By John Ruberry
Wednesday was a dark day in American history. Most of the blame for the riot at the US Capitol deservedly goes to the hooligans, about 1,500 of them, who broke through blockades and defied law enforcement and entered the Capitol building–the first such mass hostile group to do so since British forces marched in during the War of 1812 before setting it ablaze.
Many of the thugs who illegally entered the Capitol have been arrested and they deserve, if found guilty, to face the full brunt of the law.
This was not, as the media deemed last year’s many instances of “unrest” in American cities, “a mostly peaceful protest.”
President Donald J. Trump is by no means blameless. He should have conceded his loss to Joe Biden weeks ago. I support Trump’s fight for free and fair elections. But even in states where the vote count was the most questionable, Pennsylvania and Georgia, had their electoral votes magically gone to the president, Trump still would have lost. And while I disagree with the mainstream media blowhards and Democratic politicians who said Trump incited the crowd to riot, he gave some of the protesters hope. Normally hope is a good thing to spread but he gave some people the belief that their protest might have compelled Congress to ignore the Electoral College and keep Trump in the White House. That was never going to happen.
On Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show Thursday night he asked that we look at why the protesters–not just the rioters–attended the rally. They were angry.
Why?
In November a Rasmussen poll found that 75 percent of Republican voters believed the presidential election was stolen. Even many Democrats agreed. As for myself I don’t believe the election was stolen. My view is that the weak standards with mail-in voting, put in place on a widespread basis for the first time in many states because of the COVID-19 epidemic, has something to do with that. Mail-in voting, without safeguards, makes such crimes as voting twice or more, dead people voting, and voting in a jurisdiction when you live someplace else more likely.
While elections need to continue to be run at the state level Congress should, if such a thing is possible, have an open mind in regards to exploring new nationwide election standards, such as what was done after the Florida recount debacle of 2000. Banning ballot harvesting is a good place to start, as well as replacing early voting, that is “election season,” with–and this is an idea that comes from the liberals–making the day of a general election a work holiday. And photo ID should be required for voting too.
If millions of Americans don’t have faith in the election process then democracy rests on a flimsy leaf.
Now let’s look at the mainstream media and Big Tech. I’ll be brief only for the sake of not overwhelming you. I could bring up dozens of examples of media bias but I won’t for now.
For over four years most of the media flogged a dead horse of a story in Russian collusion. There was no Trump-Russia collusion. Zero. Robert Mueller’s exhaustive investigation found none. That didn’t stop the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, and MSNBC from hawking it, not so subtly, as the way to oust Trump from power for nearly four years nearly every day.
Meanwhile the Hunter Biden laptop story was minimized by that same mainstream media during the 2020 campaign. The younger Biden’s alleged influence peddling activities are not a nothing-burger. And Facebook and Twitter for a while blocked the posting the New York Post story about the deeply troubling news that the former vice president’s son might be compromised by foreign governments, including our greatest rival, China. Twitter, in a preview of 2021’s ongoing purge of conservatives that includes Trump, from the microblogging platform, locked the Post out of its account for nearly two weeks. Free press anyone? The suppression worked. Many people I spoke with, folks who only get their news from Facebook, never heard about the Hunter laptop scandal until I told them about it.
Mission accomplished.
After the election Hunter Biden revealed that he has been under federal investigation for two years. He says its for tax reasons but Hunter does not come across to me as a man who can be trusted.
Not a nothing-burger.
Trump’s core base of supporters are voracious consumers of news–and yes, to be fair of course some of their news stories come from Facebook and Twitter, unless of course they’ve been purged from those sites. And the double-standard of most of the media on those two stories seethes the Trump base.
After the riot the media continued its dismissive attitude of Trump supporters.
Anderson Cooper of CNN, a scion of the Vanderbilt family that got filthy rich during the Gilded Age, said of the protesters after the riot. “And they’re going to go back to the Olive Garden and to the Holiday Inn they’re staying at, or the Garden Marriott, and they’re going to have some drinks and talk about the great day they had in Washington … They stood up for nothing other than mayhem.”
