Quiet Man Rising

By Charlie Johnston

I was shocked and disgusted Thursday to see so many so-called “conservative” commentators and officials denounce the Capitol protests and demand that those who rushed the Capitol be caught and jailed – and with a zeal and vigor they did not use in condemning the Antifa-BLM riots that have rocked cities and resulted in actual murder and mayhem throughout the last year. Those supposedly on our team are busy calling all of us who attended Wednesday’s protest a mob.

I was on the Ellipse near the Washington Monument for most of the morning, wearing my fleur-de-lis necktie in honor of St. Joan of Arc on this Feast of the Epiphany. I never made it to the Capitol, though some in our group did. I was just hurting too much and needed to wend my way back. I rarely participate in processions or marches because, though I can walk a long way, it is by fits and starts. My gift is in my determination, not my prowess. I have to stop a lot to rest between little bits of progress.

What I saw was a very diverse and massive Mayberry on steroids. Everyone was chatting, laughing together and cheering. It was an upbeat, enthusiastic crowd. There were a lot of black folks there – and a huge contingent of Chinese Americans. Best of all, in this crowd, the men looked like men and the women looked like women. The only unsettling thing was that, here and there, someone was dressed all in black with that creepy skeleton Covid mask. Three times someone in front of me yelled, “Let’s storm the capitol!” The crowd ignored him. It was striking to me that this agitator used precisely the same language all the media would later use to describe the rushing of the Capitol.

Let’s be clear: most of those who charged the Capitol were Trump supporters. I have no doubt that Antifa types were agitators in the whole business – but it was Trump supporters that they were inciting. The business about it being all or mostly Antifa who did the charging is patent nonsense, even though they almost certainly incited it. It is a panicked defense of Trump supporters. But why? After a year of being told that the rioting, looting, arson, violence and murder throughout the country by Antifa and BLM is “mostly peaceful protests” and that it is just a case of free speech, why would we get so panicked by what was, in fact, a largely peaceful protest in which a few people got notably raucous? I don’t condemn the protestors; I don’t even criticize them.

Some conservative commentators have suggested that we can’t use the same tactics Antifa uses. How did we use the same tactics? Antifa and BLM go on an unfocused rage, attacking and destroying everything in their path indiscriminately. The worst of the protestors at the Capitol were focused only on the source of their righteous anger – and did not destroy anything. The only casualty that day was an unarmed Trump supporter. A police officer who got in a scuffle with protestors later died. The left goes on wildly violent riots when they don’t get their way. Christians and conservatives don’t do that. They only get forceful when they get neither a fair shake nor an honest accounting. They got neither here – and knew that their pusilanimous representatives weren’t about to risk their own necks getting it for them.

You know what would have prevented the rushing of the Capitol? If a single court would have opened an honest investigation of the mountains of evidence of massive fraud. The left is fond of saying the courts “rejected” the claims – implying that the courts examined the evidence and found it without merit. But that is not what happened. The courts refused to even look at the evidence, rejecting everything on procedural grounds so they didn’t have to incur the ire of the violent left. Judges across the land put their hands over their eyes and their thumbs in their ears. As it was, 200-300 people of a crowd estimated, at the low end, at half a million people got raucous. We all know that if it had been a crowd of a half million Antifa and BLM activists, Washington would be burning right now, while the media would be assuring us it was mostly peaceful and Kamala Harris was busy raising money to bail out the activists.

 

Almost everyone gathered at the Capitol Mall Wednesday knew we would probably not get justice. After a year in which Donald Trump was impeached on a shamelessly partisan pretext, in which ordinary people were forced to lose their businesses and life savings and forego visits with their families on patently unconstitutional orders from a myriad of tinpot tyrants (while watching the tyrants who issued the orders shamelessly flout them while never missing a paycheck), watched prosecutors routinely drop charges against actual violent rioters while filing charges against people who had the temerity to defend themselves and their property, in which people watched a patently obvious and shameless steal of a presidential election – with supposedly responsible officials insisting on confirming the steal with no investigation, normal Americans know getting justice from the gangster government now ruling our nation was not likely. While we knew that our Republican “firewall” was as sturdy as a tower made of playing cards, we did NOT expect the cowardly Republicans to pile on to the smears and slanders piled on us by the left. Protestors were just expected to suck up the Republicans’ refusal to vigorously demand justice. Frankly, I think the actions of even the most raucous protestors was both proportionate to the offenses we have endured and, in fact, rather restrained. But gormless conservative commentators and officials have declared that last Wednesday was a disgrace and a day that will live in infamy. It is the latest of many big lies from the left. Yeah – like the Boston Tea Party was a disgrace and a day that lives in infamy. The left is frantically calling everyone who was there a “traitor” and an “insurrectionist.” Well, to the ruling British, those who mounted the Boston Tea Party were traitors and insurrectionists, too. Free Americans have held them as patriots for over two centuries.

