
U.S. Army Soldiers with the National Guard secure an area near the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., Jan. 20, 2021. National Guard Soldiers and Airmen from several states have traveled to Washington to provide support to federal and district authorities leading up to the 59th Presidential Inauguration. (U.S. Air National Guard photo by Master Sgt. Matt Hecht)
Immediately after January 6, Pat Buchanan told readers “the event will be forever exploited to discredit not only Trump but the movement he led and the achievements of his presidency.” He was dead on the mark. January 6 has become an obsession for leftists. Now, at LewRockwell.com, Buchanan writes of their ongoing obsession:
The left cannot let go of Jan. 6. Indeed, it has fixated upon, exploited and exaggerated the riot to discredit and destroy the Trump presidency in the history books and to prevent Donald Trump from ever running or being elected president again.
Though Trump was exonerated by the Senate of the impeachment charge brought by Nancy Pelosi’s House, the House select committee wants to try Trump again and again in the court of public opinion and wants President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice to find some crime with which to charge and convict him.
There are other reasons the left cannot let go of Jan. 6.
Democrats have no other issue on which to run this November.
The Biden presidency has produced an uninterrupted string of disasters: the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle, the Texas border crisis, inflation, an explosion of gun violence and murders setting records in Democrat-run cities, failure to produce an adequate federal response to the delta and omicron waves of COVID-19.
Again, Jan. 6 was a riot, involving assaults on Washington and Capitol cops and the disruption of a formal congressional procedure to validate the electoral vote victory of Joe Biden.
But was Jan. 6 really the planned coup, the terrorism, the sedition, the armed insurrection, the attempt to overthrow the U.S. government?
Was Jan. 6 really comparable to Pearl Harbor and 9/11, during each of which 3,000 Americans went to their deaths in an hour’s time and major wars followed — as Vice President Kamala Harris said yesterday?
If so, why, a year after Jan. 6, 2021, has no one been charged with inciting a rebellion, sedition, treason, armed insurrection, plotting a coup, or a takeover of the government of the United States?
Thus far, all the charges prosecuted and punished are consistent with a riot, which is what Jan. 6 was. Comparisons of this three-hour mob action to Pearl Harbor and 9/11 are almost sacrilegious.
Was that QAnon shaman occupying the chair in the Senate chamber really the moral equivalent of Mohamed Atta ramming an airliner into the World Trade Center or Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto plotting the Dec. 7 surprise attack on Pearl Harbor?
Another reason for the left to paint up the horror of that day is that the perpetrators of Jan. 6 were not the radical left who battled cops and burned and looted Seattle, Portland, Milwaukee and scores of other cities in the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing.
They were the “deplorables” of Trump, the populists of the American right, against whom any slander is justified.
Question: If the left is so terrified of Trump it feels it must prevent him from even running again, by imposing a criminal conviction, what does that say about the left’s belief in American democracy?
What does that tell us about the left’s trust in the people?