Nancy Pelosi’s version of the 1936 Moscow “Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Center” trial has begun, and smartly, too. Four uniformed policemen, two from the Capitol police force, two from the Washington, D.C. police, performed their assigned roles flawlessly, tearfully recounting their trauma and horror at hordes of protesters swarming into the Capitol building. At least two of them teared up visibly; one, D.C. officer Dan Hodges did his bit, repeatedly referring to those who stormed and entered the Capitol building “terrorists.” It couldn’t have been more useful if they all had been coached. But that would never happen…
Certainly the thuggish behavior exhibited by those who broke into the seat of the Federal Government on January 6, 2021, is reprehensible. But for most, the crime was trespassing, usually a misdemeanor. For some, that was compounded by destruction of property, assault, battery, and in a few cases, more serious offenses. The perpetrators should be arrested, tried and if found guilty, jailed or fined – or both. They committed real crimes, and should be made to do real time regardless of current attitudes among Democrats about bail and jail – for nonpolitical criminals, that is.
But those who attacked the capitol committed no arson, leaving behind smoking wreckage. Nor did they kill. An earlier Congressional report on the January 6 assault names three police officers as having died as a result of the event, but two of those committed suicide; the third died of a stroke the day after. Not that there wasn’t someone shot to death: Ashli Babbitt, a 35-year-old US Navy veteran was shot by a capitol policeman outside the door of the Speaker’s Lobby in the Capitol. The Justice Department quickly found the shooting justified but have yet to release details or the name of the officer involved. But the ever-vigilant Department of Justice did arrest and convict the videographer who filmed the shooting – for trespassing.
As a comparison to give January 6’s lunatic assault a place on the scale of national carnage, 35 people lost their lives in 2020’s “mostly peaceful” AFTIFA/BLM riots. 25 others were shot, 15 more were “otherwise assaulted,” according to various media outlets. This doesn’t count hundreds of police, local and federal, who were attacked, many of them viciously. And about $2 billion in property was stolen, smashed or burned to ash. What happened as a result?
Portland is typical. Scene of some of the most violent and longest-lasting rioting, it saw almost a thousand arrests – 90% of which were dropped without charges by “Progressive” Multnomah county district attorney Mike Schmidt. Most of the rest are subject to misdemeanor charges. In short, not much – because that was the right sort of violence, against the approved targets, by the proper sort of rioters. One can smell the political hypocrisy from space.
Yes, I know I’m not supposed to compare the two sorts of riots. Tough. Events are not different because unnamed “experts” say they are, nor should they be treated differently simply because one is more to the political taste of the ruling class. That, too, is the mark of an ugly attitude rapidly fastening itself onto our national politics.
A complaint raised during the hearing was that many police were not properly equipped to deal with the crowd trying to break into the Capitol. Though it wasn’t a major point in the first hearing, both these deficiencies and others, especially in training, communication and intelligence were crucial in the January 6 debacle. All of those, and other problems with interagency communications and response, were dealt with in great detail in an internal report described as “blistering” that the Capitol Police still haven’t released. Small wonder when one realizes who is ultimately responsible for Capitol security. In a hearing in April, Capitol Police Inspector General Michael Bolton made it abundantly clear that he didn’t know. Neither did anyone else in the room. No surprise that response to the occupation of the Capitol was weak and disorganized.
As Nancy Pelosi’s show-trial hearing continues there might be opportunities for important facts to be unearthed; “who shot Ashli Babbitt, and why?” is one of them. Really useful reforms of the Capitol police force could also be undertaken, to improve equipment, coordination, policies, training and above all, to determine who the Hell is ultimately in charge.
But none of that is really the purpose here. Neither the monomaniacal Democrats nor their sock-puppet Republican counterparts will ask any of those sorts of questions. They are all single-mindedly, obsessively fixed on the objective of ridding the body politic of the Bad Orange Oppositionist Wrecker by any means or calumny necessary.
Which will produce results as predictable, and as wicked, as those in Moscow 85 years ago.