Clearly Cooper dines at what he deems are better restaurants than the Olive Garden. And he can afford to stay at the finest hotels, places that are beyond my financial reach. And yes, I’ve stayed at those hotels Cooper denigrated. I’ve eaten at the Olive Garden a few times.
Another cruel irony of the mainstream media coverage of the Capitol riot is that they deemed it one, while they went to great pains to call the many urban riots of 2020–which occurred almost exclusively in Democrat-run cities–anything but that. While storming the Capitol is clearly a much different dimension than looting and arson, and yes, a very disturbing one, the hypocrisy of the media is apparent to a 10-year-old.
More than ever we need new media. If you agree with my post, especially if you dine at the Olive Garden, stop seething. Start your own blog. WordPress and Blogger.com are good places to start. Even if you have just ten readers a day–my own blog has many more than that in case you are wondering–you will be making a difference. Besides, much of the mainstream media, particularly daily newspapers, are endangered species. Warren Buffett, no conservative, expects only a few of them to survive and he made that prediction before the COVID-19 outbreak that has devastated their ad revenue. Those papers, for the most part, take their lead in reporting news from the aforementioned Washington Post and the New York Times. It’s where they learn not to use words like “riot” unless it involves conservatives. They invent terms like “mostly peaceful” or sugarcoat the carnage by saying it is “unrest.” Those last two newspapers aren’t going anyhere but we can fight back with reality. An army of mosquitoes can make a difference.
There’s a void coming. Fill it. Bite back.
John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.
Update (DTG) I put something like this in as a comment but figured it belonged as a post update as this has gotten instalanched. (Thanks Ed)
John is one one my original magnificent seven bloggers/ He produces quality work and I’m proud to have him here.
I believe he is completely wrong about the election not being stolen, both math, the actions of the left and common sense in my opinion scream it to be the case, but he has the right to his opinion and I respect that he comes by it honestly and have no problem with him expressing it here.
If anyone has problem with him expressing that opinion on my site and want him off for having & expressing it, well that’s too bad.
This isn’t twitter and my name’s not Jack
Da Techguy's (no longer backup) Blog 
The causes go further back and deeper than this. Decades of legal discrimination against white males, disenfranchisement, being labeled male chauvinist pigs, angry white men, bitter clingers, deplorables, teabaggers, white supremacists, deterioration of our rights, for beginners. The events you mention are the straw that brock the camel’s back.
I’m sorry, if you don’t believe there was sufficient fraud in this election to change the outcome, that is purely a function of your own selective and willful ignorance.
Read Peter Navarro’s report(s). Go watch the HOURS AND HOURS of testimony by Rudy Giuliani and team in Michigan, Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania (possibly also in WI and NV). Check out the sworn affidavits and other information compiled by Sidney Powell and her team at defendingtherepublic.org .
You rightly call out media hyping of the false Trump-Russia collusion narrative and their suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop and related stories, but the outright suppression of even a hint of a DISCUSSION of fraud in the election somehow gets a pass? Are you also operating on the new Fox News / Tucker Carlson “see no fraud, hear no fraud, speak no fraud” at all costs, plan? Big Tech is annotating anything related to fraud as fake news, then suspending people, then banning them permanently, then deplatforming them on other platforms, then deplatforming those PLATFORMS doesn’t strike you as just a little more than a tad suspicious?
That even discussing the fraud, let alone investigating and debunking it with genuine bipartisan audits and hard-nosed journalism is utterly and wholly verboten is even more telling in some respects than the mountains of evidence. If I have won fairly, the last thing I want is to prevent people from questioning the result outright, thereby assuring that the issue stays alive in the minds of the disgruntled losers. No, if I won fairly, I want to shine every light available on the results and the process with full transparency so that even the most reluctant skeptic has no recourse but to accept that I did in fact win.
That has not happened AT ALL, anywhere in the aftermath of the November (or January) election. And more than ANYTHING else, THAT is why people are now metaphorically up in arms. At the rate we are going, given the continuous and escalating demonization, gaslighting, suppression, and deplatforming, of Trump supporters, it will not be long before people are literally up in arms.
