ROGER SIMON: ‘Hell, No, We Won’t Go!’—to the Inauguration.
Sorry to recapitulate my column of the other day—“Suppose They Held an Inauguration and Nobody Came?”—but recent events have made it even more necessary.
On the level of opéra bouffe farce, leading those events was a panic set off in the Capitol Jan. 18 that turned out to have been caused by a small fire at a homeless encampment outside a Whole Foods.
What more perfect symbolic image for America 2021!
How could Congress have missed it when they had as their speaker one of the great resident experts on the subject, Ms. Pelosi, whose own district probably has more homeless per capita than anywhere in the nation?
But this is only one small reason we should ignore the inauguration or, as we used to say in the sixties, “Hell, no, we won’t go!”
When I say ignore, I mean totally shut the event out. Pay no attention to it. Do not watch it or listen to it. Not a single word.
Pretend it’s not happening and do almost anything else. It’s a work day anyway. Do your work. And if you’re retired, read a book. Brush up on your Shakespeare.
When images appear, let them show no one there but thousands of National Guard troops—put there as a charade in the first place—with bored expressions on their faces, wondering when they will finally be able to go home and watch football reruns.
Resist the temptation to view the tedious rehashes of the banal speeches that will appear that night. You won’t have missed a thing.
When the ratings are published, let them be lower than an infomercial for the latest egg slicer.
This, of course, means no demonstrations of any kind, not in Washington and not in the state capitals.
Do not be like those gulled nincompoops that allowed themselves to be led by Antifa and BLM into the Capitol, only to become the subject of endless propaganda.
In other words, if you’re tempted, grow up. Remember the old saw: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Instead, if you’re still on Twitter, make it the day you got off. Stop being a collaborator.
But most of all, remember this: Stay calm because you have the real power.
You are the ones who do most of the work. You are the ones who can shut the country down.
Who is ultimately more necessary to our survival—a trucker who brings food to market or a Beltway lawyer? …
We can, at the right moment, shut things down—or, interestingly, keep them open only for those that agree with us, those who support freedom.
How would that be for turning the tables? It would be as if Parler shut down Twitter. Or Whole Foods were only open to conservatives. (It was started by a libertarian, by the way.)
Okay, not that. We could shut things down for the cause of liberty for all, for everyone.
And, unlike the use of force, such a shut down would be justified, considering what has happened to the citizenry of our COVID-ridden culture the last few years.
I cannot say definitively the election was stolen, but no one can say definitively that it was not. Not even remotely. The plethora of evidence was not faintly investigated.
The politicians and the courts, with very few exceptions, were too frightened, too conformist, to do their jobs.
On top of that, the current fascistic (what other word fits?) assaults on freedom of speech are destroying whatever uniqueness this country had.
Even Angela Merkel was alarmed at the banning of Donald Trump from Twitter.
Nevertheless, this is not yet the time to demonstrate or show force in the streets. It is the time to organize and cement our means of communication (a revivified Parler and others).
Stop complaining and start planning. Events will show the way soon enough.
And remember this too: A few years ago, Andrew Klavan made a prescient video explaining how the left treats us entitled “Shut Up.” If we play our cards right, we can return the favor—and then some.
Let them have their swearing-in, behind 12-foot-high razor wire and protected by 25,000 troops they themselves don’t really trust. They can pretend it’s normal, and legitimate. But nobody’s fooled.