Rather, what has become clear over the last three years is that a group of Trump supporters, convinced for very good reason that the recent election – and therefore their beloved country – had just been stolen from them, gathered outside the Capitol to protest. Also in the crowd, it turns out, were a large number of undercover FBI assets, informants, and agent provocateurs – at least 200, according to House Homeland Security Committee member Rep. Clay Higgins of Louisiana, who has seen all the available evidence. Some of these “undercover assets,” reveals Higgins, were dressed up as Trump supporters and positioned within the Capitol building before any demonstrators were allowed in. That is proof, says Higgins, of epic “entrapment” by the Deep State, since the FBI could have just left the Capitol doors shut instead of opening them wide and waving in Trump supporters, hundreds of whom would later be arrested, prosecuted and imprisoned.

When the protesters were allowed to enter the Capitol, most proceeded to mill around like tourists, take pictures, some even shaking hands with police and thanking them – all captured on long-suppressed surveillance video. A small minority broke windows, damaged property, clashed with police, or trespassed into no-go areas. One protester, an unarmed Air Force veteran named Ashli Babbitt, was shot to death at close range and without provocation by a Capitol Hill policeman.

And yet, speaking for the Biden administration, Vice President Kamala Harris insisted with great pomp and faux solemnity that the minor riot that broke out on Jan. 6, 2021, was every bit as cataclysmic for the country as the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks that killed almost 3,000 innocent people, as well as the Dec. 7, 1941 Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor that took over 2,400 American lives and thrust the U.S. into World War II.

Disgraced FBI agent Peter Strzok went even further than Harris, insisting, “9/11 is nothing compared to January 6!”

Obviously, the Jan. 6 “insurrection” is exceedingly precious to the ruling elites. The question is why?

It’s not just because convicting, imprisoning, sometimes torturing, and destroying the lives of hundreds of supporters of Donald Trump is meant to terrify and intimidate into submission tens of millions of pro-Trump Americans. Indeed, many of these people did nothing wrong; one young man is just now being prosecuted three years later for having harmlessly ventured inside the Capitol building for a total of six seconds.

It’s also not just because activist judges and bureaucrats in state after state are trying to keep Trump off their state’s election ballots by citing the 14th Amendment’s prohibition against anyone holding elective office “who, having previously taken an oath … to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same.” That provision, added to the Constitution one year after the end of the Civil War to bar Confederate rebels from holding federal office, has been absurdly weaponized against Trump in more than 30 states.

Let's hit the pause button and zoom out to briefly consider the larger picture: These same ruling elites that cherish Jan. 6 are destroying the greatest, freest, and most successful nation in world history at breakneck speed. They’re intentionally flooding the nation with millions of illegal alien invaders, including mental patients, criminals, and terrorists. They’re indoctrinating the next generation of Americans with poisonous Marxist ideologies, from preschool to graduate school. They’re driving violent crime rates to astronomical highs in major cities. They’re decimating the economy, crippling major industries from energy to automotive, and driving millions of families into serious financial hardship. And of course, they’re encouraging the grooming and recruitment of countless children too young to vote or drive, to have their breasts or sexual organs amputated, all in pursuit of a “gender ideology” that is both deranged and demonic.

To hold on to power, therefore, they feel compelled to turn their opponents into monsters – or at least convincingly portray them as such. Otherwise, they’ll almost certainly lose when voters who have suffered so grievously under their perverse rule have the opportunity to choose a different course.

However, “turning their opponents into monsters” doesn’t just mean calling Trump supporters, conservatives, and Christians “racists,” “white supremacists,” “radical extremists” and “domestic terrorists” as they do day in and day out. Talk is cheap. Much more is needed by America’s maniacally ambitious totalitarian class if they are to retain their precious power and privilege in these pivotal times.

Fortunately, a few of America’s bolder and more astute commentators are starting to talk about what appears to be coming.

‘I think they hate our country’

Tucker Carlson, in his widely viewed Aug. 23 interview with Donald Trump, asked the former president: “I’m looking at the trajectory since 2015, when you got into politics for real, and then won. It started with protests against you – massive protests, organized protests by the left. And then it moved to impeachment – twice. And now indictment. I mean, the next stage is violence. Are you worried that they’re going to try and kill you? Why wouldn’t they try and kill you? Honestly?”

