Tucker Carlson's Chansley Tapes

This should go without saying, but: of course it's possible that the video Carlson showed of Jacob "The QAnon Shaman" Chansley was misleading. A large amount of video showing someone acting peacefully doesn't guarantee that there's not other video showing him acting violently. But the video of him acting peacefully tells us something. Furthermore, if there's video of him acting violently or threateningly, we need to see it--and, so far as I know, we haven't. And, of course: the suppression of the peaceful-Chansley video was concealed from us--and, apparently, from his lawyers. 

   Hopping up a level: we know that the left controls the media, much of the bureaucracy, and most or all of our powerful institutions. And we know that the cornerstone of the left is political correctness--the subordination of the alethic and the epistemic to the political. And we know that they lie to us relentlessly, whenever such lies advance the projects and ideas of the progressive left. Knowing what we know, we should, I think, conclude that the Chansley case is yet another case of leftist politics trumping truth. 

   Now, I don't think Chansley should have been walking around in the Capitol with a flag-spear. I'm not saying he's blameless. I'm just saying what I'm saying: that he was apparently a helluva lot more peaceful than we were led to believe. And that we were likely lied to. And that this is now routine.

   In general: I think the riot was appalling and inexcusable. It also was--to some extent--an insurrection. However, it wasn't an insurrection to any great extent. It was largely a peaceful protest, largely a violent riot, and a little bit of an insurrection. In my view, pretty much any admixture of the latter two things is beyond the pale. Nevertheless, we have to clearly understand how much of each was in the mix.

   I'm somewhat skeptical of such comparative judgments, but I do think it's instructive to compare the Capitol Riot to the May 29th 2020 BLM riot outside the White House. The events are similar, but the coverage was radically different. Of course the events are very different in that the former involved breaching/entering the Capitol, whereas the latter did not succeed in breading/entering the White House. That makes the cases importantly disanalogous.