DC riots show why liberals ought not negotiate with antifa terrorists

No matter how much President Trump rage-tweets his way through tirades rejecting the results of the election, come hell or high water, he will leave the White House on Jan. 20. More people voted for President-elect Joe Biden than for any other candidate in the nation’s history, and barring some tragic accident, he will become our 46th president come next year.

All of this makes the “Million MAGA March” both strategically inane and physically reckless and the antifa response to it so incredibly telling. Outside of the very, very far from 1 million men who descended on the capital to rally for Trump, Washington is home to fewer Trump supporters than you would find in any single small town in a very purple area. Barely more than 18,000 city residents, or 5.5% of this year’s turnout, voted for Trump, with nearly 93% of voters casting their ballots for Biden.

And yet, the march has been met with extraordinary left-wing violence not just against the protesters, but also against random residents and businesses in one of the bluest cities of America. Biden has repeatedly condemned antifa violence and called for unity in the wake of his election, and yet, left-wing rioters have harassed and violently assaulted Trump supporters as well as the surrounding people and places, presumably all proudly Biden-supporting, and for what? Trump was supposed to lose, and then, the violence was supposed to stop. But clearly, that was never the case, and it’s an excellent instruction in why nobody, including the liberals who won Biden both the primary and presidency, should ever negotiate with terrorists.

A great reason to have voted for Biden, and one that I heard from plenty of his early supporters, is that unlike Trump, he wouldn’t egg on endless partisan protests and would try to take down the temperature of the debate. A terrible and oft-repeated reason by our worthless commentariat is that electing Biden would tamp down the riots by giving the rioters what they wanted. We already knew this wasn’t true, and now, we have the evidence. And it’s understandable enough because the complaint from the radical Left, not ordinary liberals disgusted by Trump, wasn’t about Trump. It was about the liberal values of Western civilization as a whole.

After pussy-hatted protesters toted signs that said, “If Hillary had won, we’d still be at brunch,” livid leftists warned liberals that there would be no returning to brunch because there was too much work to do. But it wasn’t about the work; it was about depriving the public of any return to the decadence afforded to us by capitalism. Not just no more brunch or dinner or drinks al fresco, but no more shared culture of sports and art between conservatives and liberals. Violent vermin aren’t heading down to Alabama to loot R+25 districts; they’re savaging immigrant-owned businesses in Washington and Manhattan and Minneapolis and Portland.

The message is clear: Our fragile peace of ideological diversity, functioning markets, and leisure capitalism can be hijacked and destroyed at any moment by antifa leftists happy to wreck private property and public safety. Rule of law will be left in ruins, and if you don’t tamp down on any and all dissent, Kenosha can come to you. Ask yourself, why did all the storefronts take down their boarding the moment Biden beat Trump, and why had they all painted “Black Lives Matter!” and “Diversity is our strength!” instead of “Make America Great Again” on them.

If Trump had more competence, it would be fair to characterize him as a thug, and as the events of Charlottesville, Virginia, demonstrated, he has his own share of supporters no better than animals. But our new president and his powers that be must remind the nation that we do not negotiate with terrorists and that violence will be met with the full force of the law.