What Happened At Capitol About More Than Election

I didn’t want to talk about what happened yesterday in the Capitol. I’d much rather talk about education or healthcare or anything else in the world. Unfortunately, that went out the window Wednesday afternoon.

However, since we’re here, I think it’s time to talk about what really spurred this one.

To be sure, there were events that day we can point to. Rudy Guliani talking about how they wanted “trial by combat,” for example.

But the truth is that what transpired at the Capitol is about far more than one election.

No, it’s about four years of being called “deplorables.”

It’s about far more than four years of being called racist for opposing illegal immigration or tough-on-crime policies.

It’s about years of opposition to welfare supposedly also being racist, despite more whites getting government handouts than minorities.

It’s about watching speakers from our side, even mainstream conservatives and libertarians, silenced from speaking on our college campuses because an outrage mob demanded it.

At the end of the day, it’s about all of that and far, far more. Let’s not pretend it wasn’t, either.

Yesterday at the Capitol—and I’m not excusing anything that transpired. After all, four people died—was the culmination of years upon years of hateful rhetoric directed toward the right.

It’s not a mystery that the right finally rioted. The only mystery is why it took them this long to lash out.

During a summer of riots, the left kept telling us that riots were the voice of the unheard. Today, they’re revising that sentiment, but they shouldn’t. It’s not wrong. Not in this case, at least.

You can’t go on vilifying people, claiming their every position is racist simply because you don’t know how to counter it otherwise, and not expect some kind of backlash.

Further, you can’t have a media that continually ignores or downplays one side in favor of the other. While we all know the media has its biases, the fact that they’ve openly taken sides has turned legions of Americans into the unheard.

Riots aren’t excusable, but they are understandable.

After all, we saw a summer of “mostly peaceful” riots that were justified over and over again by our media. In fact, we saw so many that riot after riot in Portland wasn’t even covered by the national media. It wasn’t news anymore, it was just the status quo.

In other words, all the politicians and media personalities justifying the Black Lives Matter riots all summer long laid the groundwork for it.

Especially when, yet again, we were told opposition to the riots was racist. We were told that we were wrong or narrow-minded to oppose people burning down entire neighborhoods and destroying businesses amid COVID-19.

Let’s also not forget how all the talk of “staying home” and “social distancing” went out the window with the riots, yet socially-distanced protests were still domestic terrorism for having the wrong point of view.

Time after time, we saw a double standard at play and we see it again today.

This morning, newspapers all over the nation will run opinion pieces about how what happened at the Capitol was inappropriate and those involved should be arrested and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Yet these opinion writers will also be the same people who defended the Black Lives Matter riots over the summer. They told us how we were wrong, that rioting for a cause was virtuous.

If not for double standards, they’d have no standards at all.

As for me, while I don’t necessarily agree with it, I understand it. I have a lot to say to the protestors, too, but that’s a topic for another time and perhaps another place. I’m not excusing it in any way, shape, or form.

But again, I understand it, and the media that never wants to hear the other side, that wants to silence large portions of our society and dismiss their opinions as fringe even though more than 70 million Americans share those opinions to some degree.

If riots are the voices of the unheard, then maybe it’s time for some of the people so upset by yesterday to sit down, shut up for a change, and actually listen for once. Maybe they should listen to the fact that a lot of people are sick of being told they don’t matter because they don’t hold the right opinions.

No, yesterday wasn’t just about an election. It was about a long-simmering resentment many Americans feel because they’ve been ignored, discounted, and dismissed by the left and their liberal allies.

They decided it was “mind over matter.” They stopped minding because it seemed they didn’t matter.