By DEACON MIKE MANNO
Joe Biden chose “America United” as the theme for his inauguration. Unfortunately, in his first test of leadership as president-elect, Mr. Biden has failed miserably to live up to that theme. Instead he allowed his party to gin up more hate, more disunion, and more distrust in the new administration.
He and his party have done the unthinkable: impeached President Trump during the last week of his term. And they have done so by using the most degrading vitriol imaginable. And it didn’t come from the riot at the Capitol; it had been well practiced weeks beforehand.
It was sedition, they claimed, an uprising against the United States, a coup, an insurrection; Trump and his fellow anarchists are traitors who should be punished — or so said the party line. Where did that come from? The idea was planted well before January 6.
In the days and weeks leading up to the congressional meeting to count the Electoral College votes, several members of Congress announced that they were going to try to challenge the electors from several states where they had concerns about the integrity of their elections. And while the media, liberal commentators, and intelligentsia were uniform in pooh-poohing that argument, there were plenty of folks who were legitimately concerned about the conduct of the election.
They had a right to be concerned. State election laws were being changed by individual election officials contrary to provisions of state law; many places were sending out live ballots wholesale without regard to any safety controls; ballot counting was suspended and when all the poll watchers left for the night magically new ballots were found, counted, and appeared to be all for one candidate; signature verifications of ballots were ignored, and numerous other problems infected the returns.
And to top it off, courts, when not dismissing challenges over technical issues, simply refused to fully hear the evidence. Case in point was the Supreme Court who refused to hear the challenges to the non-legislative changes in Pennsylvania’s election law both before and after the election.
In short, whether or not you believe that there were serious irregularities in the election, there were enough legitimate issues that were not resolved. Thus, numerous senators and congressmen announced that they would challenge the results of several states and ask for an audit of their returns. What they were asking for was fully within the law; in fact, there was a specific congressional rule that set out the procedure to do so; a procedure that several Democrats had used during the 2016 Electoral College count.
However, for the leftists among us that was a bridge too far. Beginning well before the day of the count, leftist ideologues were on social media claiming that those who raised questions about the election were engaged in sedition and should be punished. Some suggested jail, others that the offenders should be kicked off social media. One enterprising gent suggested that they should be put on the no-fly list.
When I saw that stuff starting to percolate on social media, I asked one of my “friends” how raising the question was sedition. The response was overwhelming. It was an attempted coup, it was treason against the United States. The same verbiage we would hear during and after the Capitol riot: sedition, treason, coup, insurrection.
Interestingly, one thing changed before the sedition argument went mainstream. There was an election in Georgia the day before the count and in it the Democrats took control of the Senate which gave them control of both houses of Congress and the presidency.
Then came the Trump rally on January 6, timed to coincide with the vote count which, in retrospect, might have been bad timing since one side was becoming very agitated about the whole matter. Mr. Trump asked for a peaceful march to the Capitol, and then suggested that Vice President Pence had the authority to somehow correct the vote. He didn’t, but many in the crowd thought he did. That was the president’s mistake. The mistake for which he was later accused of lying.
What happened next is anyone’s guess. Apparently some demonstrators were allowed to enter the Capitol; in some places the barriers preventing their entry were removed. In the building some videos show the demonstrators holding banners walking in line as if following a tour. However, others were not as genteel. They climbed the building’s parapets and broke windows to get in, then caused as much confusion and damage as possible.
Whether or how many anarchists were mixed in with the Trump supporters egging them on or not might never be fully known. But clearly, on the surface, it was a political rally that got way out of control and fed on the frustration of the Trump supporters who reacted accordingly.
Of course a riot at the Capitol was like any other crisis — it was to be used to somebody’s advantage. Now the political storm followed, with most of social media closing off Mr. Trump’s ability to speak to his followers. Platforms were closed to any individual or group who challenged the sedition narrative. In Congress there were serious calls to demand the resignations of any member who sought to challenge the vote, and if no resignation was forthcoming, they should be expelled.
And the doozy: the impeachment of a president who had only a week remaining in his term. Passions are high. Conservatives whose voices are being banned remember all too well the last four years where Mr. Trump was vilified as racist, a Russian troll, and any other name the left used to tag him. Johnny Depp asked, “When was the last time an actor assassinated a president,” to audience applause. Kathy Griffin posted a photo with an image of her holding the severed head of the president. A New York theater group staged Julius Caesar using a Trump look-alike as the title character who was murdered. And so it went.
Last summer, as violence broke out in many cities, the looters who burned down entire city blocks were defended by the left as peaceful protesters. Police were racist, there was systemic racism in the nation, police must be defunded, or so they said. Yet no leading Democrat condemned that rioting until some of the poll numbers started to surface. And then many party elders, including then Sen. Kamala Harris, urged followers to contribute to bail funds to spring those jailed in the wake of the riots.
And all this time, the left and the media considered Mr. Trump and his followers as one and the same. They hated him, so they hated us. We now need to go to reeducation camps to purge our antiquated ides and beliefs. Naturally, anyone who had anything to do with Trump must be canceled; even Forbes magazine says it will investigate any company that hires anyone who worked for the Trump administration.
Frustration? You bet. And what is the response from Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and the rest? They poured gasoline on a dumpster fire. I wonder if this is Mr. Biden’s version of America united. It’s not mine.
(You can reach Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com and listen to him every Thursday at 10 a.m. CT on Faith On Trial on IowaCatholicRadio.com.)
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