ACTUALLY, SEVERAL CHAPTERS ARE MISSING: The missing chapter of “holding all January 6 rioters accountable.”
With all of that said, let’s consider the other side of the reality coin for a moment. Those rioters attacked a federal building, albeit a historic one central to our federal government. But the past few years have seen many attacks that fall into the same category. What about the crowds of rioters who attacked police stations and federal government buildings in multiple cities? They set some of those buildings ablaze and thoroughly destroyed others. They too attacked law enforcement officers and “damaged our democracy” in equal fashion. The sum total of the property damage resulting from the BLM riots makes the damage to the Capitol Building on January 6th look like chump change.
Where are the calls to “hold all of the perpetrators accountable?” It’s a laughable question if you’ve been following the news at all. Portland was one of the cities that was hardest hit for the longest period of time. There were reams of video data out on social media that should have made it child’s play to identify most of the rioters and track them down. Just imagine if the federal government had gone after them with the same zeal.
And yet, as the Wall Street Journal reported, by last August only a relative handful of people were ever arrested or charged. And of that paltry group, more than half of them had all charges against them mysteriously dropped. Those riots were also attacks on our democracy and our system of law and order. And the same people screaming about accountability for January 6th largely haven’t uttered a peep about it. Some have gone so far as to defend the perpetrators. Apparently, the level of culpability you bear and the pressure that will be applied to bring you to justice are situational, based largely on which party line you vote on.
Nothing here is about justice. Like the Rittenhouse trial, it’s all about empowering lefty thuggishness while trying to use the power of the state to neutralize the right. People who spent over a year cheering on violent rioters have no standing to complain about one mostly-peaceful protest here, even if they pretend to think it was an “insurrection.”