Mimsy Were the Borogoves

Editorials: Where I rant to the wall about politics. And sometimes the wall rants back.

The January 6 witch-hunt

Jerry Stratton, September 8, 2021

An indicium of witchcraft: “It is an indicium of witchcraft to defend witches…” Background image from Joseph E. Baker, The Witch, No. 2, circa 1892.; witch trials; memes

It’s pretty obvious that Democrats and the Left are trying to create a witch hunt around the January 6 rally in DC. It wasn’t an insurrection. Even the “evidence” introduced by Democrats make it the least violent, cleanest riot ever.

This is mostly a link round-up about the prisoners. I don’t really have a lot to say about the “cleanest riot ever”. I don’t even have a lot to say about the political prisoners in DC other than help them if you can. But if there’s a witch-hunt starting, I intend to identify as a witch. Before the witch-hunter’s indicium comes into play.1

As I wrote earlier, I was in DC on January 6, and I was on the Capitol grounds milling around with everyone else who was milling around, talking about the weather in DC compared to wherever we came from, wondering if there would ever be a basic audit into alleged election fraud, and eventually, wandering away to eat Atlantic oysters.

I’m not saying that inside the Capitol was as boring as outside of it. I can only know what I saw, and it was pretty boring outside. What I see reported on the rally in areas I was at is almost universally wrong. It was wrong both at the Capitol and around DC in general. I walked safely around DC eight miles Tuesday evening and eleven miles all day Wednesday—from the Washington Monument to Pleasant Plains, Capitol Hill to Georgetown—and saw nothing requiring police presence, which was fortunate because I saw no police presence. I think I saw one police officer the whole day on Wednesday, and very few on Tuesday as we walked up Pennsylvania Avenue from the Mall after the speeches.

Cleanest riot ever: Democrat Andy Kim stages a very clumsy photo-op at the Capitol.; Democrat-media complex; Trump rally

They didn’t even bother to toss debris around before staging this photo. But even if you assume it’s not staged, look at the “debris” from the “ransacking insurrectionists”. Every rioter carefully replaced the cap before discarding their bottle. One way or another, this is the cleanest riot ever.

From all accounts, even the doctored video from the prosecutors, most of the people in jail are in jail for walking through open doors in a public building. It was about as far from an insurrection as you can get with three or more people gathered.

It’s so difficult for the news media to find egregious actions that the photos in the news almost never match the captions. They had to create a fictitious beating with a fire extinguisher—and exploit an officer’s family’s grief over a natural death—to create a fictional narrative about deadly violence on the part of the ralliers. Whether it’s a politician “cleaning up” what must be the shiniest post-riot floor ever, to the “rioters” politely keeping to the right as they walk up stairs, it’s difficult not to see the reporting on our rally in the Capitol as deliberate lies.

View video.

Walking carefully up the right side of the stairs is neither an insurrection nor a riot.

The reporting and the rhetoric and the prison time, this is all nothing more than revenge for questioning a questionable election. That’s all it is; they know it, and they know we know it. The more I see election officials and Democrats fight against the sort of simple audits that should be performed every election, the more convinced I am that this election was stolen.

On the most basic level, however, the transformation of January 6 ralliers into witches is a very dangerous path in a free country. As Ace at the Ace of Spades HQ wrote,

When people who spent four years role-playing as “the Resistance” against a “stolen election” suddenly start telling us dissent and resistance are treason that will be punished without mercy, we know exactly what’s going on. It’s a grim story repeated throughout human history.

It’s little consolation that witch trials rarely end where the witch-hunters want them to.

I know very little about the Patriot Freedom Project but they seem to be doing good work helping the families of those who are, by all appearances, political prisoners. If you can, consider making a donation.

In response to Your devil has no clothes: The others of the extreme left and right have different qualities. The others of the left—Sarah Palin, the Koch brothers, Brendan Eich, for example—voice opinions, but are otherwise fairly unobtrusive politically. They are people who would not have been an issue if they weren’t personally made an issue by the vanguard of the left.

January 10, 2024: Trump and the January 6 defendants
Admiral Ackbar: It’s a trap!: Admiral Ackbar, “It’s a trap!” for January 6 and Trump.; Star Wars; January 6

I recently read Cynthia Hughes’s Due Process Denied. She’s not a professional writer, and in a book like this that’s a benefit. Her story about how she became involved with the January 6 prisoners runs the gamut from emotional to rambling to prayerful to humorous.

This is the kind of book that we need more of: inexperienced writers telling a story they’re compelled to tell because they have a unique perspective on an important event. Hughes experienced January 6 through her nephew-from-another-family who, like many, was allowed into the Capitol by the Capitol Police and was then arrested for it.

