It’s rioting, according to the media; and the scary footage from inside the Capitol appears to bear that out.
But the media’s tight focus on that scene (I use the word advisedly) blacks out the (so far) peaceable, though resolute, assembly in the streets, as captured here by Lynn Landes, a longtime ally in the election integrity movement. Some few are reported to be breaking windows, though whether they’re protesters or Antifa (who are there, too) isn’t clear.
In other words, what’s happening appears (so far) to be rather like the German media’s coverage of Bobby Kennedy’s historic speech in Berlin, which the “free press” over there largely ignored, in favor of sensational reports about the band of “neo-Nazis” who “stormed” the Reichstag. That bit of theater made it easy to portray the peaceful multitudes out in the streets as “neo-Nazis,” too.
Two points:
(1) Any such mass demonstration, involving sincere protesters, is likely to be hijacked by professional saboteurs, as happened after the George Floyd incident. We therefore need to take the bloody details of this day, as reported by the media, with a grain of salt.
(2) Those who showed up to protest what they see as election theft (justifiably, in my view) have every right, and even are obliged, to do so—just as, I thought, and still think, the Democratic masses should have done in 2000 and 2004 (when that too would have been entirely justified). If there are grounds for doubting that the outcome was legit (grounds that “our free press” has totally blacked out—just as it did back then), it’s a betrayal of democracy to let it go.
Our voting system is completely rotten (like the “free press” that has long refused to say a word about it). Until that system is reformed, from top to bottom, our elections will be nothing more than tribal rituals that each leave one side happy (for no good reason), and the other side justifiably aggrieved.
