Don’t Believe Your Eyes and Ears
Imagine my surprise when I was perusing Twitter this weekend and found a tweet that asserted that the attack on the capital was not in fact sedition. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the wherewithal to save that Tweet, but subsequent searches found the article in question.
Occasionally we get to witness things first hand. It is particularly incendiary to see someone or some people attempt to tell us that what we saw is not what we saw and what we heard is not what we heard.
Yet, former President Trump attempted to tell us exactly that in his all out war with the mainstream media. He actually said that we can’t believe what we see and hear. When you eliminate the mainstream media then the only thing left is state sponsored media. From there, it is just a quick jump to the world that Orwell created in his novel.
Denial is one way of erasing the past. Most attempt to whitewash it. It isn’t that people didn’t invade the capitol. It is that they did it nonviolently. They had no weapons. The former president told us that they hugged the officers as they came in. They handed them all flowers and chocolates as they came in. If they are guilty of anything it isn’t paying for the tour.
Others resort to whataboutism. What about the protesters in Portland and Minnesota? What about the protesters everywhere else that caused property damage and hurt people. Some of them even had guns. Isn’t that worse than what the people did at the capitol?
Finally we get the conspiracy theorists. Sure, people invaded the capitol and sure they committed insurrection and sedition, but they weren’t the good, honest conservatives that came there to protest. Those were liberal agitators from Antifa and BLM that were trying to get conservatives in trouble.
Add it all up and it’s just pathetic deflection. First of all, we watched the attack. We know the numbers of officers that were either hurt or killed. The irony of the what about argument is that they show their hand on the last argument. Remember, conservatives always accuse you of what they are in fact doing. Certainly not all of the bad actors at protests out of Washington are in fact conservative agitators, but many of them were.
Yet, that doesn’t matter. Let’s say all of them were Antifa and BLM. It is difficult to separate in your mind what was behind the violence and who the violence was against. One group were protesting an election they lost. Others were protesting continual mistreatment by the police. One group attempted to overthrow a government in the midst of a constitutional event. The other group had members get violent in protest and may have damaged private property or injured innocent bystanders.
The point is that when we don’t want something to be true we will try anything to convince ourselves that it isn’t true. Maybe we deny it happened in the first place. Maybe we rearrange our memories to change what happened. Maybe we change the subject and try to get people to focus on something else that happened. Maybe we just change who did it. This is your shame. It’s right here and you can’t run from it anymore no matter how hard you try.
This quote has many versions from different episodes of the famous mind of holmes… this one covers the groupthink of delusion , I imagine.
“We must fall back upon the old axiom that when all other contingencies fail, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” –
Sherlock Holmes ~
1The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans
Footnote to 1 : Given an ego dedicated to honest introspection/
2From the article cited, all (the Law officer editorials, (David clark’s) American sheriff, the Washington examiner and post millennial news) are all right wing conservative media/organizations. While you’d think their support of police actions (including brutality) would be be more sympathetic to the capital police that were attacked, severely injured and killed, their main thing is anti-liberals. Somehow they think the rioters will not be charged or prosecuted for serious crimes, and think they have information to support that. Look at their sources- that’s wishful thinking.
3I think we (those of us regularly reading on JJ’s salon), think the DOJ has ample evidence and should be charging and prosecuting the capital rioters with the maximum.
I believe the outcomes will be somewhere in the middle.
The anti liberals are forgetting that prosecutors often do not initially charge people with the worst crimes until they have their cases built. The fact that many are being held without bale tells me they are serious.
But unfortunately I think many will get their wrists slapped. I just hope that many do get the maximum including sedition, felony assault and murder or manslaughter. And significant jail time.
I watched those crazed fanatics in real time, and since have rewatched snippets. Last night on MSNBC, a report went through the whole thing with times and all the interior and exterior cameras in the Capitol. Those people are enemies of our country and we should never think anything else.
4Of course, without guilty pleas or convictions, all those with charges against them are “alleged” perpetrators of “alleged” crimes. All 353 individuals charged by the Department of Justice ought to be presumed innocent. But as a group, it is clear there was an effort to stop American democracy.
Director Wray’s Statement on Violent Activity at the U.S. Capitol Building, issued January 7, 2021, speaks of the general activity.
The violence and destruction of property at the U.S. Capitol building yesterday showed a blatant and appalling disregard for our institutions of government and the orderly administration of the democratic process. As we’ve said consistently, we do not tolerate violent agitators and extremists who use the guise of First Amendment-protected activity to incite violence and wreak havoc. Such behavior betrays the values of our democracy….
5Many people don’t notice objectivity and context disappear into thin air, when replaced with subjectivity and lies.
It’s still a surprise how many prefer delusion over reality.
6They all believe they can lie and buy their way out of any thing.
7Trump & Co. has beat the law for years. He and his thugs will say and do,yes and buy,what ever it takes to keep the con on.
And look at the number of retards that believe him. And are giving him money to this day. And the line of GOP crooks that want to kiss his butt is a mile long. Makes most of us sick.
Those genius seditionists were uploading thousands of videos to Parler during the insurrection on January 6. Before the videos were taken down, a programmer archived them. They have no clue how the interwebs work. You can see over 500 of them at ProPublica. https://projects.propublica.org/parler-capitol-videos/
8Sigh! Like i have indicated before, this guy is a psychopath. He needs to be “contained”. If you buy into his blather, you are an aider and an abetter.
9It’s called “gaslighting”, and it makes the subject so strange that you begin to doubt your own experiences. It’s rampant because it works.
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