After the 2016 election, I pointed out in my column “Sorry, kids. The racist charge doesn’t work anymore,” that the problem with labeling everyone who disagrees with you as “racists” is eventually the word is meaningless. And now the same people who twisted and trivialized the word “Racists” until it lost all meaning are doing the same with the word “Insurrectionists.”
What happened a week ago wasn’t a coup. It wasn’t an insurrection.
It was a mob — an angry, riotous mob populated by a mix of social media cosplayers, dangerous cranks, idiots who like to smash things for fun, and, of course, frustrated Americans who got easily swept up in the moment when the mob formed.
Mobs are by definition disordered.
Heaven knows we’ve seen enough of them over the last four years to know that.
But Democrats and the media want to marginalize their political opposition. So just as they weaponized “racists” they are doing the same with the word “Insurrectionists.”
Now the Left’s political opponents – including the Republicans who challenged any state’s electoral votes – are being labeled “Insurrectionists.” Not because they are insurrectionists. But because the Democrats and their media handmaids deploy words as weapons in order to silence opposition.
The dope dressed like a Viking wasn’t looking to overthrow the government and install himself as Leader.
The clowns livestreaming themselves ransacking Nancy Pelosi’s office weren’t insurrectionists hoping to overthrow Congress and install a new Republic of Q.
These guys were no more insurrectionists than the idiots who looted Target or burned businesses to the ground over the summer.
They were a mob – a disorderly, violent mob looking to exploit the emotional upheaval of the moment. And in that upheaval, the people who make up the mob lose all individual thought or conscience. So they break the law without a thought; they assault police and civilians alike without a twinge of conscience.
Mobs aren’t like brave soldiers storming the beaches of Normandy. They aren’t like Revolutionary War patriots at the Boston Tea Party.
And they sure as hell aren’t “Insurrectionists.”
Words matter.
Or at least they used to matter.
But as we saw with “racist,” words are getting stretched and twisted to the point of emptiness.
“Insurrection” is a word with significant weight and severity – same goes for the word “Sedition.” But the media, along with elected members of Congress, have spent the last week trivializing both – all to smear and marginalize half the country.
The same half they spent the last four years calling “Racists.”
It’s reckless and dangerous.
What makes it especially reckless is the fact that they don’t really think last week’s mob was a bunch of “Insurrectionists” at all.
So which is it, Jake? Is Viking guy a snowflake or an insurrectionist?
Was this a band of insurrectionists seeking the violent overthrow of the government, or a bunch of snowflakes “masquerading as confrontational tough guys?”
Is it sedition or cosplaying?
Jake Tapper doesn’t believe this was a seditious insurrection. And because he’s deeply stupid, he pretty much drops the veil in that tweet.
And as is always the case, the people using this kind of reckless rhetoric become the very thing they claim to oppose.
As I said the other day, they don’t want de-escalation.
They don’t want unity; they want submission.
And like all tyrant-wannabes, the Left deploys language as a weapon.
They’re viciously firing off words like “Insurrection” and “Sedition” in order to crush their political opponents.
Abusing this kind of malicious language gives them the pretext they need to unleash with impunity a crackdown on our Liberty. Now any pushback against the unconstitutional power grab that is coming will immediately be labeled “sedition” or “insurrection.”