by J. Peder Zane
Real Clear Politics
The Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was the crisis Democrats were waiting for, and they are not going to waste it. Those few hours of lawless mayhem became unimpeachable proof that the muddy smears they’d thrown against Donald Trump supporters were all true.
Through the funhouse mirror of hyper-partisanship, that angry mob of thousands became all 74 million Americans who voted for Trump in November. The crowd’s explicit anger over the 2020 election was cast as an implicit push for white supremacy.
Never mind that almost all prominent Republicans and conservatives recoiled from the violence and immediately condemned it, or that one of the main organizers of the rally was a black Arab American. There’s enough scattershot evidence for Democrats and their allies to add “demonstrated violence” to their list of conservative crimes and justify a radical program of repression. While Joe Biden issues calls for unity, many of his allies are waging a scorched earth campaign to silence all who oppose them.