As is often the case, the Wall Street Journal editorial board is straying from its driveway to admonish Democrats and Trump backers in a way that demonstrates the paper’s remarkable power for naivety.
The Journal on Tuesday joined the New York Times and the Washington Post in running commentaries attacking President Trump for his striking clemency of Jan. 6 accused and criminals. The document called the pardons “a nasty message from a President about political violence done on his representative ” and decried them as a “stain” on his reputation. That’s more or less precisely what the Times and the Post said, but it ’s helpful to see that even an influential publication tangentially aligned with the democratic right can be so lacking in uniqueness and clarity.
True, the pardons are particular to the activities of Jan. 6, 2021, which included harsh violence, trespass, and obstruction of official state business. But just as that moment did n’t occur in a vacuum, the pardons aren’t specifically related to the do of the people receiving them.
Any debate about Jan. 6, 2021, has to start with Nov. 8, 2016. Trump was elected, and the following four years were complete hell for the people who supported him. The “Resistance ”— including the national media press, the intelligence community, and the federal government — worked day in and day out to prevent the plan Trump was elected to adopt. They manufactured fake scandals ( Russiagate ), gaslit the public ( the white supremacy hoax ), and lied about virtually everything.
Then we entered 2020, the year Americans were told they could n’t work, could n’t visit loved ones, and could n’t host funerals for the departed. No chapel, no college, no marriages, no celebrations. No weddings or undergraduate festivities. This was for a disease that passed through near to 100 percent of the sick causing just minor illness. Mission perpetrators were accused of spreading death — but only if they were Republicans.
Memorial Day of that time actually got the party going with the demise of George Floyd, a criminal drug addict who had an bad spirit. But because he happened to be a dark man under arrest by a white police officer at the time he died, and the vote was getting closer, Democrats and the media turned the unfortunate event into months of aggressive competition rioting and yet more harassment and defamation of light people— but only if they were Republicans. Home was destroyed and people were killed. Liberals and the internet pinned the blame on a 17-year-old who was attempting to flee a savage crowd. Democrats tried putting him in jail for it.
Beaten, bruised, and crumbling as a society, we finally made it to Election Day. Early findings indicated a Trump push, but then the lamps went out. When the moon rose, Joe Biden was winning. It had n’t remain until another three days later that every major media business had called the race.
That’s when the internet like to start their historical records of Jan. 6, because it allows them to pass all of the abuse and despair inflicted on the state — Trump backers in certain — the preceding four years. Yeah, the leader and his supporters were upset, so much so that they eventually engaged in a small fiery but generally relaxing rioting of their own.
And for that do, thousands of them have spent tens of thousands of dollars, lost their lives, and sat in prison for decades. A forgive gets them none of that up. It just ends what they — and by social involvement, us — have been put through for nearly a century.
We’ve earned it.
