For years now, people on the Right have been pummeled incessantly by the Left for daring to speak their minds, or even (heaven forfend) getting elected to high office under the United States.
You know what I mean. Hollywood celebrities fantasizing about the gory and horrific death of the President, or of senators or congresscritters. Antifa and its ilk threatening honest citizens who happen to have opinions that run counter to theirs (funny, I thought Antifa were supposed to be the ANTI-fascists). The current left-wing hatred for ICE and its agents, specifically the shit that went down in Portland where the Antifaggots surrounded the local ICE office and the police (backed by the mayor) wouldn’t lift a finger to help.
And it’s not just the Trump administration that’s the target. It’s just the current target. The same sort of things went on during the Bush 43 years. But it wasn’t as wound up back then, more subtle, but just as evil and nasty under the subtlety.
In many cases, what these people are doing is violating the law.
Cowardly Antifa wears masks, which often runs afoul of state and local anti-mask laws that have survived since the heyday of the KKK. Such laws don’t exist everywhere, but more and more localities are considering adopting them. Antifa stages marches that turn into armed riots, which are definitely illegal no matter where you live.
Actors like Kathy Griffin (who is probably just the most extreme of the bunch) give interviews and create videos in which the painful death of Donald Trump is clearly promoted. (Shit, an entire movie was made back in the early aughts about the assassination of George W. Bush.) While it may not necessarily be against the law to express such thoughts, when you are a public person with an audience who may take your suggestions as a call to action, that should warrant at the very least a visit by the Secret Service and a clear warning to stop behavior that could be viewed as incitement to assassinate the President. (And if repeated, at the very least a federal grand jury ought to be impaneled and hand down indictments for conspiracy to assassinate the President. While we don’t do lèse-majesté in this country, we do frown upon and take threats to our President seriously — or at least, we used to.)
Even Congrescritters and Senators lie about things they allege Donald Trump has said, and call him a racist for saying them, even when it turns out Donald Trump said nothing of the sort. But everyone is a racist these days who doesn’t toe the Communist, er, Democratic Party line, right?
And when pressed, all of these people without exception resort to the free speech argument; “I can say what I want and you can’t stop me from doing so. It’s just my opinion.” Of course, purely political speech is not to be infringed in this country because we have, per the First Amendment, freedom of speech. But the Left believes that it can stretch the definition of political free speech to suit itself, and then in turn deny the same right to its opponents on the Right. And frankly, until the advent of Donald Trump, they’ve pretty much gotten away with it.
This needs to stop.
I don’t care about what anyone says about Donald Trump’s policies. If you oppose him, you oppose him. If you support him, you support him. You do need to have the intellectual honesty to not lie about what he says or does, and that goes for both his detractors and his supporters. But that’s all political speech and it’s protected; I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.
When you go out and you make what could easily be considered threats to the life and welfare of the President and his family, you’ve crossed a line. Your speech (or expression) is no longer protected, and you cannot claim freedom of speech as an excuse for such behavior. Trying to skate past outrage by claiming carrying around a fake and bloody Donald Trump head after decapitating him is simply an expression of your feelings about Donald Trump and not any sort of intent to actually do that specific deed is not just intellectually dishonest, it’s stupid, it’s incitement to violence on the part of your fans, and you damn well know it is.
If I went running around on Monument Circle carrying a bloody decapitated Donald Trump head, I’d be arrested and probably sent for a mental health evaluation. I don’t see why the same didn’t happen to Kathy Griffin. Is she a citizen, like me, or is she some sort of elite who is above the law? She’d better not be the latter, because that way lies revolution.
The best part of the Donald Trump presidency so far is what happened to the Inauguration Day rioters in DC. None of those young jerks believed they’d be arrested, or if they were, they figured it would be a minor infraction, spend the night in jail, pay a fine, and go home. Nope. Federal District, federal felonies. These grown children were crying in court. Good. Even though very few of them were actually convicted of felonies, just the scare it put into the rest was worth it.
The same thing needs to happen to Antifa rioters. Civil rights violations by Antifaggots need to be prosecuted. Holding ICE personnel captive in their offices and (separately) threatening to kill ICE agents who are just doing their jobs are civil rights violations. Doxxing and rioting in front of politicians’ homes (as has lately been done to folks like Mitch McConnell) is a civil rights violation (not to mention trespassing and any other civil or criminal charges an inventive prosecutor might come up with). Civil rights violations are federal crimes and grand juries ought to be considering indictments for all who would inflict them.
This also goes for the idiots who block interstate highways or otherwise cause violence to the innocent for no other reason than they thirst for power and intend to get it by any means necessary. “Run them down,” said a famous blogger, and he was right; that’s exactly what drivers should do in cases like that. It’s self-defense against those who would violate your civil right to travel peaceably about the country (regardless of your destination).
The bottom line is that bad behavior ought to be punished. By not punishing it, these events continue to happen, and they escalate every time.
The question at this point should be, “If not now, when?”
We cannot continue as a democratic republic if this behavior continues to be condoned, or at the very least ignored. Sooner or later, if something is not done about it, the silent majority is going to have had enough, and will finally stand up to be counted.
And that will be a very, very bloody day, I fear.