Posted on 01/12/2021 7:18:50 PM PST by Ennis85
IN HIS highly entertaining 2018 travelogue, Another Fine Mess, English journalist Tim Moore drove an old Ford Model T through the American regions which had voted most heavily in favour of Donald Trump. A self-confessed “typical liberal”, Moore was curious about the kind of people who would vote for a man that Moore and his peers viewed with a mixture of contempt and derision. As it happened, the author was surprised to discover that the vast majority of those Trump supporters he encountered were kind, good natured and eager to offer a helping hand. He freely admitted that they flew in the face of his preconceived notions that anyone who had voted for him was a typical American cliché – racist, boorish and violent.
Well, last Wednesday the cliché came to life and stormed the heart of American democracy in the most shocking and disturbing scenes any of us have witnessed since, perhaps, 9/11. What we saw in those scenes of the invasion of the Capitol was the dark underbelly of the wilder fringes of the internet suddenly doing in real life what they had always threatened in the virtual realm – a direct assault on the very institutions which make America the greatest country in the world.
That was bad.
What makes it even worse was the fact that it was all orchestrated by the American president – probably the only time a sitting president has incited an attempted coup against the democracy he was supposed to protect.
It was shameful. It was heart-breaking. It was soul-destroying. After four years of Trump and, more pertinently, his followers, being dismissed and denounced as a bunch of violent, racist, white-supremacist rednecks by the so-called ‘elites’, last week saw them live down to that description. In fact, not only did they live down to the lowest expectations of their political opponents, they went several steps further and proved they and their leader are a genuine threat to a democracy they seem to despise.
The ramifications of the mass assault on the Capitol are still being felt and many American commentators are still struggling to get their heads around what they watched. They’re not the only ones.
I’ve spent much of the past four years trying to defend, explain or simply clarify the reasons why so many people voted for him. I resented the lazy slurs against the kind of Americans who were simply fed up with being either ignored or insulted by the power-brokers in Washington, the print media on the east coast and the Big Tech firms on the west coast.
But nobody of good conscience, or even in their right mind, can possibly try to explain, justify or defend what we saw last week.
I was ‘lucky’ enough to be stuck in Harare during a period of anti-government instability in the 1990s and I remember the blood being hosed off the streets following a riot. For several hours last Wednesday, America reminded me of Zimbabwe at its most chaotic.
This should not be happening in the largest democracy in the world. Frankly, most of the scenes looked like a cheap anti-Trump dystopian movie directed by Michael Moore. But this was no movie. This was no attempt to portray Trump and his followers as a bunch of a domestic terrorists. This was the reality of what many of his supporters look like.
This was the reality of what happens when the mask slips from a man who seems to have become genuinely insane at the thought of losing the election. This is the reality of what happens when the bonds of liberal democracy, which insist that even opposing sides respect the other point of view, begin to fray. Frankly, I worry that they may have now frayed beyond repair.
I used to laugh at those Irish media chin-strokers who loftily declared that Trump was a wannabe Mussolini. I’m not laughing now because the joke was on me. I could probably conjure some defence for my initial support. I could talk about the dangers posed by Antifa and Black Lives Matter, who spent much of last summer taking violent control of cities like Portland and Seattle. But why bother? Now is not the time for whatabouttery. Trump showed his true colours and many of his followers liked what they saw. They revelled in the idea of storming the Capitol. That, in many ways, is one of the most perplexing elements of this sad and sorry affair. After all, Antifa are explicitly anarchist and are open in their hatred for America. Similarly, the more extreme elements of Black Lives Matter are happy to chant ‘death to the USA’ when the mood takes them.
But these thugs weren’t Antifa or BLM. These were the very people who loudly professed their devotion to law and order
– before they killed a cop with a fire extinguisher. Yet this was a mob which raises many issues. The most obvious is the difference between how they were treated and how any other group of radicals would have been received.
If it had been Antifa or BLM, there’s a good chance we would have witnessed a slaughter live on TV.
This would-be tin-pot dictator needs to be removed from political life forever. But even if that does happen, the problem remains – you can remove Trump from the pitch, but what is known as ‘Trumpism’ will still exist. Not the Trumpism that Tim Moore encountered on his quixotic journey through the American heartland, but a darker, more dangerous strain that seems to quite relish the idea of a second civil war.
Following the disgusting scenes of Wednesday, I appeared on Fox News to give a European perspective. This prompted numerous angry emails from American viewers. One of them even compared the rioters to the men and women of the 1916 Easter Rising and hailed them as “patriots”.
If that’s the new definition of American patriotism, then they’re in even more trouble than we may have thought.
Dark days lie ahead.
For several hours last Wednesday, America reminded me of Zimbabwe at its most chaotic
Engage in hyperbole much?
"What makes it even worse was the fact that it was all orchestrated by the American president – probably the only time a sitting president has incited an attempted coup against the democracy he was supposed to protect."
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/01/left-slanderously-accuses-trump-inciting-capitol-joseph-klein/
"If it had been Antifa or BLM, there’s a good chance we would have witnessed a slaughter live on TV."
Amazing the people who still hadn't heard of Ashli Babbitt.
Good grief, the Irish have become idiots.
“We really got Trump this time! It’s all over for him now!” #473894702
Funny he didn't do the same thing for those who voted heavily for Biden. Oh. Right. Because there are no such places.
Actually, come to think of it, it's too bad he didn't drive through such regions like Oakland, CA, Detroit, MI, Portland, OR, or Compton, CA. Hilarity would surely have ensued.
Ireland...once a proud and decent country...now just another tawdry little European cesspool.
Yep. Shamefully so.
We are not a ‘democracy’, and the US was never conceived as one.
(I get so tired of the word ‘democracy’ being spouted all over by ignorant people...)
“Good grief, the Irish have become idiots.”
Some pretty women, though.
Yes but any Irishmen with testosterone moved to the US long ago.
Quotes from "The Russian Revolution" by Alan Moorehead 1958 which are becoming reality here more and more every day.
"… this was a predatory state which the Czar and a small group of noblemen and bureaucrats ruled for their own exclusive benefit...The ruling group owned all the wealth, enjoyed all the privileges and monopolized all the political power, and it did not intend to give up any of its prerogatives. It considered the peasants to be little better than animals..."
Sometimes people don’t leave where they were born and raised because they love it, all their roots are there, and they want to stay and try to make it better.
Ireland has been shilling for the mullahs for years.
They don’t know what they are talking about.
Don’t believe ANYTHING you read in ANY press including the Irish.
Liars and biased leftists.
Very good drama queen material by the mick. He needs to look at his once splendid country which is now a sh*thole and pontificate that.
I have a not of Irish in me. I would love to visit Ireland, but not if the modern Irish men are there.
Ashly Babbitt,
RIP
The Irish were allied with Hitler...
hey O’Doherty... póg mo thóin
#2. Re “Good grief, the Irish have become idiots”
What do you mean by “have become”?
If the slaughter of the IRA/IRA Provisional and related Trotskyite Marxists wasn’t enough to show that “Ireland has a problem”, then nothing will.
The writer of this article is a blind fool and “Never Mind The Burning American Cities Attacked by ANTIFA/BLM”, as he proves in it, but is also indicative of the stupidity of the Left in Europe to the fact that Trump may have been their “Last Great Hope” at maintaining their freedom in the face of a resurgent Soviet Russia and Red China/Iran.
I love American Irish people. They are more loyal to America than native Irishmen/women are to their own country and its freedom.
Europe: Welcome to the New Dark Ages and this time you may not ever emerge from it.
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