“They’re savage animals,” responded Trump. “They are people that are sick, really sick. … These are people that, I think hate our country, [if] you want to know the truth. When you see open borders, when you see these policies that they have and so many other things, it’s so sad to see. We have a country that’s very fragile right now.”

Carlson probed further: “Do you think we’re moving towards civil war? … Do you think it’s possible that there’s open conflict? We seem to be moving towards something.”

“I don’t know,” said Trump, then adding, “I can say this: There’s a level of passion that I’ve never seen. There’s a level of hatred that I’ve never seen, and that’s probably a bad combination.”

In December, Fox News’ Laura Ingraham picked up the theme: “What we are seeing in the courts, at the Department of Justice, and even in state attorneys generals’ offices – and given Democrats’ ‘Trump is Hitler’ rhetoric – is it not logical, even to consider, maybe to assume that some on the left are hoping to spark some type of civil unrest here?

“Which would be followed, of course, by a mass crackdown on civil liberties or the declaration of maybe a nationwide emergency, all as a way … to usher in, I don’t know, nationwide mail-in voting?” speculated Ingraham. “Remember, the left loved the lockdowns. They loved the 2020 riots, and they even loved the weapon that Jan. 6 gave them. And, of course, they really, really love the idea of universal mail-in or even internet voting.”

Question: What if, far from being horrified by a half-baked riot they absurdly claim is worse than any domestic conflict since the Civil War, the left actually loves the idea of violence on the right – the worse the better – since it perfectly serves their agenda?

Increasingly, the evidence strongly suggests today’s power-mad leftist elites not only intend to intimidate and discredit their political opponents by calling them terrorists, they mean to provoke actual violence.

Julie Kelly, the most dogged, in-depth national reporter on the Jan. 6 story, recently wrote this with regard to revelations in the long-hidden surveillance video footage: “The public undoubtedly will be shocked to see police officers from Capitol police and D.C. Metropolitan Police Departments viciously attacking crowds of people assembled outside the Capitol. [Capitol Police Capt. Carneysha] Mendoza’s testimony also confirmed that Capitol police officers used nonlethal ‘munitions’ on hundreds of individuals beginning shortly after 1:00 p.m. Weaponry included pepper balls – projectiles containing a chemical irritant shot from a launcher similar to a paintball gun – gas, rubber bullets, and flashbangs, a less-than-lethal grenade that likely caused the fatal heart attacks of two Trump supporters that afternoon.”

The harsh truth is, that the leftist elites are delighted with any riot, vandalism, or demonstration they can cynically label “terrorism” and “insurrection.” It serves their purposes. That’s why House Speaker Nancy Pelosi perversely refused to approve President Trump’s specific request for a major National Guard presence at the Capitol that day. Tucker Carlson recently called the whole Jan. 6 riot “a set-up.”

Remember, the Jan. 6 riot, like the massive “Stop the Steal” rally earlier that day, occurred precisely because the 2020 election WAS stolen. That is now irrefutably true; not only was there a large amount of documented election tampering but also, there is no official confirmation that the government and Big Tech colluded to suppress highly damaging and entirely true reporting about the Biden crime family shortly before the election. As multiple subsequent polls revealed, Joe Biden would have lost the election had the truth about his corrupt family not been deliberately suppressed.

That’s not just immoral and corrupt. It constitutes straight-up election rigging.

Just like corrupting a nation’s elections, suppressing a formerly free people’s speech and expression can also ultimately lead to violence. Then the government can crack down on those rebelling against their tyranny and treat them like criminals, as totalitarian leaders always do.

Here’s how then-GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy put it during a July event in Iowa, noting his belief that the Jan. 6 riot was the result of “pervasive censorship” of free speech: “Until we reckon with that reality, I worry that [Jan. 6] is the beginning compared to what's to come – unless we step up and speak the truth, restore integrity, and actually lead us to who we are as a people, rather than sweeping the truth under the rug.”

In other words, if the government censors and punishes truthful expression at every turn, if it cancels and suppresses conservatives and brainwashes their children, if it encourages the rigging of elections in a multiplicity of ways, as it has done, and if it engages in obviously corrupt lawfare to eliminate the most popular candidate in the country – a former president – all of this serves predictably and intentionally to encourage and promote violence on the right.

