media. It’s no surprise that two out of five Americans now believe that a vast conspiracy rigged the 2020 presidential elections. 

https://thefederalist.com/2021/01/07/the-consequences-of-the-capitol-assault/

A little over a decade ago, I was tear-gassed for the first time. It was the first day of September in the Twin Cities, and the anti-globalist, anti-war protesters were milling about with giant papier-mache heads of the people they hated. Mark Hemingway was there. My future wife and mother of my child was inside. It was painful. Afterward, I left and set up my laptop at a nearby rooftop bar and had the best Guinness I’ve ever ordered in my life. The reports about the protesters were overwhelmingly sympathetic. These were justified because of the wars. The New York Times said so.

A few years later, I covered Occupy Wall Street, and the tone was similar. These people taking over public parks, shitting all over the place, yelling at each other in circles, and setting up occasional rape tents were to be accepted, because Wall Street exists and is a thing. The sympathy for them was even greater than for the war people because of a lot of guilt about how media is funded. Zephyr Teachout wrote a thing.

Around the same time, there was another form of protest, something very different, which emerged. It was called the Tea Party. It was, unlike the anti-war, anti-globalist, anti-Wall Street folks, a fundamentally dangerous and racist entity, bent on destruction and violence, that threatened the very foundations of representative government and only existed because people couldn’t accept a black president. They were basically the Klan. Alan Grayson said it.

It was odd. In all my years of covering the Tea Party, I never saw them be rude to a cop, even by accident. They were upper-middle-class people who drove up in SUVs. They had no designs on destruction or occupation. Their taxes paid for that park, so they would clean up after themselves. They took pride in it — that they weren’t like the dirty, filthy leftists who left graffiti and literal shit on the ground.

https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2021/01/06/insanity-wrap-119-democrats-go-full-radical-nutjob-win-anyway-n1309620?utm_source=piano&utm_medium=onsite&utm_campaign=582

Democrat Raphael Warnock Wins Georgia Runoff

Well, that was a punch to the throat.

Every party has its share of crazies. Sometimes, one or two even get elected to the House of Representatives.

Insanity Wrap has long been of the opinion that local voters send crazies to Congress for the sole reason that they’ll do less damage there in Washington than they would back at home. At the very least, they’re farther away.

But Warnock just got himself elected to the Senate, which still sometimes has the audacity to bill itself as the world’s most august and deliberative legislative assembly.

That ancient — aged, really — legislative body will now make a spot for a Castro-loving, police-defunding, military-disparaging, allegedly wife-abusing student of an anti-white racist.

A radical nutjob, if we may borrow a phrase.

It’s no longer possible to attempt to pretend to deny that “radical nutjob” is about the best the Democrats have to offer as alleged President-elect Joe Asterisk is set to enter the Oval Office long after he entered senescence.

This is who they vote for. This is who they are.

As we write this, Democrats are just a few thousand Fulton County votes, real or conjured, away from control of the Senate.

We’ve been here before, but at least Barack Obama was smooth and smart enough to somewhat tamp down the crazies. Only because it served his Red-Diaper Baby agenda, but still.

Now the crazies are out in force and no longer held in check by Obama’s faux moderation.

Hunker down, kids — it’s going to be a long four years.