As I write this, the Capitol Hill riot of January 6 is enjoying its extended 15 minutes of fame, complete with straight-faced comparisons to December 7, 1941 and September 11, 2001.

In hindsight, it will hopefully (and hopefully quickly) shrink to its real-life proportions: A few thousand hysterical Donald Trump supporters, and likely at most a few dozen truly dangerous thugs, protested against what they claimed was a stolen election. Then they stormed and vandalized a building, scared some politicians, and killed a cop (who turned out to be a Trump supporter himself).

No, it wasn’t pretty. Neither was the March 1, 1954 attack on the Capitol in which Puerto Rican nationalists shot and wounded five members of Congress, or Frank Eugene Corder’s September 12, 1994 suicide by plane on the White House’s south lawn. Last time I checked, those dates were no more occasions of somber remembrance than January 6 is likely to become. In the grand scheme of things, they were all teapot tempests.

The real and lasting damage of the Capitol riot will come not from the riot itself but from its exploitation by authoritarians of all stripes. The Rahm Emanuel strategy — “never allow a good crisis to go to waste when it’s an opportunity to do things that you had never considered, or that you didn’t think were possible” — is in full play, in the form of “let’s stack new evil ideas on top of existing evil ideas.”

One such new evil idea, advocated by politicians on both sides of the partisan aisle, is adding those accused of participating in the Capitol riot to the Terrorist Screening Center’s “No Fly List.”

The No Fly List was sold as a way of protecting US air traffic from terrorist attack by barring suspected terrorists from flying. In reality, it’s just a secret government enemies list that’s grown from 16 names to tens of thousands since the 9/11 attacks.

You have no way of knowing if you’re on the list until and unless you’re prevented from boarding a plane. You have no way of finding out WHY you’re on the list even then. You can politely ask the US Department of Homeland Security to remove you from the list, and they can politely tell you no. If you have the means, you can go to court, maybe win, maybe lose. The US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia ruled the list unconstitutional in 2019, but the list is still there.

One previous item from the Bag of Stupid No Fly List Tricks was barring those on the No Fly List from purchasing firearms.  Fortunately that scheme has repeatedly failed (despite support from, among others, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and pseudo-Libertarian 2016 vice-presidential candidate William Weld). It was a bad idea. So is this one.

The power to prevent a person from traveling without even charging, let alone convicting, that person of a crime (or even notifying the victim!) isn’t a power we should have even considered letting government have at all.  Rather than allow its expansion, it’s time to demand its abolition.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

• “The No Fly List: More Dangerous than the Capitol Rioters,” by Thomas L. Knapp, OpEdNews, 01/16/21
• “No-fly list more dangerous than Capitol rioters,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Spring Hope, North Carolina Enterprise, 01/16/21
• “No-fly list more dangerous than Capitol rioters,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Wilson, North Carolina Times, 01/16/21
• “The no fly list: More dangerous than the Capitol rioters,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Havasu City, Arizona News-Herald, 01/16/21
• “The no fly list: More dangerous than the Capitol rioters,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Hopkinsville, Kentucky New Era, 01/18/21
• “The New No Fly List: More Dangerous than the Capitol Rioters,” by Thomas L. Knapp, CounterPunch, 01/18/21
• “The No Fly List: More dangerous than the capitol rioters,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Dillon, Montana Tribune, 01/20/21
• “The No Fly List: More Dangerous than the Capitol Rioters,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Miles City, Montana Star, 01/21/21
• “The No Fly List: More Dangerous Than the Capitol Rioters,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Antiwar.com, 01/23/21

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible,” President John F. Kennedy said in a 1962 speech, “will make violent revolution inevitable.”

Nearly 60 years later, two warring groups within the American political class seem resolutely determined to make “peaceful revolution” — by which JFK seems to have meant orderly democratic decision-making — impossible.

Supporters of Donald Trump rejected the outcome of the 2020 presidential election and, with his active if  deniably worded encouragement, rioted in a tantrum intended to overturn that election’s results.

Trump’s opponents immediately and predictably responded with calls for a reign of terror to suppress “sedition.” US Representative Bennie Thompson (D-MS) asked the Transportation Security Administration and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to add Trump supporters who have yet to be convicted of (or, in many cases, even charged with) any crime to the unconstitutional “no-fly list.” Newly elected US Representative Cori Bush (D-MO) filed a resolution calling for the expulsion from Congress of members who objected (as House rules allow) to certification of the election results.

Big Tech promptly swung into action in support of the latter side. The two largest social media platforms, Twitter and Facebook, banned Team Trump’s major voices and vowed to block or delete posts that call Team Pelosi’s line into question. Google, Apple, and Amazon colluded to take another social media platform, Parler, offline with the obvious purpose of denying Team Trump’s supporters any venue for expressing wrongthink.

If you’re looking for good guys, you won’t find them on either side of this fight. It’s a fight between two factions of the political class, with Big Tech trying to appease and co-opt one of those two factions. It’s neither a revolution nor a fight for freedom. It’s just a schoolyard brawl over which gang gets to rule. The interests of ordinary Americans aren’t represented.

But ordinary Americans do seem to be rallying in great numbers  to one side or the other. Whoever said “there’s a sucker born every minute” was low-balling it. The political class is well practiced at duping most of us into thinking we have skin in their power games.