And on the left. For not only have the elites encouraged and promoted left-wing violence like the Black Lives Matter/Antifa mega-riots that set city after American city ablaze during the summer of 2020, killing at least 25, injuring 1,200 police, and costing $2 billion in property damage. (The corrupt establishment media routinely and straight-faced called them “mostly peaceful” protests.) But they also continually liken Trump supporters to white supremacists and fascists – and much worse, compare Donald Trump himself to genocidal mass murderer Adolf Hitler, likely the most reviled human being in world history.

This writer has previously documented how, throughout Trump’s four years in the White House, Democrats and the media relentlessly likened the 45th U.S. president to Hitler. This reckless defamation continues to this day. In the Dec. 20 edition of The New Republic, an article headlined “Trump Is Going All In on the Hitler Vibes” once again openly compares America’s 45th president to the Nazi mass murderer:

“They’re destroying the blood of our country. That’s what they’re doing. They’re destroying our country,” said Trump during a campaign rally in Iowa, echoing language from Hitler’s Nazi manifesto. “They don’t like it when I said that – and I never read Mein Kampf.” …

Trump has been dipping his toe into fascist rhetoric for years, but in a couple of Veteran’s Day speeches and same-day posts on TruthSocial, he described his Democratic rivals as “vermin” – a word Hitler regularly used to dehumanize his political enemies and the Jewish people.

Then on Jan. 6, 2024 – the third anniversary of the Jan. 6 riot – Biden himself, in a major speech delivered near historic Valley Forge, went there again, likening Trump to Hitler:

“He calls those who oppose him ‘vermin.’ He talks about the blood of America as being poisoned, echoing the same exact language used in Nazi Germany,” said Biden. “He posts the words that describe his 2024 campaign: revenge, power and dictatorship. There's no confusion about who Trump is.”

Unfortunately, repeatedly likening your top political opponent to the genocidal monster Adolf Hitler is not just absurd; it carries great peril. After all, most people agree that the most moral and patriotic response to the actual Hitler was to try to kill him, to end a terrible war and stop the murder of 6 million Jews and countless others. There were 16 known plots to assassinate Hitler, and even though all of them failed, the perpetrators and collaborators, all executed by the Nazis – from Col. Klaus von Stauffenberg to the revered German theologian Deitrich Bonhoeffer – are today universally considered heroes.

Finally, it’s impossible to truly understand why all this is happening – why the left is compelled to relentlessly demonize, oppress and silence normal, decent, traditionally minded Americans – without acknowledging the most fundamental, over-arching spiritual reality of human life. And that is that God the Creator is real, and there actually are objective, immutable, divinely ordained moral laws that human beings are called to follow, indeed that are “written on their hearts and minds,” as Scripture puts it. Because of this core dynamic of life, people who have fallen morally and spiritually to the point that they ignore their conscience, crave power, wealth and advantage, lie effortlessly and have lost any genuine caring for others, feel not only uncomfortable, but somehow mysteriously threatened and condemned in the presence of genuinely decent and moral people.

Put a little differently, there’s a real reason “woke” bureaucrats attack good parents at school board meetings as “domestic terrorists,” just for standing up and objecting to their kids’ being sexualized and brainwashed. Those parents, by taking a stand for common decency, are shaming and exposing evil. And the people who, consciously or unconsciously, have come under the control of very dark forces simply cannot stand the light. It literally makes them want to scream, as sunlight does to the proverbial vampire.

However, being creatures of projection, they always blame the moral, truthful person who makes them so uncomfortable. One recent mega-example: On Dec. 30, Department of Justice Special Counsel Jack Smith, one of Donald Trump’s chief persecutors, argued in an 82-page court filing that Trump’s claim to presidential immunity in the case against him relating to Jan. 6 and the 2020 election would open the door to mass assassinations, directed by Trump.

That’s right – Smith actually said that. “The Nation,” he argued to a D.C. Appeals Court, “would have no recourse to deter a President from inciting his supporters during a State of the Union address to kill opposing lawmakers ... to ensure that he remains in office unlawfully.”

Obviously, that’s wildly insane, but it does illustrate the core dynamic of today’s struggle in America: It is entirely spiritual.

What is cryptically called “the left” has grown so rebellious against God, truth, morality and reality that it feels compelled to put out the light, to silence voices of truth, to “call evil good, and good evil” as the prophet Isaiah put it.

Americans are truly living through a time when the most decent, honest and courageous people are, as the Savior of mankind put it, being “persecuted for righteousness’ sake.”

With 2024 promising to be such an extraordinarily consequential year, there’s never been a better time for good people to let their light brightly shine into the oncoming darkness.