What a day! Or, rather, what media hysteria. In fact, what happened in D.C. was almost entirely safe, normal, peaceful, and constitutional.

(For that small percentage of the D.C. event that deviated from those standards, here’s hoping that an honest investigation will uncover the identities of all those who committed criminal acts and lead to their prosecutions. I believe that no true patriot at that event would have  death, injury, or defiling the American flag with violence on his or her conscience.)

It’s been a long time since I was in the Capitol. I seem to recall, though, that there were places where one paused upon entry to have one’s identification checked, the purpose for visiting approved, bags searched, and person scanned with walk-through detectors. All the Trump supporters I know, if asked, would have completed this process before moving into the halls.

Where were those posts, and the guards that usually go with them? Why so few Capitol Police when all through this past two years of SCOTUS confirmation hearings, impeachment hearings, and spontaneous (or not) BLM uprisings, the city has been flooded with and protected by all sorts of federal and city law enforcement officers?

 What was the message from Congressional leadership to those gathered Patriots and President Trump-supporters, including those we all know embedded themselves with them? Come on in, we’ll be waiting, we’ll be watching, and then we’ll make a spectacle of running for our lives from you. Was that it – to prove how scary we Trump supporters can be?

For years now (Portland being the epicenter) every single gathering of conservatives of any sort precipitates an alt-gathering of anarchists, anonymous, Antifa and, lately, BLM. Violence over the past couple of years escalated from screaming at police and diners, pushing and shoving, and blocking traffic to dragging old people out of their cars for beatings and pushing to the ground or into the sides of buildings folks trying to go about their business. That escalated to arson, stabbings, shootings, mobbing up on individuals and individual homes, looting businesses, throwing Molotov cocktails, and throwing bottles of frozen urine, cans of string beans, bricks, and concrete blocks at law enforcement. That too escalated to blinding police with lasers, hitting them with hammers, and blocking doors to try to burn people alive in buildings is the worst. Democrats and their media cohorts assured us this was a legitimate protest by an “idea.”

As for what happened on January 6, what message should the pro-Trump gatherers take away when, in the ripest environment for such violence, there was almost none at all? Could that violence, perhaps, have been scripted all along? Hmmm.

(NB – For those who still dismiss the existence of Antifa as merely being an idea, please note that the 2020 Democrat Party platform begins with these four words “America is an idea.”)

For most of the morning, the crowd simply grew, milled around, waved flags, listened to speakers, sang, chanted, boosted signs, made connections with like-minded souls from all over the country, and stood in interminable lines at public toilets. Half a million? A million? Somewhere in between? More than that?

In the early afternoon, a few hundred, a statistically insignificant percentage of the whole gathering, went over to the Capitol Building to make a stand and have their say. That’s what most of them did – stood around on the steps and talked, waved their flags, and sang the national anthem.

Some went inside. We’ll probably never know how many of those inside were embedded Antifa, how many were embedded law enforcement, and how many were Looky-Lous or simply yahoos up to no good, but there were certainly some of each.

Given this “mob” of “rioting protestors,” exactly how many statues were destroyed? How many cars set on fire? How many police bashed in the head with concrete blocks? How many members of the “mob” stabbed and shot counter-protestors? None?

When the Capitol police shooed them away three hours later, they departed. How many gathered later for a night of running amok and destroying property? None, again?

What message should the American public take away when the mainstream media labels the burning, looting murderers in Minneapolis, Portland, Seattle, and Kenosha as “peaceful protestors” and then says the nearly litter-free streets of DC are full of rioters mobbing the Capitol? Ah, that’s right, nowadays definitions of words, like genders, are fluid. Snooping through offices and walking off with a podium now constitutes the violent destruction of Western democracy.

What message are the folks who were exercising their First Amendment rights to gather, speak, and seek redress peaceably to take from the President-elect who insults and degrades them, not just before their country but also in front of the entire world? That they are powerless? That the call to unity does not include them?

There is a special message for all you snowflakes in this, all you victims of undetectable micro-aggressions, all you young people who need special places where looking at another is indistinguishable from looking in a mirror. You need to take heed. All you libsiders who are so eager to trade personal freedoms and inalienable rights for dreary sameness, listen up. Pay attention, all you legislators and executives who obviously believe that if you can’t win on your own merits then cheating is perfectly acceptable.

President Trump only had to ask quietly for supporters to come and stand with him to oppose election fraud, abrogating the will of the people, the harm being done to our republic, and they came. By the hundreds of thousands, on their own dime, in the winter, they came. They came to DC and to all fifty state capitals. The tens of millions of us who did not travel were with them in will, in spirit, in prayer, and with logistical support.

As of about 2018, the whole United States had around 929,000 sworn law enforcement officers – full- or part-time, federal, state, county, city, and tribal. And it had 2 million military members in all branches, at all levels, abroad and at home, active, reservist, or as part of the national guard. For a year now, the left has campaigned hard to defund the police, vilified federal intervention into the public safety arena, and reimagined law enforcement as practically nonexistent in cities all over this country.

Now imagine if President Trump instead had called for patriots to rise up and to fight at his side against the clear and present danger of a communist/socialist/ fascist/totalitarian take-over of our country -- which is what this year’s comprehensive violation of the electoral process looks like to many. Go ahead, do the math, we’ll wait.

And while we’re waiting, we’ll remind you that we are a powerful people with hundreds of thousands among us who do serve and have served their country out of love for that country and her ideals. We are millions upon millions strong. We are proud Americans. Our domestic adversaries, who so blatantly pit themselves against us, would do well to remember that.

But we did not rise up. Barring a few hotheads, almost certainly helped along by Antifa agitators, we came in peace, just as our President asked us to.

Mr. President-elect Biden: For all people, unity is a choice with a purpose. Give us a common cause that aligns with the core American beliefs in liberty (not tyranny), inalienable rights, and equality (not equity of outcome), and you’ll have your unity. Think about it. We’ll wait but not forever. 2022 is just around the corner.

Author’s credit – Anony Mee is a retired public servant.

IMAGE: Prayer circle at Trump rally. Rumble screengrab.