The Myth Of The "Mostly Peaceful Protests" And Unprovable Counterfactuals

Donald Trump, still pressing the narrative of a stolen election, met with protesters hoping to shut down the formal electoral vote count. These protests later turned into an absurd, theatrical farce, with dozens arrested and four dead. Very quickly, Joe Biden went straight into absurdities of his own, pretending that the kid-gloves treatment afforded the George Floyd protesters of last summer did not happen, and that they were instead somehow manhandled by the police:

Biden: "No one can tell me that if it had been a group of Black Lives Matter protesting yesterday, they wouldn't have been treated very, very differently than the mob of thugs that stormed the Capitol. We all know that's true, and it is unacceptable. Totally unacceptable." pic.twitter.com/TfWa25VzEt

— CBS News (@CBSNews) January 7, 2021

Kamala Harris and Michelle Obama made similar statements:

.@KamalaHarris: "We witnessed two systems of justice when we saw one that let extremists storm the United States Capitol, and another that released tear gas on peaceful protesters last summer...We know this is unacceptable. We know we should be better than this." pic.twitter.com/Uc1FC8aZKg

— CSPAN (@cspan) January 7, 2021

Like all of you, I’ve been feeling so many emotions since yesterday. I tried to put my thoughts down here: pic.twitter.com/9xzRvrpk7y

— Michelle Obama (@MichelleObama) January 7, 2021

This is the purest of self-delusion. In fact, the summer protests are likely to go down as the most expensive in US history, with mayors in, at least, Seattle, Portland (especially), and Minneapolis all taking little effort and/or being slow to suppress the violence. Seattle only finally cracked down on October 3, but Minneapolis continues to have problems, and Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler actually said something mean about violent protesters. Yes, Trump famously (and stupidly) got unmarked federal police (some from the Bureau of Prisons) on the scene in D.C., and also to Seattle, but both dispersed relatively quickly. It's hard to look at this and conclude this is nothing but a narrative in search of its own facts — and that Democrats have no interest whatsoever in an honest accounting of any misdeeds from their side of the aisle.