There Was No ‘Insurrection’Overstatement of the year. by Shmuel Klatzkin
January 12, 2021, 10:30 AM
The videos and photos that emerged from the Capitol invasion looked like an alcohol-powered high school gang prank that spontaneously gathered momentum. The invaders are pictured walking around taking it in, many shooting videos and taking pictures of the grand success of their teenage disobedience.
There was another dimension to the scene that seemed out of 1968 Haight-Ashbury – a little past its prime, but still robustly weird. The icon of this segment was the guy dressed up as a little bit of the Mighty Thor and little bit of Captain America, looking as if he had just come from an acid test that he had failed. A prophet of Q, apparently, an appointment that we must take on faith. He too struts about aimlessly, with no plan and no tactical command, giddy at his temporary success but with no purpose other than being there, apparently. ...
There is of course a big difference between this and a high school stunt. This breached a space and a place that is as revered as it gets in an argumentative democracy. The support for the lawless acts committed is exceedingly small — Right and Left in their overwhelming majorities condemned it in the strongest terms.
As most unthinking acts do, this has turned out disastrously for the cause that these people ostensibly embraced. Hopefully, we will see who they really are as investigations proceed, though there is no cause to be sanguine about that. The Capitol breach turned all focus away from the issue that the tens of thousands of demonstrators had wanted to put before the country, and it slammed shut the door on the last constitutional opportunity to contest the election results.
Just like a high school prank gone disastrously wrong brings out the resolve of parents and schools to crack down on bad behavior, so too this trampling of our democracy’s capital has stirred revulsion among the great mass of Americans. ...
But one thing this was not was a Trump-led insurrection. Recognize that charge as the lie that it is, the one the radical Left thinks it can use to cast aside any pretense of care at all for the approximately half of all Americans who voted against them. They are seeking, by philosophy, to force them — to force us — to change to fit their model. ...
American Spectator
