OPINION:
More revelations about poor accommodations for National Guard members stationed in Washington obscure the greater insult that they are being used by Democrats as political props to drive a divisive narrative.
Our men and women in uniform are increasingly a solution in search of a problem, there to hide the catastrophic security failures of the Jan. 6 riot but more to perpetuate the sick notion that the American right is a threat to national security.
We know from history that police states share several characteristics. Americans are watching those play out today in our very own Forbidden City.
The Communist Chinese used the pandemic to create chaos and Democrats have seized the moment to restrict constitutional freedoms, including freedom of speech, religion, movement, commerce and other basic features of our democracy.
In a classic case of psychological projection, Democrats who accused Donald Trump of being a dictator, are being exposed as the real authoritarians. Arbitrary, unscientific lockdowns and COVID-related state surveillance, restrictions on worship, the destructive cancel culture and the militarization of Washington, D.C., are all part of an un-American pattern of behavior.
Police states justify their power by inflating internal threats and demonizing groups. Democrats are doing the same.
We’ve been told repeatedly since Jan. 6 that there are credible threats to the safety of those inside the U.S. Capitol. Nancy Pelosi has even suggested that there are Republican members of Congress who are an “enemy within.” Yet, acting Capitol Police Chief Yogananda Pittman has not been forthcoming with information that would give greater credibility to these claims.
True to historical norms, the Democrats’ police state also protects elites instead of ordinary citizens. While Mrs. Pelosi is building walls around the Capitol, D.C. had some 200 murders in 2020, the highest number in more than a decade. The threat of violence on the streets for average Washingtonians is greater now, but Congress is more interested in protecting itself.
The pope is visiting Iraq as bombs are dropping. President Biden has traveled, albeit sparingly, without a security incident. President Trump held dozens of rallies throughout a tense 2020 attended by thousands of people without violent incidents.
Democrats and their new oracle of security Chief Pittman contend that Capitol Hill must remain a fortress, visitors must be prohibited, meetings of Congress canceled, the president’s joint address to Congress delayed — all because of some rag tag band of conspiracy theorists most Republicans have never heard of.
While Black Lives Matter Marxists and Antifa roam free, Ms. Pittman and the Democrats urge massive, permanent upticks in security forces in Washington openly equating violent White supremacism with Republicans and conservatives. Claims that conservatives are to be treated with suspicion because of the existence of QAnon or a group like the Proud Boys are unjustified and bigoted.
Suggestions by any official that former President Trump controls these people is equally appalling. A recent survey by Suffolk University/USA Today showed that only 4% of self-identified Trump voters had a favorable view of the fringe QAnon network and fully 43% had never heard of it.
We didn’t lock down after 9/11 when Islamic terror chatter was deafening, and Washington was rocked by anthrax attacks or after the assassination attempt against members of Congress by a socialist only a few years ago.
Concertina wire is for Baghdad, not Washington. Walls, fences, double perimeters and machine guns are for border crossings, not Capitol Hill. Threats by small groups of violent extremists in a nation of our size are commonplace. Lone wolf attacks are always possible.
Americans have to wake up to the fact that none of this is really about security at this point. It’s about control and driving an anti-conservative narrative. Without public pressure, it won’t stop at the Capitol.
• Tom Basile, host of Newsmax Television’s “America Right Now,” is an author and adjunct professor at Fordham University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, where he teaches earned media strategy.
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