Posted on 09/27/2022 5:15:56 AM PDT by george76
More than ten months after the Jan. 6 breach (oops, “insurrection”) of the U.S. Capitol, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Trump Derangement Syndrome-driven January 6 Committee continues its “investigation” (show trial) in a never-ending attempt to do as much damage to Donald Trump and Trump supporters as her delusional self can do before finally riding off into the San Francisco sunset — God knows when.
Or is damaging Trump really Pelosi’s main goal?
Investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald thinks not.
In a Substack column dropped on Sunday, Greenwald argues that the real objective of the radically changed Democrat Party is to exploit the so-called “insurrection” as an excuse to further “trample” on the civil rights of America and its citizens. The Jan. 6 committee, wrote Greenwald, “may be the worst abuse yet.” In the opening paragraph, Greenwald sets the stage —as eloquently and forthright as we’ve come to expect from one of the best investigative journalists on the planet. (Emphasis, mine.)
When a population is placed in a state of sufficiently grave fear and anger regarding a perceived threat, concerns about the constitutionality, legality, and morality of measures adopted in the name of punishing the enemy typically disappear.
The first priority, indeed the sole priority, is to crush the threat. Questions about the legality of actions ostensibly undertaken against the guilty parties are brushed aside as trivial annoyances at best, or, worse, castigated as efforts to sympathize with and protect those responsible for the danger.
When a population is subsumed with pulsating fear and rage, there is little patience for seemingly abstract quibbles about legality or ethics. The craving for punishment, for vengeance, for protection, is visceral and thus easily drowns out cerebral or rational impediments to satiating those primal impulses.
Enter: Nancy Pelosi and her show trial.
The events of Jan. 6 could not have delivered a more perfect opportunity to Pelosi and her party. Here were Trump supporters, waving Trump flags, wearing Trump gear, “angrily” marching on the Capitol of the United States. The photos and videos could not have been better for exploitation — and nobody in D.C. hates Donald Trump more than Nancy Pelosi. Perfect foil. Perfect storm. Let the trampling begin.
“The aftermath of the 9/11 attack provided a vivid illustration,” wrote Greenwald. The perfect comparison.
Everything should be done to crush the terrorists who — directly or indirectly were responsible for [the] traumatic attack.
The few dissenters who attempted to raise doubts about the legality or morality of proposed responses were easily dismissed and marginalized, when not ignored entirely.
Typically, they were vilified with the accusation that their constitutional and legal objections were frauds: mere pretexts to conceal their sympathy and even support for the terrorists.
It took at least a year or two after that attack for there to be any space for questions about the legality, constitutionality, and morality of the U.S. response to 9/11 to be entertained at all.
Greenwald then pointed to the obvious, which we began to see and hear on CNN and MSNBC — and from Democrat lawmakers — even as the Jan. 6 “riot” was in progress, and we have heard, ever since:
For many liberals and Democrats in the U.S., 1/6 is the equivalent of 9/11. One need not speculate about that. Many have said this explicitly. Some prominent Democrats in politics and media have even insisted that 1/6 was worse than 9/11.
And the hapless new president-to-be?
Biden’s speechwriters, when preparing his script for his April address to the Joint Session of Congress, noted Greenwald, laughingly called the three-hour riot “the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.” Democrat hyperbole. Don’t you love it? The histrionics and all?
And let’s not forget Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney [rolling-eyes emoji] — nor did Greenwald:
Liberal icon Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), whose father’s legacy was cemented by years of casting 9/11 as the most barbaric attack ever seen, now serves as Vice Chair of the 1/6 Committee; in that role, she proclaimed that the forces behind 1/6 represent “a threat America has never seen before.”
The enabling resolution that created the Select Committee calls 1/6 “one of the darkest days of our democracy.” USA Today’s editor David Mastio published an op-ed whose sole point was a defense of the hysterical thesis from MSNBC analysts that 1/6 is at least as bad as 9/11 if not worse.
S.V. Date, the White House correspondent for America’s most nakedly partisan “news” outlet, The Huffington Post, published a series of tweets arguing that 1/6 was worse than 9/11 and that those behind it are more dangerous than Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda ever were.
This exchange with The Washington Examiner’s Byron York illustrates the insanity of Dáte and “journalists” like him.
...
Donald Trump and his “terrorists” were far worse than Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda.
Greenwald continues, making several more comparisons between the aftermath of 9/11 and Jan. 6 — in the minds of today’s radicalized Democrat Party — before concluding with several examples of the subsequent trampling of civil rights.
...
The no-fly list was widely regarded as one of the worst civil liberties abuses of the first War on Terror: unseen bureaucrats putting people on lists with no due process. It was imported onto US soil, but many are so petrified of 1/6 that nothing was said
...
Almost immediately after the Capitol riot, some of the most influential Democratic lawmakers — Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Homeland Security Committee Chair Bennie Thompson (D-MS), who also now chairs the Select 1/6 Committee — demanded that any participants in the protest be placed on the no-fly list, long regarded as one of the most extreme civil liberties assaults from the first War on Terror.
And at least some of the 1/6 protesters have been placed on that list: American citizens, convicted of no crime, prohibited from boarding commercial airplanes based on a vague and unproven assessment, from unseen and unaccountable security state bureaucrats, that they are too dangerous to fly.
I reported extensively on the horrors and abuses of the no-fly list as part of the first War on Terror and do not recall a single liberal speaking in defense of that tactic. Yet now that this same brute instrument is being used against Trump supporters, there has not, to my knowledge, been a single prominent liberal raising objections to the resurrection of the no-fly list for American citizens who have been convicted of no crime.
Yet, “half” of Americans believe “the big lie” of Jan. 6. Why? Because they want to.