Unlike Julie Kelly, who does great work as a professional journalist, Hughes really is just an American who happened to see evil happen to someone she loves and decided to do something about it. Her Patriot Freedom Project grew from a weekly support chat for families of those held without bail to a fund for helping them survive the loss of breadwinners and jobs, as well as a referral service for helping them find lawyers and therapists. Many people lost both friends and family after the arrests.

She is obviously someone who doesn’t understand what’s going on in her country yet who wants to make a difference anyway. And by most accounts, she is making a difference.

Sometimes, among the concerted efforts to make it seem like President Trump should abandon his supporters, it seems like there’s a concerted campaign on the conservative forums I follow to fool people into thinking Trump has abandoned his supporters. I see a small number of unfamiliar posters claiming that he’s abandoned the January 6 prisoners, for example, despite him introducing and praising people like Cynthia Hughes at his giant rallies for all the world to see, despite him calling out the prosecutions as the witch hunts they are.

“We all saw this a mile away,” they write, so why didn’t Trump? Why didn’t he pardon all of his supporters who attended his rally?

But the fact is, we didn’t see this a mile away. We certainly didn’t see it less than two weeks away, which is what would have been necessary for a blanket pardon between January 6 and January 20. And it would have had to have been a big blanket. It’s not like there were signups for people attending his rally.

Presidents have pardoned named individuals for unspecified crimes (President Ford, pardoning Richard Nixon). Presidents have pardoned specific groups for specified crimes (President Carter, pardoning people who avoided the draft by moving to Canada).

Read the full post and comments

January 4, 2023: January 6 nightmare worthy of Kafka

View video.

Trump thanks the Patriot Freedom Project.

Two years ago tomorrow I was winging my way toward Washington, DC for sightseeing and to attend President Trump’s rally on the National Mall.

Two years later there are still people in jail in the Capitol. They’re not in jail because they’ve been convicted of a crime. Many haven’t even gone to trial yet, let alone been convicted. Two years is not a speedy trial and there’s still no end in sight.

They’re legally innocent because they haven’t been found guilty, and for most of them, they really are innocent. The “crime” they’re suspected of is… walking into a public building with permission, gawking like tourists, and going home.

There but for the grace of God.

The only killings were committed by Capitol Police—Ashley Babbitt and, possibly, Rosanne Boyland. Because the news media is so biased in this matter, it is very difficult to separate fact from fiction.

As I wrote earlier, I initially believed the reports from the press, that an officer was murdered with a fire extinguisher. But the foundation changed over the several months that followed. First, the news reports changed to, well, he was injured but we can’t say how or with what.

Then, he was uninjured, but maybe pepper spray killed him.

Okay, pepper spray didn’t kill him either, perhaps it was stress.

The evidence, even if true, has dropped well below the threshold required for the initial conclusion, that the officer died because of the January 6 protests. But it was not true. The officer died of blood clots that would have killed him no matter where he was or what he took part in.

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February 2, 2022: Free the January 6 prisoners
We are all domestic terrorists: Julie Kelly: We are all domestic terrorists now.; Biden administration; January 6; Julie Kelly

This is not a long post but it is an important one. I don’t know anyone in DC. I expect that’s true of most of us at the Capitol of January 6. It must be horrendous for families to have their loved ones in limbo so far away, and it must be horrendous to be imprisoned so far away from your loved ones in such a limbo.

I had the opportunity to hear Brooke Rollins speak two weeks ago. Rollins was director of the United States Domestic Policy Council for President Trump. During the Q&A I asked, "what can we do for the January 6 prisoners?"

She seemed genuinely angry at their treatment, and that they're still held without trial, but the only advice she could offer was, write your representatives.

So I sent this letter to my Senators, my governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, and state representatives.

It is unconscionable that we are still holding so many January 6 prisoners without trial or bail.

I do not know the truth of the accusations against them. I cannot trust the media; I know that the media lied about conditions outside of the Capitol: I was there.

Naively, I initially believed media reports about what was happening inside. Then slowly it came out that everything they'd reported about assaults and deaths was not just wrong but a lie.

I cannot trust the Capitol Police. At best they allowed these lies to circulate for months, slandering all of us, before acknowledging they were lies.

At worst, they were complicit in spreading those lies.

But I do know that it is wrong that more than a year later they are still awaiting trial with no bail. The reporting by Julie Kelly and others on conditions within the prison and the long continued incarceration without trial or bail is heartbreaking.

Please do everything you can to bring them home. Please do everything you can to help them and their families.

This isn’t much of a letter, but that’s partly because this should go without saying. I cannot understand why everyone in DC is silent about the uniquely bad treatment meted out to these prisoners.

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  1. Anyone who pronounces against the death sentence is reasonably suspected of complicity; no one is to urge the judges to desist from the prosecution; nay it is an indicium of witchcraft to defend witches, or to affirm that witch stories which are told as certain are mere deceptions or illusions. — Martin Antoine Del Rio (The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology)

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  1. <- Conservative mom
  2. Hating Israel ->