The below is really nothing more than a diary entry of sorts. A snapshot in time of things many around me see. If you observe the world with discernment, there is nothing here for you, just a restatement of what you know. If you are confused about the world, this article is not a polemic intended to convince you. This is just a snapshot of what I see, others too.
Yesterday, July 27, 2021, the United States Congress began hearings related to the events of January 6, 2021. The initial hearing included testimony by four, I believe four, police officers and not a small bit of crying by members of congress and the officers themselves.
January 6th (1/6 as it has been labeled to place it in a properly 'ominous' category) was an “assault on the sacred and holy institutions of Democracy” we have been told, many times. It was an “insurrection” we have been ad are increasingly told.
To a reasonable observer, we saw something in between soccer hooligans in Britain and the riots and looting in the summer of 2020, and frankly, it was objectively much closer to soccer hooligans than rioters and looters burning cities.
But those statements are polemic. There is a reason that soccer fans are so rowdy, there are reasons that people burned, looted, destroyed, and killed people in the summer of 2020 and there are reasons that the events of January 6th happened.
Don't get the next paragraph twisted alert
I am intellectually honest enough to say that the people involved in riots last year had justifications. The people that marched through the Capitol building had justifications. Not all of the justifications of either group were or are always based upon the complete truth, sometimes each group got many things very wrong. Sometimes they were deceived and spun up by grifters, agitators, and very likely by people within our own government.
I am not making an analogy between the riots and January 6th. I am saying that I am honest enough to know that even though I think almost all of the reasons that people held to be true that drove them into the streets with bricks and matches last year were perversions of something that held some truth. It is curious, and disturbing that nobody wants to give those that entered the Capitol the same benefit of the doubt.
Just this week, crowds in France surrounded their president's house and when they were not heard, brought on tractors hauling tanks of liquid excrement and sprayed his residence. Not an insurrection it seems.
In France the government stopped getting in the way of mobs that were angry, they stopped that about 1791, which did not turn out very well. The French get riled up every year and take to the streets about something. They have justification, I usually do not agree with them but the French government has come to the conclusion that they have to blow off the steam of their frustration. It is either that or kill them all, which often ends poorly.
We know what nations kill and imprison protestors and mobs of people that are angry, China. We remember Tiananmen square, they literally machine-gunned hundreds and then rewrote the history of the event. They exercised more patience with the Hong Kong protests, they simply placed people on a list and made them disappear over time. Never go full China, and yet, what are we about to do?
Therefore, some of us look at the January 6th commission and see a pretty dangerous thing occurring. We do not believe the testimony of the “brave” officers that came forward to cry. We do not believe that January 6th was more terrifying than deployment to Iraq (unless the person sat comfortably on some FOB at a desk, in a bunker).
We know there are video cameras everywhere in D.C. and that in the crowd there were thousands of more recordings of things. If this commission wanted to get to the truth of the matter, there is enough video to start that process. Why has the public not seen this video? Why does the DOJ only release small bits, often out of context with the other things going on?
The “lived experience” and testimony of four guys, most of which have said some pretty partisan things online, is not evidence, not when there is real evidence available.
We do not believe you; we do not believe you are seeking truth. We do not believe you have good intentions.
An intellectually honest and decent person can know something is both wrong, and that there are reasons that people believe it.
I think folks that want to burn, loot and kill because they believe they are oppressed are immoral. I also know there are reasons (yes, they have liars in their ears) but some of them, for reasons, (sometimes their fault sometimes not) cannot get jobs, our system is not perfect and can always be improved (the right way).
Leftists that are now salivating about the fact that those “disgusting MAGA people” are going to “get theirs” ought to try and be a little intellectually honest too. Yes, those people were told some lies and deceived….but why did they believe them, what is true that made them susceptible.
What about our system that is so corrupt, illegitimate, and flawed that makes people want to burn cities and march through the Capitol? We need a commission for that.