In a 2017 article titled Why We Believe Alternative Facts, the American Psychological Association argued that “the natural tendency to cherry-pick and twist the facts to fit with our existing beliefs is known as motivated reasoning — and we all do it.” (Operative word being “all.”)
“Motivated reasoning is a pervasive tendency of human cognition,” says Peter Ditto, PhD, a social psychologist at the University of California, Irvine, who studies how motivation, emotion and intuition influence judgment.
“People are capable of being thoughtful and rational, but our wishes, hopes, fears and motivations often tip the scales to make us more likely to accept something as true if it supports what we want to believe.”
Incidentally, the above doesn’t apply to us, of course. Just the other guys.
It's also called "confirmation bias."
The issue for these leftists and Rinos is that no one, relatively speaking, is in fear. Literally nobody cares about this sham. Perhaps if these democrats had a strong economy and a track of not producing bullshit witch hunts the public would give it a second thought. But they don’t. Everyone watched the nation burn in 2020. 1/6 looks like a joke compared to the 2 billion in damages caused because a life long criminal resisted arrest and died of an overdose. The more this “committee” trudges on the less credible they look. It’s almost completed and what have they produced? Not much. With Ray Epps sitting out there , with no interest from the FBI apparently, how can any of this be taken seriously?
I was against passage of the Patriot Act. At the same time I recognized the need to stop terrorism. My logic was the Patriot Act was a greater danger to freedom than the terrorists. Sadly, I have been proven correct.
Can’t both reasons be true?
Methinks liberals like the author are in denial about the Democrat's lust for absolute power which has been a foundation of the party since the at least turn of last century.
Woodrow Wilson and FDR make Pelosi, Schumer, Obama, and Biden look like rank amateurs.
Bottom line, only a psychotic would believe a three hour riot was an “insurrection”. “Terrorists” do not stay between the velvet ropes.
Enough!
I am of the opinion that the goal of all these sham investigations is to provoke an incident that they can then use to really clamp down on the free citizens of the United States.
J6 was a damn built by the RAT DOJ to hold back the 2022 tsunami that was building against the RAT party. THAT’S ALL IT WAS. It was no “insurrection” or any of that other Feddy jive BS.
I think the original use was to intimidate conservatives and keep them quiet and fearful.
Look what they did to Joe McCarthy who was truly concerned about Communists in our government and it was thoroughly infiltrated. To this day they pretend it was some kind of witch Hunt when in fact our government was riddled with communist s.
Then the tea party, even in my sparsely populated neck of the woods there were people who were persecuted because they were tea party members.
The J6 debacle is to show you what will happen if you exert your constitutional right and you are conservative.
They will marginalize you, demonize you, send the IRS after you, send the FBI after you, if you don’t keep your mouth shut.
And the saddest thing of all, 2020 proved that our votes don’t count either. I had strong suspicions before that but 2020 proved it to me
Biden received millions of votes on ballots that had numerous other candidates for other offices on the same ballot. Yet, on millions of those “ballots” Biden was the only person the voter voted for.
Humans don’t do that....
Yet, “half” of Americans believe “the big lie” of Jan. 6. Why? Because they want to.
Attributed to Mark Twain, “It is easier to fool the people, than to convince them they have been fooled.
We have certainly seen an increase in over-the-top FBI raids and arrests, calls for censorship, attacks on the traditional family, and attacks on our lifestyles (e.g., banning gasoline engines/cars, natural gas heat, beef) in the past two years.
Millions of ballots with only Biden/Harris marked. NO votes for downballot or for Trump. Delivered to key areas by USPS trucks. Printed in China.
Yet, J6 is such a huge deal.
Look at how far and wide their efforts are now to create this atmosphere.
Biden, pelosi, et. al. cannot have anyone protest or QUESTION the FRAUDULENT installation of the corrupt, brain damaged Fuhrer Joseph R. Biden. The Jan 6 show trial is to threaten and intimidate anyone from protesting or even questioning the so-called results of the election. This not only preserves the sham 2020 results, but prevents anyone from raising any objections about future broader election fraud schemes.
Greenwald’s theory gives much credence to the suggestion that PELOSI ORGANIZED AND STAGED THE ENTIRE JAN 6 “INSURRECTION.”
And her goons in the FBI carried it out.
“For many liberals and Democrats in the U.S., 1/6 is the equivalent of 9/11.”
The problem for them is that the majority of the population will never see things that way, so people aren’t going to go along with any “1/6 Patriot Act” nonsense.
I would suggest a slightly different reason.
In order for me to accept a set of conditions as “facts”, I must first understand how persuasive the facts are that argue for the opposite.
For example, we are asked to believe that Joe Biden, occasionally campaigning from his basement, secured the votes of 81 million Americans and handily beat the sitting President. For that to be true, I would have to other things that were visible to me with my own eyes.
1. That from September 1 through Election Day, Joe Biden attracted 2500 people to his “rallies” while Donald Trump attracted 1.5 million people.
2. That Joe Biden carried only 1 of the 20 crucial “swing districts”. By historic precedent, Biden should have lost convincingly on that basis alone.
3. That the counting of ballots in 5 critical states showing Trump comfortably ahead stopped almost simultaneously for reasons that even a child would not accept.
4. That Joe Biden, a political non-entity from a thoroughly forgettable state, was more popular than the man he served with - Barack Obama?
I could go on and on and on but the point for my own “confirmation bias” is not that I want a certain result and shape my opinions to assure the same. It is how much I must ignore or declare to be untrue in order for me to accept the facts presented as being true. Noticing the mountain of contrarian data does not make me an ‘election denier’. It makes me want to have someone explain to me how it is that these other things are not true.
They're working far too hard pushing it for it to be true.
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