AFTERMATH – OVERNIGHT:  Obviously, this is not a day anyone wants to repeat.  However, I'd like to make these points, things I've found in following the day's events, and the news coverage of same:

1)  While President Trump was his vulgar, self-centered self in his speech this morning, he cannot be convincingly accused of wilfully inciting violence.  He did encourage protesters to march to the Capitol, but that is common in Washington demonstrations.  And we now know that pre-made bombs were found at several locations and that some of the rioters brought gear to be used to scale walls around the Capitol.  They were ready for violence.  They didn't need someone to encourage them.

However, Mr. Trump can be properly criticized for responding to the violence too slowly, and ineffectively.  Once violence started, he should have been on national television, as commander-in-chief, making clear his revulsion and pledging quick action to get the Capitol back to normal and prosecuting the violators.

2)  The violence was committed by a small number of the thousands of demonstrators.  The media, to its disgrace, has not made much of an effort to identity exactly who was violent.  That should be their first responsibility.  Indeed, they simply referred to the lawless ones as "Trump supporters."  Some probably were, but many may well have been members of seasoned agitation groups. 

3)  The Washington police and Capitol Police were unprepared and undermanned.  This requires a full investigation.  It was disgraceful. 

4)  Vice President Pence performed superbly.  He was reportedly the executive who ordered the National Guard to be employed, raising serious questions as to whether the president was really in charge today.  Pence behaved as the leader and statesman that he is.  There may well be future political implications for him in the way he conducted himself.  Ditto many other Republican leaders, who were unsparing in their denunciation of the violence and their calls for prosecution.  Compare please with the behavior of Democrats in this last year of constant street violence committed by their constituents.  They were ready with every excuse, every justification, knowing that the leftist press would never hold them to account.

5)  Much of the media today was absolutely disgraceful, as I noted earlier.  The American people saw on display what many despise about journalists.  The double standard was presented in its full ugliness, and it never changed.  

And what's more, and I think this is important, our journalists are becoming out of date.  Watching many of them today was like watching people living in a past generation.  They live in a world created for them by their liberal professors, where America is a terrible place and one is either oppressed or an oppressor.  They have succumbed to one of the greatest curses in journalism, the inability to understand the passage of time.  In their world, a minority youngster must know his place, the place of the victim.  But in the real world of today, more and more minority youngsters are rejecting that role.  They don't want to wear Che Cuevara T-shirts.  They want to wear Brooks Brothers suits.  They don't reject America.  They want to be full participants.  But the world of many journalists is gone with the wind.  Increasingly, Americans will realize that and snap off their TV's. 

January 6, 2021