The rushing of the Capitol was the pagan left’s Reichstag Fire. But it was not the only maneuver they took from the fascist playbook. It was followed up Friday with Kristallnacht – the night of the long knives in which social media got deadly serious about purging all dissent. All of this comes in the form of a blitzkrieg, in which the left strikes like lightning in multiple areas to shut down dissent before it can get any traction.

Though it seems otherwise, the leadership of the pagan left is in raw panic. Yes, they stole the election and have issued a never-ending flow of unconstitutional orders revoking the liberty of ordinary Americans. But the success of all this is dependent on pacifying the population. They had gotten the submission of Republican officials and of most religious leaders, but those irksome “bitter clingers” and “deplorables” were not going along. They had to make a lightning strike, a blitzkrieg, to discredit normal Americans and make them objects of scorn. That is why all sorts of scary rumors about the Capitol shutting down and lack of security were being spread before the protest – in hopes of depressing the numbers who would attend. The monumental crowd of ordinary Americans who showed up anyway scared the bejabbers out of the powers that be, so they had to act with alacrity to make them out to be villains and terrorists instead of the ordinary Americans they are. It got some traction with the timid – and with those who, for the first time, realized this is real, not some political maneuvering or board game. It won’t last.

This has given us some real fodder for self-examination, though. Far too many of us have been willing to cheer Donald Trump on as long as he was willing to do all the fighting for us. Now that it seems almost certain that we will have to do our own fighting, many of the most martial voices in our coalition are uncharacteristically subdued. Some are even sounding the retreat. This is no surprise to me. In politics, it was often the case that those organizations which had been most promiscuous in demanding that others show courage and put their careers on the line ran like scalded dogs when they found themselves in the crosshairs. In a couple of cases, I quietly helped such organizations weather the storm in exchange for their agreement never to attack me or my candidates in such a way again. There is a type of man who is always very martial and uncompromising so long as it is someone else who takes all the risks. This is why I value the counsel of those who have come under fire far more than the mouthy armchair heroes – and respect the decisions of those who do take the risks even when I do not agree with them. You have a larger and more charitable perspective when you have actual skin in the game. If you know the stakes and are still willing to make your stand, you are invaluable to me. Last week many people, for the first time, got some idea of what the stakes actually are.

I expect Trump to be a critical ally in the battle for faith, family and freedom going forward. Sadly, though he was clearly elected to two terms, he will almost certainly not finish his full term, as the coup is ascendant for a time. Though I did not make it clear at the time, when I gave Trump such likely odds of success in his challenge, what I mainly meant was the odds of him proving the steal. He did the latter – while I had made clear that getting to his second term would require courageous legislators and honest judges. Those were harder to find than open bars in Salt Lake City.

Consider the Book of Job. Here was a fully righteous man who God allowed to be put to the test. Did you really think that God was going to let you get through this without you having the most intimate of skin in the game yourself? I believe the Star of Bethlehem this year was the sign of the beginning of the final time of choosing. God is proving us all. Those who think they have all the power and have doubled down do so now to their own destruction. Those who see the likelihood of being arrested and seriously persecuted but keep faith anyway are worthy to be named among God’s 300. Those in the middle, the timid, the sunshine soldiers, those paralyzed by fear at the things they may lose, may be reclaimed or may go on to perdition. I have said all along it is up to us, the ordinary men and women, to renew the faith and face of the world. If I never hear the words Gitmo, insurrection act, or military tribunal again I will be grateful. No one except God is going to rescue you – and only after you have proven yourself to yourself. This process will probably take a few weeks, or even months. But wise brawlers know to avoid rousing the quiet man – for though his patience is long, when it is spent, he almost always prevails. The pagan left is busily rousing a lot of quiet men and women these days.

I delayed posting last week because it was obviously fluid and fast-moving…and I wanted to give good, considered counsel rather than add to the cacophony of chaos being ginned up. I will post many times this week, as I have a lot to say now.

In my freshman year of college I was fortunate to be admitted to a semester-long seminar on the American Revolution, presided over by Professor Clarence VerSteeg, a noted expert on the subject. It was limited to 15 students and met once a week for four hours. I was startled and gratified when my final paper was the only one to receive an A+. Its premise was that the American Revolution was not a revolution at all, but a counter-revolution. A revolution is the forceful or surreptitious overthrow of the traditional order. A counter-revolution is the aggressive defense of that order. From the time the first English colonists landed on American shores, they were almost entirely self-governing. After about a century, when England realized the vast mercantile potential of these colonies, it began cracking down – enacting huge taxes, major restrictions on who the American colonists could trade with, efforts to disarm the colonists – and even force them to house the very British soldiers sent to oppress them. For a good 15 years before the break, the Americans worked desperately to get redress of their grievances from England, for they considered themselves loyal British citizens. They were rebuffed and insulted at almost every turn. Finally, on July 4, 1776, the Americans declared their independence. It was not an effort to overthrow the existing order – but a determination to preserve and improve the traditional order in America. It was a counter-revolution.

Last Wednesday was the first skirmish of the counter-revolution against the fraudulent occupying force which has seized power in America. It won’t be the last.