Democrats call January 6 an "insurrection" while calling Portland riots "peaceful protests".
The words and music don't go together very well.
On January 6, 2021 there were protests at the U.S. Capitol that were expected by the House leader Nancy Pelosi and by the Capitol Police. Rather than prepare for what might be a volatile protest, Speaker Pelosi refused an offer for the National Guard to be present and took no steps to protect the capitol buildings from any unrest. She preferred to expose the capitol community to risk to build political talking points.
There was one death at the January 6 protests - an unarmed woman protester was short and killed by an unnamed capitol officer. Why this person was not named immediately is a good question. Subsequent disclosure that the officer involved was Michael Byrd who was “cleared of any wrongdoing” in shooting unarmed Ashli Babbit who was a threat to no one points to the double standard applied by the Biden regime. If Babbitt had been black and the event in Portland the outcry would have had left wing heads spinning with screams of “racism”.
Since January 6, the Democrats have labeled the protest an “insurrection” and done everything possible to blame the events of that day on Donald Trump. There is no doubt Trump’s character played a part in the protests.
The January 6, 2021 events needs to be seen in two contexts - one is the violent protests during the summer where arson, murder and looting were commonplace, and, the other is an historical context. The historical context is more interesting since it cannot be “politicized” by the events of the Trump years in office. January 6, 2021 was not “unprecedented” nor the first time violence was visited on the capitol buildings. I won’t go back 200 years to the time when the Canadian colonies (Canada was not yet a nation) burned down the White House, which makes the January 6, 2021 incident look mild by comparison.
On March 1, 1954 four armed Puerto Rican nationalists stormed into the capitol buildings and from the gallery fired automatic weapons into the assembled representatives killing four members of the House and wounding one. The perpetrators were tried and convicted only to be pardoned by Democratic President Jimmy Carter late in his term in office. Automatic gunfire in the House of Representatives killing members of the House comes a lot closer to “insurrection” than a person wearing a Viking hat with a painted face strolling through the offices of the capitol building.
On March 1, 1971 a protester placed a bomb in a washroom one floor under the Senate chamber. The bomb went off but its effect was limited to property damage. A few weeks later, a protest far larger than the January 6, 2021 “insurrection” took place with capitol police struggling to restrain the crowd.
On November 7, 1983 another bomb went off just outside the Senate but again the bombing led only to property damage. The motive for this event was to protect U.S. involvement in Lebanon and Grenada.
I will limit myself to the above three examples to have space to compare the January 6, 2021 events to the summer “peaceful protests”. It is worth noting that Americans have taken matters into their own hands on a number of occasions when they either assassinated or attempted to assassinate the President. Each of Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and Kennedy were assassinated. Attempts were made on Andrew Jackson, both Theodore and Teddy Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Gerry Ford, and Ronald Reagan. Based on the history, there seems to be a one in five chance any President may be subject to an assassination attempt.
The 2021 summer of violent protests is a more relevant context. Following the death of George Floyd at the hands of a police officer (now serving time in prison for his role in Floyd’s death) there were a number of protests in Portland some of which turned violent. The violence included arson, looting and murder.
At least 25 people were killed during the protests. Both far left and far right groups participated - Antifa on the left and “Proud Boys” on the right. The riots were not condemned by Democratic leaders whose public statements supported the rioters. Congresswoman Maxine Waters urged the protesters to be more violent if Derek Chauvin, the police officer charged with killing George Floyd, were not convicted. It is hard to reconcile the extreme rhetoric regarding the January 6, 2021 events in the capitol where the only death occurred at the hands of capitol police with the lack of any Democratic outcry over the violence in Portland or Kenosha where federal buildings were burned, business destroyed and dozens of people killed.
In America today, the divisions between Democrats and Republicans could not be more stark or dangerous, but the conventional wisdom I hear from left-leaning friends puts the blame on Donald Trump and ignores the role of Democratic members of the federal government or Democratic mayors in the cities host to the violence. Trump deserves blame and so do they. It is a sad state when Canadians who have taken little time to arm themselves with facts dive into the fray with nonsense that vilifies Republicans and exalts Democrats. Neither party is worthy of much praise.