One of many noticeable observations after Wednesday’s breach of the U.S. Capitol by Trump rioters is how the same Democrats who last summer supported defunding the nation’s police departments in the face of Black Lives Matters riots are now born again supporters of law enforcement.
It turns out being threatened by an angry mob and whisked out of your office and into a guarded safe room is a real Paul-on-The-Road-to-Damascus moment for those who just a few months ago held police in such foul disregard. We have to wonder what was going through the head of California Congresswoman Maxine Waters, who famously called for the public harassment of members of the Trump Administration when mobs caught them in public.
Don’t they call that ‘karma?’
More ironic yet: these revelations came to congressional Democrats the same week as Saturday’s celebration of National Law Enforcement Appreciation Day.
Now, amid the near blanket condemnation across the political spectrum of these acts of outright insurrection and the widespread support for arrests and prosecutions of the perpetrators, what glows most in the aftermath is the hypocrisy of Democrats and the Far Left Establishment.
Democrats who only last summer screamed for civil liberties and minority rights are now justifying censorship against conservatives by Big Tech companies. Twitter in recent days began systematically deleting followers from the accounts of conservative writers, celebrities, politicians and pundits, and banned President Trump’s account altogether. Big Tech attacked alternative social media apps Parler and Gab as well in an effort to muzzle millions of conservatives who left Facebook and Twitter by the millions for their own free speech option. Not since Stalin have free speech purges been so voluminous.
Interestingly, no one’s banned accounts run by the Chinese Communist Party propaganda arm, nor banned Ayatolla Khamenei’s repeated calls on Twitter for the destruction of Israel.
Twitter and Facebook of course famously banned President Trump, after the capitol breach, for fear of his preaching violence and insurrection, although Twitter allowed “Hang Mike Pence” to trend on the platform toward the end of last week.
Of course, the moves of these leftist tech giants to censor Trump’s following will only inflame them more. The Internet is, after all, a big, big place. Even the giants occupy only a tiny sliver of it. Trump already has hinted he’ll start a social media service of his own after he leaves office, and half the country is likely to follow him. That means catastrophic U.S. audience losses for advertisers on Facebook and Twitter. Outside the left-controlled social media arena, there’s even more.
Kamala Harris, who raised millions of dollars over the summer to pay bail for arrested BLM rioters who burned and occupied American cities, is calling out the heinous existence of “two systems of justice” in the American system– one that allowed white Trump supporters to storm the capital, and another that tear-gassed “peaceful protesters” at BLM riots last summer.
Yes, readers, she really said that – despite the fact that a woman in that capitol mob – a white woman, no less – was shot in the throat and killed by a capitol policeman.
Harris and Joe Biden have to be given points for dexterity in their post-capitol breach comments, however. It’s no easy feat to transition from indignation over a suspect election to the tired mantra of systemic racism.
The capitol rioters left their right to petition the government for a redress of their grievances at the door of that building. They should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. And once again, an American president takes office despised by half the country. The election is over.
But for conservatives the tyranny has already begun. Their rejection of the Socialism soon to be foisted upon them as well as the suspicion, division and hypocrisy that drove them to elect Donald Trump in the first place – that is alive and well.
–Dane Hicks is publisher of The Anderson County Review in Garnett, Kan. His novel “A Whisper For Help” celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2021.