It was the greatest affront to democracy the country had seen since the Civil War, we were told. The storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 was worse than 9/11, Pearl Harbor, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and all the other terrorist attacks on the U.S. Capitol building by leftists — yes, there have been more of those than you remember.
After seven months of left-wing riots over George Floyd, and all of the attendant toxic political correctness and anti-police propaganda spawned in the “woke era,” I can see why some people might have become confused about how bad riots are. But I do remember the day of the riot — I was pissed off about it. Idiots fighting with police should never be embraced or celebrated.
Even so, that event lasted only about three hours — significantly shorter than the fiery, billion-dollar damage and death-filled “summer of love” that Democrats had lustily cheered and encouraged. The Capitol clean-up was done quickly. The Electoral College vote certification was only minimally delayed.
In contrast, many of the buildings and neighborhoods destroyed in the name of racial justice have still not recovered and likely never will.
That’s why it is so hard for me to get worked up over the Capitol riot all these years later. No matter how many times they repeat the lie, no police officers were killed that day — the only person killed during the riot was a rioter, shot by a policeman as she and a group of fellow rioters were trying to break through a barricaded glass door in the Capitol building.
That brings us to New Jersey and the show that Democrats recently put on at an ICE detention facility in Newark. These glory-hounds know that their voters are angry and fearful, but still not excited to vote for them — hence their stunt of storming a federal facility and assaulting law enforcement on camera in order to champion illegal aliens.
It’s an odd flex, favoring people with no right to be in the country over American citizens. But it is what motivates the progressive left these days.
In a cross between an insurrection and a prison break, three members of Congress and the Mayor of Newark got into a shoving match with guards as they tried to force their way into the facility. If normal people had tried to fight their way past guards into a prison like this, they likely would have been shot.
These politicians brought cameras with them because the whole thing was planned for public relations purposes. Naturally, the media slurped it up. Time magazine ran a piece entitled, “A New Jersey ICE Facility. A Warning for the Country,” whose author declares, “From my vantage point, as someone intimately familiar with its surroundings, Delaney Hall’s existence stands in opposition to the values of the very community where it is located, and the dissonance is staggering. I know this because I grew up a couple of miles from the facility, near Wilson Avenue, a busy thoroughfare teeming with immigrant-owned bakeries and coffee shops.”
This holding facility for violent illegal aliens is “in opposition to the values of the very community where it is located?” What does that even mean? Does the community enjoy being victimized by violent criminals? Does the community value violence against law abiding citizens and legal immigrants?
Of course not — no community likes being preyed on by people who have no business even being in the country. But Democrats don’t care about that. They are playing to their base, using emotional arguments to make victims out of the predators. And if you ask me, that’s just one of many reasons they have been losing the votes of so many Hispanic and other legal immigrant voters in places like New Jersey and South Texas.
In any case, the Time piece closes with, “Our country’s immigrant population deserves the opportunity to thrive, and our communities, whether populated by immigrants or citizens alike, deserve better.”
Note how there is no differentiation between legal and illegal alien, criminal and law-abiding immigrant. Democrats don’t care. They want the head count, because they at least think (perhaps wrongly) that these are their future voters and will prop up their plummeting Electoral Vote count in states like New York and California. They are perfectly happy to let Americans and legal immigrants suffer in their march toward their goal. They simply do not care.
The Democrats don’t take to the streets in the name of justice for Americans or legal immigrants who’ve been victimized by illegals. The teams of high-powered, high-priced lawyers doing “volunteer” work (you know they’re being paid by someone) on behalf of illegals is not matched by a similar team of powerful lawyers working for free for the victims. Democrats do not care. Democrats have their priorities, and you are not one of them.
Americans who simply want to live their lives free from fear and violence are not a priority for Democrats, who think their best hope is to create more Americans who will vote for them. If they have to get a little insurrection-y to achieve that goal — storming federal detention centers and shoving guards — then so be it. They can always count on their friends in the media to pretend their law-breaking and violence was either “mostly peaceful” or “in the cause of justice” — or something.
Derek Hunter is host of the Derek Hunter Podcast and a former staffer for the late Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.).
