New Day, Same Problem, Different Group

So let’s take a look at this new warning from the .dotgov.  Here’s the summary:

The Acting Secretary of Homeland Security has issued a National Terrorism Advisory System (NTAS) Bulletin due to a heightened threat environment across the United States, which DHS believes will persist in the weeks following the successful Presidential Inauguration.  Information suggests that some ideologically-motivated violent extremists with objections to the exercise of governmental authority and the presidential transition, as well as other perceived grievances fueled by false narratives, could continue to mobilize to incite or commit violence.

What interests me about this diktat  is not that it’s spurious bullshit (it is), but in terms of this language it could have been equally applicable after Trump was elected President.  Let’s parse the thing, to get the parallels to 2017.

  • “Some ideologically-motivated violent extremists”  — Antifa?  Most definitely.
  • “Objections to the exercise of governmental authority and the presidential transition” — Anyone remember the Washington D.C. riots during and after Trump’s inauguration?
  • “Other perceived grievances fueled by false narratives” — that would be the completely false Russian “involvement” of 2017.

All these and more could have been good reasons for Trump to invoke this very kind of action, back in early 2017.

But he didn’t.

Yet because a couple hundred idiots invaded the Capitol, walked off with Nancy Pelosi’s lectern and sat behind her desk, now it’s Defcon-3 and BOLOs for “terrorists”?  Just a reminder:  the “insurgents” who broke into the Capitol weren’t carrying weapons, didn’t throw Molotov cocktails around in the streets or public places, didn’t burn and pillage shops and office buildings, and didn’t beat up innocent people in the streets.  Even the ones arrested were released within hours, and if any effort was made to identify and charge the instigators of said riots, I don’t remember it and nothing ever came of it if there was such an effort.

Also, I don’t recall any of the 2021 “ringleaders” actually saying things like Black Lives Matter’s co-founder Patrisse Cullors, who said in 2015 that she and her fellow organizers are “trained Marxists”.

So which group is more likely to want to violently overthrow our republican form of government:  the “Proud Boys” / Trumpist conservatives or BLM / Antifa?

Anyone who suggests the conservatives, I would suggest, is the enemy of the United States and should be the ones targeted by the National Terrorism Advisory System Bulletin of January 27, 2021 — because if ever there is a “false narrative”, it’s the one contained in the bulletin’s summary at the top of this post.

It’s an age-old tactic of the Left:  accuse your opponents of doing what you’re doing, or plan to do.

Not Gonna Happen

Oh, here’s a charming little piece.  The post heading reads:

The Seditionists Need A Path Back Into Society

…and it’s all about how the Left can make accommodations to learn to live with us, the poor misguided 75 million people who actually voted for Trump in 2020.

Whom she charmingly calls, “Seditionists.”

Now I’m not going to fisk the whole article because I’m trying to keep my breakfast pint of gin to only one per day, but let me just make one observation.  Here’s an example of Applebaum’s towering condescension:

Not all Republicans are seditionists, nor is everyone who voted for Trump, nor is every conservative: Nothing about rejecting your country’s political system is conservative.

Here’s a tip for The Atlantic  and its writers:

We’re not rejecting our country’s political system.  We’re protesting the fact that our votes were nullified by massive injections of fraudulent ballots in states which would otherwise have gone overwhelmingly for Donald Trump. 

Or, put another way:  if our political system — the one that the Left seems to have installed — is now going to systematically allow wholesale criminal alterations of voting preferences by the addition of fraudulent ballots:  then fuck yes, we’re going to reject it.

Until such time as you understand this, there will never — never — be any kind of accommodation towards the Left by us conservatives.

What happened at the Capitol wasn’t an “insurrection”, it was a protest.  If you want to see an insurrection — and I promise you, you don’t — just keep squeezing us:  keep calling us names such as “seditionists”, keep preventing us from getting jobs because of our political philosophy, keep talking about “re-educating” or “reprogramming” us and our children into obedience to your foul Marxist doctrine, keep shutting us out of social media, keep muzzling conservative voices, keep trampling all over our First Amendment rights in general, keep trying to infringe our Second Amendment rights, and in short, keep trying to push us out of the American society and polity.

You Marxists think that the protest at the Capitol was the bite of a savage dog (you know, the one that keeps getting teased until it snaps).  It wasn’t a bite — it wasn’t even a nip.

So keep trying to take away conservatives’ votes (like with the horrible “For the People Act of 2021”, which entrenches the wrongdoing of 2020).  Just remember the switch in the above picture.

As your own Glenn Greenwald has written:

The New Domestic War on Terror is Coming
No speculation is needed. Those who wield power are demanding it. The only question is how much opposition they will encounter.

Good question.

If, that is, you’re going to categorize all 75 million of us as “terrorists”.  That should be interesting.

Warm Up The Engines

When I saw this linked at Insty’s, I nearly fell over.   It’s an overview of the very first bill (H.R.1) proposed by the new House of Representatives, the grand-sounding “For the People Act of 2021”, whose preamble reads:

To expand Americans’ access to the ballot box, reduce the influence of big money in politics, strengthen ethics rules for public servants, and implement other anti-corruption measures for the purpose of fortifying our democracy, and for other purposes.

This has to be a hoax because the bill, if anything, entrenches all the above.

Except that it isn’t a hoax.  To check on that before I posted anything, I looked it up at congress.gov, and here it is, in all its disgusting splendor.

If one — ONE — Republican legislator in either chamber votes in favor of this, they should be subject to recall in their districts and replaced with someone who understands the actual sanctity of the vote.

That’s my official position.  The unofficial position I’ll leave to your imagination, but here’s a clue:

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