That’s a big problem. Peaceful revolution, which would require an orderly dissolution, or at least devolution, of the US government, isn’t on the table. Neither major political class gang is willing to allow it on the table, because it would deprive them of power.

Fortunately, you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. Sooner or later, sufficient numbers will wise up, rise up, and put an end to this nonsense.

The Trump base, as personified by the DC rioters, is hardly an unstoppable force. But neither are its opponents an immovable object. The fates of Louis XVI, Nicholas II, and Nicolae Ceausescu are the alternative to peaceful revolution.

This dust-up is only one front in a larger war: A war by both gangs upon the rest of us. A war for power. A war for control. Neither gang will ultimately win that war. Their choice is whether to lose peaceably or violently.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

• “The Political Class: At War with Each Other and on the Rest of Us,” by Thomas L. Knapp, OpEdNews, 01/13/21
• “Political class at war with each other, us,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Spring Hope, North Carolina Enterprise, 01/14/21
• “Political class at war with each other, us,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Wilson, North Carolina Times, 01/14/21
• “The Political Class: At War with Each Other and on the Rest of Us,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Ventura County, California Citizens Journal, 01/15/21
• “The Political Class: At War with Each Other and on the Rest of Us,” by Thomas L. Knapp, CounterPunch, 01/15/21
• “There are no good guys on either side of this fight,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Kingsport, Tennessee, Times News [web and print], 02/18/21
• “The Political Class: At war with each other and on the rest of us,” by Thomas L. Knapp, New Rockford, North Dakota Transcript, 01/18/21
• “Political class is at war with each other — and us,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Fredericksburg, Virginia Free Lance-Star [web and print], 01/19/21
• “Political Class at War With Each Other,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Forest Hills/ Rego Park, New York Times [web and print], 01/19/21
• “Political Class at War With Each Other,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Queens, New York Examiner [web and print], 01/19/21
• “Political Class at War With Each Other,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Brooklyn, New York Downtown Star [web and print], 01/19/21
• “Political Class at War With Each Other,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Queens, New York Ledger [web and print], 01/19/21
• “Political Class at War With Each Other,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Glendale, New York Register [web and print], 01/19/21
• “Political Class at War With Each Other,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Long Island City / Astoria, New York Journal [web and print], 01/19/21
• “The political class is at war with each other and with the rest of us,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Sterling Heights, Michigan News-Herald, 01/26/21

On January 7, the day after rioters entered the US Capitol and put hundreds of politicians to flight in support of Donald Trump’s wild-eyed election fraud claims, Wisconsins’s State Assembly passed a resolution. The money line: “[P]olitical violence in any form has no place in the American system of government and should never be tolerated.”

If the Assembly (and other government bodies passing such resolutions) had followed up by dissolving themselves and sending their members home for good, I might believe they mean what they’re saying. Otherwise, no dice.

Political violence, and credible threats of political violence, are the very basis of “the American system of government.”

When the Assembly (or Congress, or your city council) passes a law or an ordinance, they’re not asking, they’re telling.  If you’re discovered not doing what they order you to do, or doing what they order you not to do, armed government employees will abduct you and put you in a cage. If you resist, those armed government employees will assault you, maybe even kill you.

Absent political violence and the credible threat thereof, government agencies would just be benevolent clubs making recommendations — recommendations we’d be free to accept or reject without threats of force either way.

Is all political violence bad? Well, no. Laws against the INITIATION of force — assault, murder, robbery, etc. — are defensive in nature, and if their enforcement was financed voluntarily rather than through taxation (under penalty of force for not coughing up), those laws would be entirely justifiable.

Needless to say, the Wisconsin State Assembly doesn’t limit itself to passing such laws. When it passes something like  2019 Assembly Bill 132 (“Persons under the age of 16 years may not operate a class 3 electric bicycle,” etc.), it’s threatening the use of violence against people who have not themselves engaged in violence.

The Capitol riot was unjustified because the claims used to incite it were nonsense. Congress does a lot of things that SHOULD get its members chased out of town by angry mobs. Counting votes that the rioters didn’t want counted was not a worthy casus belli.

Our rulers aren’t really opposed to political violence on grounds of justifiability, though. They’re only opposed to political violence when it’s used against them rather than by or for them. They’re the lords. We’re the peasants. While they won’t say that openly and proudly, they don’t want us to forget it even for a moment.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

• “Political Violence: The Politicians Doth Protest Too Much,” by Thomas L. Knapp, OpEdNews, 01/10/21
• “Political Violence: The Politicians Doth Protest Too Much,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Ventura County, California Citizens Journal, 01/11/21
• “Political violence: The politicians doth protest too much,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Hopkinsville, Kentucky New Era, 01/12/21
• “On political violence, the politicians doth protest too much,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Richmond, North Carolina Observer, 01/13/21
• “Political violence: The politicians doth protest too much,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Batesville, Mississippi Panolian, 01/13/21
• “Political Violence: The Politicians Doth Protest Too Much (erroneously headlined ” Yes, Fauci, you do need some humility”), by Thomas L. Knapp, Madill, Oklahoma Record, 01/13/21