I have never participated in a protest in my life. When there was talk of going to D.C. on January 6, 2021 to protest what I thought to have been highly irregular activities in the just past November Presidential Election, I immediately thought, not a good idea. Nothing good will come from it.
First off, Washington D.C. is one of, if not the single most overwhelmingly blue cities in the country. You couple a large population of minorities whose political affiliation is overwhelmingly Democratic, with a massive number of Federal Government employees, also overwhelmingly affiliated with the Democratic party, and there is no way to find an impartial jury. None. Nope. Can't be done. Why would that matter?
Because politics in 2021, 2022, 2023, and surely 2024 has become a pure Rorschach Test. We live in echo chambers. We have become indoctrinated to think the absolute worst of people who think differently from ourselves politically. Hillary Clinton called us deplorables: racist, homophobic, islamaphobic, xenophobes. Biden called MAGA semi-fascists. Many on the left don't want to say it out loud, but there is no doubt that the rhetoric in recent years has people seeing and believing the absolute worst in people. Every one of the protestors (even some people who weren't in D.C. on Jan 6th at all!) is going to have the book thrown at them. The Judge in the Donald Trump case is going to throw the book at him. Why? I'll tell you why.
Because they believe the absolute worst about Trump. About Trump supporters. There is no benefit of the doubt. There is no presumption of innocence. There is no consideration for anything at all. What there is is hatred and vengeance. Yes. Hatred and vengeance. Proud Boys Joe Biggs got 17 years today. He helped take down the fence that separated the police from the protesters. Maybe that's the right sentence based on his situation. It seems like a lot to me, more than warranted. But you go on social media, where Democrats feel comfortable to speak openly, and it is nearly unanimous: the sentence was too light.
I think we are being taught a lesson. These protesters are being made an example: if and when you come to that think we fucked you over by stealing the next election, you'd better not dare come here and protest. We will gulag and stockade your smelly Walmart shopping gun toting asses until your grand and great grandchildren are on Medicare.
I saw the BLM riots that preceded the election. I saw the Antifa violence. President Trump whisked to his secure location by Secret Service. Fires in D.C. Federal courthouses on the west coast under seige by angry, violent mobs of protesters. I saw protesters illegally camp out outside the homes of Supreme Court Justices. In my eyes that stuff was all just as wrong and just as punishable as what many, many minor non conspirators, caught up in the moment are having done to them.
I am not condoning anyone interfering with official government business. But I am able to see clearly an extremely heavy hand being wielded on the one hand, and the extreme kid gloves on the other.
None of what happened, and none of what is happening, gives me greater confidence in our government, trust in the fairness and justice in Federal law enforcement, belief in our elections, or hope for our country. But honestly, I am afraid to go to Washington to express my concerns in protest as protected by the First Amendment of our beloved (at least by some of us) US Constitution. Nope, because I know, Constitution be damned, my innocence of crimes damned as well, that I'll wind up in gulagged and stockaded, made an example of in the finest tradition of Stalin, Mao, and the rest of the inhuman totalitarian bullies of the last 100 or so years.
