patrick.net

So, I was out at dinner with my old battalion commander – literally outside, because dining inside apparently is super deadly if you live under blue tyranny – and we were laughing at this whole “Muh Insurrekshun” nonsense. What happened January 6 was no “insurrection” in any meaningful sense of the word, especially not to those who survived the riots of 2020, and not to us either. See, I was my old battalion commander’s assistant operations officer and I was riding with him in his HUMVEE driving through Los Angeles as it burned in April 1992.

That was a riot. What happened on Capitol Hill was a few dudes dressed like Conan the Fauxbarian acting like fools and occasionally fighting with the cops while a few hundred other dudes took selfies in the Rotunda.

We were in the 3rd Battalion, 160th Infantry, the first combat arms unit on the street during the LA Riot, a riot brought to you by Maxine Waters and other idiots, by the way. There was burning and looting and dozens we can say with absolute certainty were murdered by the LA rioters, unlike at the Capitol. It lasted for days. You wouldn’t know it from Rep. Stolen Cower, who seems to claim she suffered PTSD from being at the far end of the same ZIP code as the bruhaha, but what happened on January 6 was no “insurrection,” and Republicans need to stop playing along with the Establishment talking point that it was.

The idea of an “insurrection” is to delegitimize all resistance to the garbage Establishment’s reign of error, and to play along is to give credence to its lie and to empower its propaganda. You have done nothing wrong by rejecting the Establishment narrative. You have done nothing wrong by protesting what you see as a flawed election and a corrupt ruling class. You have a right to protest anything you want, and you don’t need their permission.

Dissent is patriotic. Or did that end when it became inconvenient?

They hype the happening because they want to make you afraid to speak up. They want to try to make it impossible for you to live in this society if you do not parrot the party line. They won’t say it that way. They will try to wrap themselves in the same flag they were calling a symbol of white supremacy last year to try to seize some sort of moral high ground and shut you up. Like they give a damn about the Constitution. This tiresome “insurrection” and “sedition” palaver is just a ham-handed attempt to turn 74 million Americans – almost none of whom wear Thor drag – into enemies of mom and apple pie, which is weird because they usually hate traditional family structures and non-kale foods.

This kind of baloney is par for the course for the Democrats. They’re going to call you an “insurrectionist” today and a “racist” tomorrow and some other hogwash after that, so who cares what they say? But what does grate are the Republicans who go along with this bogus framing, and it’s sometimes unclear how much of the reason is just the usual GOPe pol stupidity and how much is the usual GOPe contempt for the GOP base.

Yeah, we get that it was scary to have knuckleheads running rampant through the Capitol. Blame the knuckleheads. Don’t blame the other 74 million people who supported President Trump. And quit playing along with the ridiculous idea that January 6 was Fort Sumpter x 9/11 to the Pearl Harborth power.

It was not. This foaming-mouthed performative overreaction is all cynical performance art, and this goofy impeachment is just a senatorial Toobin Zoomin’.

Now, I also had the chance to see the wreckage of a real insurrection when I was in Kosovo with the Army after the fighting ended. An insurrection means ruins and mass graves, not some dude in a horn hat wandering around the House as a police officer asks him to chill. Don’t let them define insurrection down to mean “Anything conservatives do.” ...

GOP pols, listen up. You are not defending the buffoons of January 6 by accurately characterizing their actions. Stop playing along with the false narrative that unjustly trashes your own people. Stop minimizing what happened in the murderous Democrat-abetted riots in LA in 1991 and throughout our country in 2020 by not just lumping this incident in with them but by pretending it was a zillion times worse.

Just stop.