Whatever the real, imagined, or exaggerated reasons for Trump Derangement Syndrome, an infectious source for that condition continues to be the Jan. 6, 2021, protest at the U.S. Capitol. For opponents of our president, the events of that day are endlessly repeated confirmations that as Hitler incarnate, the man sworn to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of this nation, intended to violently overthrow its government.
It did not matter that in challenging the 2020 election outcome, Trump never told protesters to “storm,” “breach,” or “break into” the Capitol. And it did not matter that Trump’s electoral challenges were hardly unprecedented in that several Democrats, including Hillary Clinton in 2016, also questioned the legitimacy of their defeat.
Nor did it matter that the chief of the Capitol Hill police claimed that presidential requests for additional National Guard support to protect the Capitol went unheeded or that Trump undeniably told supporters to make their voices heard “peacefully and patriotically.” All that mattered was that the Capitol “riot” was progressive proof that if re-elected, democracy would perish in a violent insurrection he had provoked.
But while the destructive Capitol protest was clearly wrong, it pales in comparison to the riots inexcusably excused by left-wing pundits and politicians during the preceding summer. Whereas the Capitol protest lasted three hours, was not directly responsible for the death of any law enforcement officers, and created less than three million dollars in damages, the summer protests lasted three months, directly led to dozens of deaths, and incited property losses in the billions of dollars. Yet, in their “criticism for thee, not for me” standard, Democrats reflexively blamed Trump for the former, while months prior, they had implicitly encouraged the latter.
By rationalizing widespread rioting after George Floyd died in police custody, liberal politicians and their media allies unwittingly fostered the carnage that followed. Inarguably so, since their criticisms of the rioting were largely absent while their conveniently blind rationalizations for its violence were stridently voiced, that “silence is consent” conclusion spoke loudly.
A small sampling of downplaying the widespread mobocracy was Minnesota’s attorney general laughably depicting the riots as “distracting conduct,” MSNBC reporter Ali Velshi described the same as “not generally unruly,” and filmmaker Michael Moore exhorted that “We must rise up [and] revolt.” And most ridiculous of all, in apparently forgetting the First Amendment’s guarantee of peaceful assembly, CNN’s Chris Cuomo stated, “Please, show me where it says protesters are supposed to be polite and peaceful.”
Moreover, in normalizing the riots, CNN anchor Don Lemon opined, “This is how this country got started,” a Huffington Post documentary was titled “How Riots Built America,” and in response to the partial occupation of Seattle, its mayor advised, “Don’t be so afraid of democracy.” But not outdone by such clueless analysis, Nancy Pelosi, in a “what me worry” response to property destruction, sagely offered, “People will do what they do.”
But sadly, in response to destructive protests, including vandalism, arson, drive-by shootings of vehicles, and attacks on drivers, the left’s “silence is consent” credo is alive and well in yet again failing to universally condemn violent attacks on Tesla. Yet, there’s no such reticence when it comes to their inflammatory hate speech linking Elon Musk to Nazis and repeatedly claiming he’s a self-serving billionaire caring little for others. After all, isn’t a Third Reich connection the go-to criticism progressives direct toward anyone or anything connected to Donald Trump?
Other examples of progressive hatemongering include Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York saying Musk goes after “disabled and orphaned children so he can pocket the tax cuts for himself.” Or comedian Jimmy Kimmel doubling down on that perception by asserting that Musk “randomly and gleefully [put] thousands of people out of work.” And with camouflaged intent, House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries tiptoed around his demonizing criticism by saying, “There are legitimate ways to express strong disagreement with far-right extremists who are trying to dismantle the American way of life.”
So rife with hypocrisy, the vast number of Democrats once turning a blind eye to the deadly summer riots of 2020 have again ignored or augmented a Tesla tinderbox of hatred in selfishly serving political ends. Yet, in continuing such fanning-the-flames theater, they are playing with dynamite. Because it is only a matter of time before someone somewhere tragically escalates their inflammatory rhetoric into far worse than that. And if so, their silence as a consenting response will reap the whirlwind of political suicide for many years to come.
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