The legacy media and the Washington ruling elite—two groups united in their loathing for ordinary Americans—cling to the “insurrection” narrative because it allows them to play victim, and to portray the unorganized populist opposition as dangerous. Thus, we are to believe that an “insurrection” led by powerless working-class activists from the countryside posed a threat to the nuclear-armed machine that is the federal government.

The fruits of this narrative—from the elites’ perspective—are already evident. For four years, the FBI—which can’t be bothered with hunting down rapists and real criminals—has relentlessly pursued the “insurrectionists.” Virtually all of these “criminals,” which the FBI would have you believe are violent felons, have been convicted of petty crimes like trespassing. Others have been convicted of “crimes” that were perfectly legal throughout the first hundred years of American history, but became “crimes” as the federal government gradually destroyed the Bill of Rights after the Civil War. These newly invented “crimes” include unconstitutional thoughtcrimes like “seditious conspiracy.”