1. THIS WAS NOT THAT.

I’m already tired of seeing Trump fans argue on friend’s posts that what happened yesterday was equivalent to rioting and looting at Black Lives Matter protests.

Pictured: what awaited BLM protestors on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 2020.

2. There is no comparison. A few people showed up to those protests and rioted/looted. Most were peaceful. You know how I know this was different? For 1 thing, we have seen numerous protests within Washington D.C. None of them involved breaching the walls of the Capitol building.

3.Instead they were greeted with overwhelming force, even to the point that the president had peaceful protestors driven out with tear gas and force so that he could waltz out to a church for a useless photo op.

4.I have been to protests in New York and locally and though we might have made rude gestures at Trump Tower, there wasn’t a large contingent (or even a small one, as far as I know) trying to bust in and vandalize it, much less any government building.

5. While there were some attacks on police stations in other protests, that is a much smaller thing, and they were met with force and arrests much more effectively than what we saw yesterday.

6. And BLM protests were in response to actual facts and the deaths of fellow humans at the hands of representatives of power and supposed order, not based on the ludicrous rantings and ravings of a president unmoored from reality.

7. What were the goals of people breaching our nation’s capitol building? We know the basic goal of BLM—to call attention to injustice and demand change. The goals of yesterday were to try to prevent/disrupt another usual step in the process following a free and fair election.

8. There is no rational comparison between the insurrection egged on by a lawless president and a few people either desperately acting out from the agony of watching their fellow humans getting killed or a few others using protests as an excuse to wreak havoc. THIS WAS NOT THAT.