Isn’t that the only point of the full-court press from Democrats and the media on the observance of the one-year anniversary of the Capitol riot — to advance the Democratic agenda? Actually, no; it’s also to distract everyone from the terrible job performance of Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and congressional Democrats over the past year as well. The Capitol riot would be worth a retrospective look by media outlets on its first anniversary, but putting it on par with the 9/11 attacks in terms of the wall-to-wall media coverage we see today is transparently partisan and transparently agenda-serving.

Mitch McConnell made the same point yesterday in the Senate, blasting Democrats who are mourning the loss of norms to extremism on one hand while using the riots to justify destroying the norms of the Senate in order to pass extremist legislation:

The current Senate Democratic Leader once said that nuking filibuster rules would be a ‘doomsday for democracy.’ Just a few years ago, more than 30 Senate Democrats joined a bipartisan letter supporting the legislative filibuster. President Biden defended the principle in long, passionate speeches throughout his career. Just last year, as President, he repeated that destroying the filibuster would, ‘throw the entire Congress into chaos.’

There is no partial or limited nuclear option on the table. As the senior Senator for West Virginia put it yesterday, whenever you start talking about carving things out, you end up eating the entire turkey.

No party that would trash the Senate’s legislative traditions can be trusted to seize control over election laws across America. Nobody who is this desperate to take over our democracy on a one-party basis can be allowed to do it.

Finally, it is beyond distasteful for some of our colleagues to ham-fistedly invoke the January 6th anniversary to advance these aims. Washington Democrats have been trying to seize control over elections for years. Their first draft of the legislation at hand was introduced in January of 2019. The fact that violent criminals broke the law does not entitle Senate Democrats to break the Senate.

It is surreal to hear sitting Senators invoke January the 6th to justify breaking rules to grab outcomes they have not earned. It is surreal to hear sitting Senators invoke January the 6th to argue that institutions can be trampled because they’d like a different result.

The Capitol riot was an idiotic instance of political violence in service to a fantasy, both about the election and Congress’ role in “certifying” it. Shame on all those who participated in it, and shame on those Republicans in Congress and in the executive branch that pandered to those fantasies and conspiracy theories. Tomorrow will be the first anniversary of my decision to become an independent for the first time in my life, and I’m happy to remain one for the rest of my life.

However, it was hardly the only instance of idiotic political violence in the past few years, and certainly not the most violent. Riots broke out across the US in the May and June preceding the Capitol riot, attacking government buildings (including the federal courthouse in Portland, for instance). Violent rioters seized entire city blocks for weeks on end in several cities and declared themselves their own government autonomous from the US, essentially holding residents hostage to these insurrections around the country, while Democratic city and state governments indulged the rioters. Meanwhile, the same Democrats and media outlets going 1/6-exclusive today on the “threat to democracy” insisted that these insurrections were “mostly peaceful” demonstrations of legitimate frustration and should be tolerated rather than forcefully ended.

Perhaps I missed the day-long exclusive remembrances for these insurrections and their threat to democratic self-governance. Perhaps the rest of you missed it as well. It seems that the media and Democrats don’t care much about political violence unless it suits them to object.

The only reason for today’s orgasmic coverage of 1/6 is to advance the Democrats’ stalled election-takeover legislation by eliminating the filibuster. Not only would this bill make Congress a more legitimate focus for election problems in the future, it also would destroy the norms of state and local control of elections, the results of which Democrats have enthusiastically endorsed over the last 14 months, and for good reason.

McConnell’s correct; today’s events are “beyond distasteful,” beyond hypocritical, and beyond politicized. It’s a disgrace by all involved.