Following the hours-long Battle of Capitol Hill on Wednesday, a former friend reached out to me.
“This is on you” said the message from my acquaintance in the one account I hadn’t closed off to him.
This individual had previously blocked me on social media, speechifying at the time how my thoughtfully-crafted but dissenting viewpoints on matters like the coronavirus response, race riots, cancel culture and vote fraud were no longer tolerable to his entirely tolerant worldview.
I finished the job of disconnecting from him with one final message, warning him of what lay ahead if he continued to brush off the overtures of the radical Left to establish an authoritarian regime that selectively administered civil liberties at its pleasure.
I didn’t bother to tell him that certain “deplorables” who lacked my gift of gab would find their own ways to make known their displeasure with the brave, new normal that was offered to them as America 2.0.
Perhaps his assumption was that I would simply accept the premise that something cataclysmic had occurred, and that I would bow to the righteous indignation of the victors/victims—the Democrats—in order to preserve the few remaining remnants of goodwill and cooperative spirit that had been senselessly squandered amid the carnage on Capitol Hill.
Certainly, given the ideological aid and comfort I supplied to the MAGA movement by way of my laptop, I was no longer entitled to enjoy privileges I had become accustomed to—such as free speech.
Imagine thinking I might be graced with a clear conscience after the inconvenience that Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer endured for hours in a secure, undisclosed bunker before promptly getting back to business.
Regrettably, many Republicans who are closer to the nucleus of government have embraced this same radioactive reasoning, issuing mea culpas for their thought-crimes while repudiating President Donald Trump in the twilight of his first term.
I thoroughly disagree, and I would argue—applying the same rhetoric radical leftists used repeatedly throughout the past half-year—that Wednesday was but the opening shot for an enraged, silenced and—indeed—oppressed mass of concerned citizens who had patiently waited and had, at last, exhausted all of their diplomatic options.
Wherever blame may lie, the time for assigning it has passed. Before politely filing back out of Statuary Hall, the “invaders” in the people’s house made clear who the real captain is.
And, as I reminded my ex-pal, those who have already decided to block and censor people don’t necessarily have the option of re-engaging them at their own caprice.
For months, if not years, Democrats have turned a blind eye to their own affronts on democracy. Those efforts were amplified by even more outrageous censorship this week, and notions of a peaceful coexistence during the Biden/Harris era drew farther away.
As reasonable, conservative voices sought to advise them of the inevitable consequences of their actions, leftists derisively dismissed these so-called conspiracists—despite having repeatedly found themselves humiliated by their own false narratives.
Once millions of MAGA supporters become fully unmoored from their obligations to uphold the rule of law and maintain civility, though, there is a real danger at hand, of which Wednesday was but a sneak preview.
While clearly rattled by the events of last Wednesday, the Establishment still didn’t get the message.
Those on the Right who cringed at the takeover—and the lamentable loss of five innocent lives that came with it—did so largely out of a desire for constancy.
The reasoning is that the abuses heaped upon Trump backers while in power must not be replicated or else they will simply yield a vicious cycle of destruction.
Democrats, however, do not apply that same logic. Their true aim seems to be baiting adversaries into responding in-kind to their atrocious conduct so that they may then occupy their favored position as the aggrieved class regardless of who’s in charge.
If there is one lasting legacy of the Trump era, though, it must be a willingness to take the fight to whatever ground—high or low—that those bent on destroying America choose to engage upon, and to let their own past actions guide the response.
In retrospect, my three-sentence reply to my antagonizer may have been too much.
The reality is that Wednesday marked one of conservatives’ first times forcefully pushing back against the unjust slings and arrows borne during the Trump administration.
By saying it was “on” me, from my strategic vantage point 300 miles away, my ex-friend perfectly illustrated the true cause of the problem: the refusal to recognize their own stake in the growing partisan rift. The backlash will only gain greater momentum the more leftists attempt to suppress it.
I can think of only one word that needed to be said in reply: “Thanks.”
Follow Ben Sellers at https://parler.com/profile/Sellers.
