The true significance of January 6 is that the response of the Biden Administration and the Democrats in Congress to a demonstration that turned into a riot was a virtual flare warning Americans that our government and one of its two major parties are flirting with totalitarianism. The aftermath also sent a clear, if distorted by, again, the news media, message that a double standard exists in law enforcement, encouraged and nourished by the the totalitarian-trending Left.

The racist and corrupt Black Lives Matter “mostly peaceful” demonstrations lasted for months in 2020, disrupted cities and communities across the nation and resulted in the deaths of at least 50 people. There were almost no prosecutions of participants who engaged in rioting, because these were, we were told, justified rioters whose violence was good violence, and their rioting was endorsed by Democrats like Kamala Harris, major corporations and professional sports teams. Ironically, the Washington Post ran an opinion piece in April of 2021 arguing for less vigorous prosecution of misdemeanors, a bad theory that resulted in widespread looting of stores in maniacally woke locales like San Francisco, Seattle, Oakland, and Washington, D.C., as well as the accumulation of filth and human waste in Manhattan and, again, the tarnished City by the Bay.

Now read this New York Times story today, focusing on the state of some of the rioters the Justice Department pounced upon because it wanted to make an example of Trump supporters. [Gift link!] At least the Times, which has generally carried the Axis lie that the single day riot was a Trump-led “insurrection”,” (though we are told that one rioter “was removed from office under the 14th Amendment [as] the first public official in more than a century to be barred from serving under a constitutional ban on insurrectionists holding office”) mostly avoids that false but ubiquitous characterization. If the idea behind the story was to demonstrate that soon-to-be President Trump shouldn’t pardon these pawns, it failed miserably. The article shows just how unjust their prosecution and punishment was, especially in contrast to the treatment of the Black Lives Matters demonstrators. Eric Clark, for example, was sentenced to five months in prison for illegally entering the Capitol “in a Guy Fawkes mask” and “refusing to leave for nearly 30 minutes.”

Let’s see: a white female rioter was shot dead during the riot without a warning by a black, frequently disciplined Capitol cop who faced none of the inquiries and protests every white cop who has killed an unarmed black citizen faces regardless of the circumstances. A partisan House committee stacked with anti-Trump fanatics ran a rigged investigation for years, destroying evidence, coaching witnesses, and using the House investigation machinery as a 2024 campaign tool. The riot was used as a catalyst for full-court lawfare against Donald Trump, the first instance in American history of a party attempting to use the criminal justice system to eliminate political opposition.

As a final insult, the Washington Post today runs an absurd on its face op-ed by “Joe Biden” headlined, “What Americans should remember about Jan. 6.” [ANOTHER gift link!]Yes, yes, we are used to ghost-written columns by elected officials, but in this case, the pretense that what is being expressed comes from the supposed author is particularly fanciful. “Joe” tells us that January 6 was an “insurrection.” The lies come fast and thick: again, we have the narrative that officers “died as a result” of the riot, which is false, though the Biden Administration even gave a martyr’s funeral to one officer after a later retracted New York Times account.

“Joe” also says that 2020 was a “fair” election, which it most emphatically was not; using the pandemic as an excuse, usual safeguards on voting security were loosened or eliminated; several states, all going in Biden’s Electoral College column, simply ignored their own laws, and the victorious candidate, already sinking into dementia, was spared the rigors of usual campaigning.

In a fair election, relevant developments relating to a candidate would be reported in timely fashion: in this one, a story potentially raising questions of Biden’s honesty was embargoed by social media and most of the mainstream media as “Russian disinformation.” Then there was the relentless effort by the news media to discredit President Trump and prevent his re-election before he was even sworn in. “Fair” indeed.

Trump’s claims that he had won the 2020 election were and continue to be untenable, but his supporters had every reason to be suspicious, angry and resentful. There were legitimate reasons to suspect that our democracy was being corrupted, and the conduct of the Biden administration since that ugly January 6 —especially the Justice Department, his party, Democratic judges and prosecutors and the leftist propaganda-machine and of course, the emerging evidence that we have been experiencing a Soviet-style puppet Presidency, have only given more weight to that belief.

There is no hesitation here in stating that the rioters were foolish, stupid, and wrong, and that President Trump was reckless and irresponsible in the manner in which he addressed his 2020 defeat. He indeed shares responsibility for the riot. However, the Democratic party’s exploitation of the event and eagerness to give its participants maximum punishment should stand as a vivid warning of a metastasizing cancer in our political culture far more menacing than any single protest that turned violent.

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Added: After posting this I encountered the Federalist article titled “Here Are The Top 10 Lies Of Liz Cheney And The January 6th Committee.” It is useful background on the Ethics Alarms post.