“As for myself I don’t believe the election was stolen.”
Are you confident that it was NOT stolen? And if so, whatever in the world would be the basis of that confidence?
Second, and this is a more important question: Has your belief that the election was NOT stolen been altered in any way by the mostly peaceful protest at the Capitol?
Third, and this is the most important question: If you were absolutely certain that the election was stolen, would you still characterize the sometimes violent protesters as wrong?
John is one one my original magnificent seven blogger and I’m proud to have him here.
I however believe he is completely wrong about the election not being stolen but he has the right to his opinion and let me make it clear that if anyone has a problem with him expressing that opinion on my site and want him off for having that opinion, well that’s too bad.
This isn’t twitter and my name’s not Jack
Wholly agree with EXOPUNDIT.
I hold a Ph.D. in Political Science, and I can tell you that there is absolutely NO WAY the middle-of-the-night vote dumps that occurred in multiple states were legitimate. Beyond the fact that there are no other similarly sized occurrences (of vote count submissions) in any American election for which I found data, the statistical probabilities of any one of those vote dumps occurring honestly is impossible. Some of the individual dumps were 7 or 8 sigma above the mean vote count ratio in their respective states. One legitimate outcome like that would be an enormous rarity, but multiple outcomes across different states IS NOT POSSIBLE.
And if you think the President’s comments or behavior were problematic, you need to acquaint yourself with the details of incitement law. Given the overall tenor of political rhetoric over the last 30 years, Trump’s speech on January 6th was positively restrained. (Contrast his words with those of Obama, Biden, Harris, or basically any other democrat in regards to the race-riots they have been fomenting since 2012.)
Thanks! When I wrote it wasn’t stolen I meant that I just don’t see where all the phony ballots add up to reversing the result. Calling it rigged, as Trump has, is something I am leaning towards, but there is no legal recource I know of–I am not an attorney–to go after Twitter and Facebook–for supressing the Hunter Biden story, as well as shadow banning. Repealing Section 230 is a great idea of course. While no one can ever be completely fair and unbisased, the seemingly mild favrotism of, let’s say Dan Rather on CBS News referring to party affiliation when a Republican is embroiled in a scandal but not a Democrat, is a quant artifact of a much simpler time, unlike the Orwellian tactics used by the media of 2020. Thank you for not banning me, ala Jack Dorsey.
The very thought that I would even consider banning you for your opinions is laughable
Black Panthers in 1967.
Vietnam War protestors in 1971.
Keystone Pipeline protestors in 2014.
Democracy Springs activists in 2016.
Trump inauguration protestors in 2017.
Obamacare supporters in 2017.
Immigration policy protestors in 2018.
Brett Kavanaugh protestors in 2018.
LGBTQ activists in 2019.
Climate change protestors in 2020.
Black Lives Matter activists in 2020.
Biden election protestors in 2021.
All of these groups have held protests in Washington D.C., along with many other groups. Several of these groups have occupied the U.S. Capitol Building, including armed Black Panthers in 1967. The media and members of Congress have largely ignored these protests, especially in the last few years. Nancy Pelosi and several other Democrats even praised the protestors for their actions calling them patriots furthering the cause of Democracy. Democrats went on to praise and encourage nationwide looting, rioting, burning and beating innocent people, calling them “peaceful protestors.” All of a sudden, when the Biden election protestors (Pro-Trumpers according to the media) occupied the Capitol Building, as many have done before them, the media goes into a frenzy, calling these people “rioters and domestic terrorists”. None of the other protest groups were called domestic terrorists, nor did they receive 24/7 national coverage for weeks after the protest occurred. There was also never a call for a President to be impeached over a protest. This highlights the double standard of the Democrats and the liberal controlled media. The only true statement the media made was, “This is a sad day in America.” It is a sad day in America when a sitting President is impeached over something he had nothing to do with and when he is stripped of his God given First Amendment right to free speech. Our founding fathers would be absolutely shocked and completely ashamed of what progressives have done to our once great nation.