Thread by @DrewHolden360

I’m open I let my emotions get the better of me yesterday. I don’t have a column or anything like that, so I figured I would lay out my thinking about what happened at the Capitol where I lay out most things - a not-so-quick 🧵.

First, what we saw yesterday with the storming of the US Capitol was vile, barbaric, and unamerican. There is no excuse that exists for a mob to break into a federal building, particularly one that was housing the entire US government. It was despicable.

It’s important we start here because every other piece of commentary - esp on media hypocrisy - is secondary.

Sure, we need to be able to walk & chew gum and talk about issues in parallel. But that requires defining what issues must take priority over others. This one is tops.

Second, what we saw was inextricably tied to President Trump. He drew in and fired up the people who stormed the Capitol, both in the long arc running up to yesterday, and the morning of.

This is inexcusable and clear evidence of a profound moral failing. Neither are surprising.

Some have tried to pin the blame elsewhere. They’re wrong to do so. There were other problems for course - including security - but these are secondary moral matters.

And this wasn’t some Antifa false flag. Anyone who says it was is delusional or a liar. @robbysoave has why👇

https://twitter.com/robbysoave/status/1347253053313982464

And all of this was over something that can rightly be called a conspiracy theory. I know many of you don’t agree with me, some of you in good faith. I’ve written about this for @amconmag here, and hope to write more about it soon: theamericanconservative.com/articles/profi…

But repugnant as the behavior was, we can’t just write off the feelings of resentment, isolation, and disenfranchisement that drove this disaster. Much of it flows from the same forces that got Trump elected in the first place.

We ignore those at our own peril.

Some of that frustration is with the media, who blatantly ignored this summer’s BLM/Antifa riots. I’ve talked a lot about those. My schtick on here is media hypocrisy. It isn’t lost on me that these things matter & that lots of people are acting in bad faith.

Here’s one thread:

https://twitter.com/drewholden360/status/1287895193103015937

The media blatantly & unapologetically lied to the American people about the scope, scale, and impact of those riots and did so for partisan reasons.

That’s shameful, too. It matters & it’s worth discussing. It’s worth comparing these two episodes because the hypocrisy is clear.

But that failure can’t be used as a crutch to forgive or excuse what happened at the Capitol. We can’t give in to the temptation of hypocrisy simply because those we don’t like already have on something similar.

That’s moral cowardice. And we need to be better than that.

And there’s something infantilizing to all this that cuts against the conservative tenet of personal responsibility. While context may help us understand a situation it can’t excuse violence & destruction. These are points we’ve spent years reminding the left, with good reason.

And of all people, political leaders can’t be let off the hook. Words and actions have consequences - we saw that clearly yesterday.

Elected Republicans - including @HawleyMO, @tedcruz, and my old boss, @RepGosar, need to reflect on their roles in all of this.

Perhaps they have and they think they’ve done nothing wrong. Perhaps they believe that, while this is all unfortunate, their cause is ultimately noble.

But this needs to be an inflection point in the conservative movement. I remain hopeful that it can be.

In all this I’m trying - imperfectly - to balance the various things that I think are true with the white hot rage I feel about what happened yesterday.

It was an egregious, despicable attack not only on the institution but the idea of America. It was - and is - shameful.

I don’t know where we go from here. I don’t know how we can find the common ground we need to - with empathy and charity on all sides, hard as both may be. But I still believe that we can.

Part of that comes from talking about these things honestly. I worry we don’t do that.

I don’t know that I’ve got much to offer in all this. I’m a guy with a Twitter account, a spectator in the arena at best.

But I promise that I’ll keep doing my best to speak honestly, to apologize as much as possible when I err, and try to recognize the limits of my perspective.

Perhaps it’s foolhardy but I think a little bit of that attempt at charity might go a long way here in the coming days and weeks.