A really good article today by Mark Glennon of Wirepoints, based here in Chicago. I can’t say that the day in history that Glennon fingers is THE day that the violence all began—I’m sure a cursory search would bring up incitements to violence against Trump earlier than 3/11/16—but there’s not doubt that events on that day in Chicago marked a turning point. And that turning point led down the road to the assassination attempt on Trump.
March 11, 2016 in Chicago: The Day Violence Against Trump Campaign Was Legitimized – Wirepoints
Glennon looks back, comparing rhetoric then to the Dem attempts to weasel out of responsibility for the political violence of the past 8 years. The article appends Glennon’s original account of events back in 2016 as well as two additional items:
Glennon’s account of incitement to violence by Rep. Jan Schakowsky (Hate-Baiting and Race-Baiting Turned Surreal in Chicago on Friday Night)
An article by a leftist Chicago writer who was dismayed by the ugliness of the Left’s violence—and predicted it’s counterproductive effect. Flash forward to today, right?
After describing and commenting on events back in March, 2016, Glennon concludes in light of today, with Dems trapped by their own incitement. First he notes the aftermath of March, 2016:
Nor were any criminal charges made. Not by the Cook County State’s Attorney, the Illinois Attorney General or the U.S. Justice Department.
The violence at the rally was preceded that evening by a particularly ugly and inciteful protest outside the Palmer House hotel in Chicago in which Schakowsky herself participated. I saw it myself and described it here.
“Whatever it takes” to defeat Trump became the rule. The ends came to justify the means.
Then he turns to today, in the aftermath of the attempted assassination of Trump and in light of 8 years of almost identical rhetorical incitement to political violence:
Democrats had planned daily press conferences this week to highlight “the grave danger that Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans pose to our democracy, our rights and our livelihoods,” as the Chicago Sun-Times reported Monday, but they have paused that messaging. Pritzker [soon to become IL governor] was among those to hold a press conference, which was cancelled. Good.
Prior to Trump’s shooting on Saturday, Pritzker said his party “stopped being so damn afraid of a little chaos and just embraced it as the path from here to there, we will win.”
Be thankful Pritzker got only the “little chaos” he was fine with. A one-inch difference would have shattered Trump’s head and national bedlam would have ensued.
Too bad, however, that only now Schakowsky and so many others see that violence has no place in a democracy.
We know the aftermath. Trump won against all odds. We can’t be sure how much of that victory was due to the revulsion against mindless Leftist violence that both Glennon and the leftist writer in the Chicago Sun-Times documented at the time. It almost certainly helped goose the turnout that carried Trump to victory. That in turn very certainly fueled the desperate measures taken by the Ruling Class and Deep State in 2020. Now, here we are again.
Highly recommended read.
Why pick on Democrats only? It seems to me, as an outsider, that violence is hard-wired into American genes as the answer to everything. John Wayne syndrome and guns, guns, guns. Trump himself was critical of Biden's behaviour re Gaza -- he wasn't doing enough to facilitate the genocide! And what a heroes welcome Netanyahu will get shortly when Congress, including Republicans, will give him multiple standing ovations. The whole fabric of US society, while paying lip service to Jesus, seems to be spoiling for conflict. Either in courts or on battlefields, let's duke it out!!
He has Ceasar’s luck, truly.