Rioters on January 6, 2021, stormed the white house building, put up confederate flags, overwhelmed the security forces, held hostage and replaced the US image of liberty and freedom with an image of mob control reminiscent of the French Revolution. All these despicable acts were meant to stop the very foundation and pride of this country.
Expression of protests and reform are critical for a country to progress but they cannot be violent, based on hatred and destroy the very ideals that constitute democracy. The rioters caused and justified their action by comparing to those in the black lives matter movements.. One may disagree with BLM, and that is perfectly fine to have your own opinion, but they are based on ideals in the US constitution and hundreds of years of mistreatment and exploitation that is still continuing in black people’s lives and that is supported by facts.
Again, one may disagree with BLM but one cannot argue that this upheaval is as morally correct as BLM. This mob did not want to improve their lives or fight for a respected belief but instead they turned to violence, to disrupt democracy simply because they didn’t get their desired political outcome. Politics is extremely important but achieving your political goals are not life-threatening whereas if BLM don’t achieve their goals then injustice and discriminatory practices will continue against them. This is proven by US news, where a third of all people who die due to the police are blacks and 17% of the black people who die are unarmed. Blacks are 1.3 more likely to die from police brutality than the average of 13%.(US News).
Violence should be condemned in BLM and the riots but the black lives movements were mostly peaceful, according to time.com who states that 93% of BLM protests were peaceful (time.com). Yet, the entire despicable riots were violent or used other’s acts of violence to achieve their goals. Violence never should be involved in trying to achieve progress because it is horrifying, damaging and simply not effective but this destructive “movement” not only used violence but they did so because of their unhappiness in accepting the political decision of the majority. If a group or groups are unhappy with a political decision, then vote. The beauty of democracy means if you are unhappy with your leaders, then vote them out when given the chance to do so but do not try to use violence as a tool to destroy the nation, simply because you simply cannot accept the decision of the majority and can’t wait until the next election to vote those leader out.
The events of January 6, 2021 will forever remain a critical event in both human and US history,. They are scary, detestable and unforgettable and it is easy to follow the dark path that humanity seems to be speeding toward and yet I believe that humanity will reverse course and go onto a brighter path.
