by Julie Kelly
Joe Biden is either an historical illiterate or a shameless liar. Perhaps he is both.
Desperate to keep the disintegrating narrative about the events of January 6 alive, Biden, in his first sparsely attended speech to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday night, declared the January 6 protest was “the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.”
Marked safe from Washington Post fact-checkers, Biden continued to lie. “As we gather here tonight, the images of a violent mob assaulting this Capitol, desecrating our democracy, remain vivid in our minds,” he lamented. “Lives were put at risk. Lives were lost. Extraordinary courage was summoned. The insurrection was an existential crisis, a test of whether our democracy could survive. It did.”
Of course it did. And no, lives weren’t lost. A single life was lost. Yes, many police officers acted courageously while many politicians scurried to hide under their desks. It wasn’t an existential crisis—no term in the vernacular of your average Democratic politician is more overused—or even a desecration.
It certainly wasn’t an “attack on our democracy” in any manner. Excuse the language but only a complete moron—or your average MSNBC viewer, but I repeat myself—can possibly believe that comment to be true.
First, it doesn’t even make sense; what’s an “attack on our democracy” anyway? I would argue the totality of the incalculable macro and microaggressions unleashed over the past year under the guise of stopping a mostly harmless respiratory virus are far worse than a few hours of mayhem at the Capitol building.
Second, the historical record shows legitimate attacks such as Pearl Harbor and 9/11 caused death, destruction, and misery that a handful of furry organic shamans could not even hope to inflict on their fellow countrymen if they wanted to do, which they did not. Attackers of democracy aren’t known for taking lots of selfies then immediately posting the evidence on Facebook.
And third, the events of January 6, with the exception of a few dozen thugs who assaulted cops and vandalized the building, were not violent and did not amount to an “attack on democracy”; in fact, thousands of nonviolent Americans demanding that their elected leaders working in a government building once known as the “People’s House” hear their collective objection to a compromised national election is the opposite of an attack on democracy, it is democracy, albeit a little uncomfortable, in action.
Which is why angry protests from the quadrennial uprising in the streets of the nation’s capital to contest the inauguration of every new president to the furious storming of a Senate office building to stop the confirmation of a Supreme Court justice are considered part of America’s birthright. This ain’t North Korea—or is it?
After all, January 6 protesters are being held as political prisoners for defying the party line. The “attack on our democracy” is coming from inside the government, not from a Georgia teenager or a horseback-riding Trump supporter.
The “attack on our democracy” began last year and the facts aren’t in dispute. A new leader was chosen and installed by a self-serving cabal of powerful interests; no one even tries to hide it anymore. The “shadow campaign” to rig the 2020 election isn’t described as cheating or an actual “attack on our democracy” that seized control from tens of millions of voters but as a successful attempt to “save” the election.
Before and after the election, content that contradicted the ministers of propaganda was banned and its authors dispatched to an information Gulag. Comments about a stolen election are met with harsh rebukes and accusations of treason and sedition. Even worse, anyone involved in the January 6 protest who expressed that belief in social media posts or private messages is automatically guilty of a thought crime punishable by solitary confinement in a D.C. prison before a trial can begin.
First, Second, and Fourth Amendment rights do not apply to a select group of Americans. A top Justice
Department prosecutor bragged about authorizing nationwide manhunts and arrests in a display of “shock and awe,” not to round up real criminals but to silence and bully the political opposition.
No presumption of innocence, no due process.
The national news media fabricated a story about the untimely death of a police officer to help inflame the January 6 narrative. After the story was exposed as a lie, no one was punished. The claim made it into the Democrats’ impeachment trial memorandum, a document that will remain in the official record even though it is patently false.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi referred to January 6 as an “armed insurrection” the following day even though no “arms” were found inside the Capitol. The Director of National Intelligence, flagrantly violating her authority, referred to January 6 protesters as “domestic violent extremists” in a separate government document without offering a shred of evidence. The attorney general of the United States compared the Capitol protest to the Oklahoma City bombing where 168 people, including babies, were killed—even though the only person killed on January 6 was an unarmed protester, Ashli Babbitt.
As many people have said to me in response to my work over the past few months, this isn’t America.
Joe Biden’s ahistorical and shameless descriptions of January 6 not only desecrate those lives lost in real attacks against this country—they serve to justify the ongoing attack on our democracy perpetrated by Biden himself.
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Julie Kelly is a political commentator and senior contributor to American Greatness. She is the author of Disloyal Opposition: How the NeverTrump Right Tried―And Failed―To Take Down the President. Her past work can be found at The Federalist and National Review. She also has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, The Hill, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, and Genetic Literacy Project. After college graduation, she served as a policy and communications consultant for several Republican candidates and elected officials in suburban Chicago. She also volunteered for her local GOP organization. After staying home for more than 10 years to raise her two daughters, Julie began teaching cooking classes out of her home. She then started writing about food policy, agriculture, and biotechnology, as well as climate change and other scientific issues. She graduated from Eastern Illinois University in 1990 with a degree in communications and minor degrees in political science and journalism. Julie lives in suburban Chicago with her husband, two daughters, and (unfortunately) three dogs.
