I feel that I ought to have some wisdom to impart about events in D.C. on Wednesday, but I don't.  Obviously, storming the Capitol was criminal, and the mob that did so must be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

I'm inundated with information, some good, some not so good, and am trying hard to separate wheat from chaff.  However, based on what I know from the past four years and what I've learned about today from what I believe is reliable information, I can come up with a few conclusions.

I know that, for four years, the left has never stopped doing everything in its power to destroyspeech a duly elected president.  It's battled him on the streets; in the media; in schools, colleges, and universities; and in Congress.  Its rage and disdain have been open and aggressive.

The media have never spoken an honest word about Trump and have used their 24-hour platform to slander him and everything he's done, at the same time attacking those who support him.  Congress repeatedly tried to impeach him (it's still trying), including the risible attempt over the Ukraine phone call.  Academia has used cancel culture to silence any opposition.

Things escalated in 2020.  The left latched onto the Wuhan virus as a way to destroy all anti-fraud protections regarding voting and, as a nice byproduct, to enrich its supporters and economically destroy Trump-supporters.  At the same time, in a year that started with Pelosi ostentatiously and literally ripping President Trump's State of the Union speech, the left has condoned extraordinary violence.

Its prosecutors have stopped enforcing laws, its governing bodies have stripped police of their power, and the establishment as a whole cheered on BLM and Antifa violence.  As cities burned and people died, leftists assured us that protest was meant to be violent and uncomfortable.  At the same time, they had as their mantra the claim that burning cities; looted stores; and sustained, destructive Antifa attacks against the government infrastructure in Portland and Seattle were "mostly peaceful" or just the manifestation of "an idea."

Trump-supporters sucked up all the attacks and all the pain.  They just kept looking to the election for salvation.

Sure, they noticed that Biden wasn't even bothering to campaign, but they thought that meant he'd lose, not that their guy, who was regularly drawing in tens of thousands of people at his rallies, was going to lose.  They worried about "fraud for the asking" mail-in voting but thought that if they turned up on Election Day in the millions, that would do the trick.  And they trusted their local governments to keep the elections honest.  They also knew that every single indicator promised a Trump victory.

But there was no Trump victory. Instead, there were observers blocked from observing voting and vote counts. There were states that, for the first time in history, as Trump was massively ahead, simultaneously shut down counting for hours. There were bizarre numbers that, instead of accreting, as votes must, marched backward for Trump or magically transferred themselves to Biden. Even without all the other claims of fraud, this was going to make people suspicious.

But when people wanted answers, the entire Establishment said, "Shut up!  You're stupid.  Everyone hates Trump.  You're paranoid.  All of this is perfectly normal."  And then this same establishment wonders why half of America's citizens, all of whom have tried to use the normal channels (courts, the media, their politicians) to get information to assuage their concerns, are getting angry.

Tucker Carlson articulated this problem extremely well in his Wednesday monologue.  I wish I didn't have to use YouTube for you to see it, but that's what I've got:

It's not a representative democracy if people are not heard.  And when people cannot get information to which they are legitimately entitled in a free society by asking politely, they will get less polite.  I desperately want America's current impasse to get resolved peacefully, but I fear that this won't happen if our political and media class continue to say, "Shut up.  You're stupid (and racist, sexist, homophobic, and inherently evil)."

Image: Storming the Capitol.  Rumble screengrab.