“Cops are taking selfies with the terrorists,” tweeted Timothy Burke. Another Twitterer quipped, “White privilege is . . . Being part of the mob while taking a selfie with the cops.”

After citing these two tweets, Heavy noted a third: “To be fair, you could see a cop doing the right thing to de-escalate by saying ‘all right, you can take your selfie now get the hell out.’” 

That last thought is reminiscent of Paul Jacob’s Andy Griffith reference at Common Sense. 

The protest-turned-invasion of the Capitol was, all in all, not very violent. One woman was shot and killed as she advanced upon police within the building. No one else was. The other listed deaths were outside the trespass event, on the streets.

Were the trespassers “terrorists”?

Well, terrorists are those who use violence upon civilians to gain some political effect. The breaking-and-entering incursion into where Congress works was illegal, and “violent” in the sense that breaking glass is violent, and marching into property without the owners’ permission is violent. So: not-very-violent. The woman shot was not brandishing a weapon. The oft-cited deaths outside the Capitol building turn out to be mostly . . . irrelevant. But, and this is key: this riot was turned against the government directly, not against the citizenry. Insurrectionists would be a better term, but even that is a bit much, since it is obvious that they just wanted to “make a statement,” not take over the government. The various riots over the summer lasted weeks, months. This lasted a few hours.

Now, is this general low-key quality of the whole affair — as exemplified by the selfie moment — an example of “white privilege”? That seems a little off. The protesters-turned-trespassers had no beef with the police. So the “privilege” consisted in not being a threat. Sounds like the wages of peace rather than the perks of privilege.

Their beef was with the machinery of vote counts and the whole system that they think stole the election for Biden over their candidate, the current president.

Most people in media and on the Democrat side — and many, many Republicans — say “there’s no evidence for a stolen election.” While it is possible that the election itself wasn’t stolen (I’ll abide by evidence rationally presented) to say “no evidence” is off. There’s a lot of evidence of voting schemes and ballot abuse. It’s just that the system isn’t set up to deal with it in the time allotted by the Constitution.

The proper time to deal with election fraud is before and while it is happening — definitely not a few weeks before inauguration. Even of a Manchurian Candidate.

twv