No, You Don't Get To Elect Felons And Murderers To Congress

Despite what delusions you may hold, we are still a nation of laws.

One of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her relationship with Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he couldn't be bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending to be outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he actually didn’t understand what was going on, and really being genuinely stupid. He was renowned for being amazingly clever and quite clearly was so—but not all the time, which obviously worried him, hence, the act. He preferred people to be puzzled rather than contemptuous.

• Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

There’s something sick and demented about the Rabid Far-Right not only trying to rehabilitate January 6th insurrectionists but to practically beatify them. We’re talking about murderers, thugs, and rioters, who not only did significant damage to the U.S. Capitol but are responsible for five deaths and hundreds of injuries.

And yet some are doing everything except short of canonizing them. WTF?

These people should not be held up for anything but ridicule and significant prison time. They’re criminals who broke federal law by attempting to prevent Congress from confirming the election of a legitimately elected President.

In a representative democracy, you don’t get to riot because your guy lost- in this case, by eight million votes. You don’t get to cry, “STOP THE STEAL!” and storm the Capitol when you can’t prove that shenanigans occurred.

They did not.

Far-right commentator John Zmirak appeared on “The Eric Metaxas Show” last Friday, where he likened those who stormed the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection to the Founding Fathers and equated the Democrats to the Nazis for supposedly persecuting these heroes.

Zmirak appeared on Eric Metaxas’ program to promote his recent column, “Will January 6 Be the New July 4 for Our Descendants?” Zmirak and Metaxas were particularly outraged about the 4-year prison sentence handed down to Nicholas Ochs, a member of the far-right group the Proud Boys that was instrumental in fomenting the insurrection and whose leaders are now on trial for seditious conspiracy.

During the discussion, Zmirak urged “the next Republican president” to pardon all those convicted for their roles in the Jan. 6 insurrection and then urge them to run for Congress.

I neither know nor care what John Zmirak wants or is advocating for. However, I do know that despite his apparent belief that his side gets to ignore the law whenever it serves their purpose, our legal system doesn’t work that way. There isn’t one standard for Democrats and another much lower one for Republicans.

Zmirak and Eric Metaxas can be “outraged” from now until the Second Coming of Pee Wee Herman if they choose, but that doesn’t. The law doesn’t allow for differentiation based on political affiliation. If you break the law, there are consequences. Period. John Zmirak doesn’t get special dispensation because he’s a Republican.

“The next Republican president needs to first pardon the Jan. 6 dissidents and then endorse them as candidates for Congress,” Zmirak replied. “I want to see a Republican Congress who’s the majority of Jan. 6 people. That is what we need in America: people who have first-hand experienced the jackboot of our elites and our new public health dictatorship on their faces, who still have the tread marks of the jackboots on their faces.”

No, these aren’t “dissidents.” They’re criminals. They violated federal laws by destroying federal property, assaulting law enforcement personnel, and killing and injuring people. That behavior violates federal law, and the perpetrators deserve to be incarcerated. Many have been so far, and many more will be.

That’s what happens when you break the law.

Zmirak compared the Jan. 6 insurrections to “the American patriots who survived the crackdown in 1773” and “went on to lead their new free country,” comparing the treatment of the insurrectionists to the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany.

“This is precisely what the Nazis did to take power in the 1930s,” Zmirak asserted. “They had their street thugs—the Brown Shirts, the SA—beating people up over politics. If those people fought back—like the Social Democrats or the Catholics or the communists—if they fought back, everyone will be arrested. The pro-Nazi judges would let the Nazis go and prosecute the communists and the socialists and the Catholics who had defended themselves against the Nazis, and this is how the Nazis took power in Germany, and it is what the Democrats are doing in the United States today, and we should simply call them what they are: Neo-Nazis.”

Wow. That’s some seriously overcooked rhetoric. And the Nazi comparisons are just wacko enough to push Zmirak’s argument over the edge of reasonableness.

His comparison is, of course, pure, unadulterated bullshit. There’s no basis for contrasting the treatment of January 6th insurrectionists with how Nazi Germany persecuted Jews. To even intimate such a comparison is offensive to those persecuted and murdered by the Nazis.

When he brings Godwin’s Law into the equation, Zmirak’s argument loses what little credibility it may have had to begin with. No credible evidence or argument could come close to linking the treatment of January 6th criminals with the murder of Jews during WWII. To compare what the Nazis did to what Democrats are doing today is not only offensive, but it shows utter ignorance of history.

The Nazis murdered 11,000,000 Jews, Roma, homosexuals, and others they deemed “unworthy.” In no world is there ANY basis for comparing the deaths of those who were murdered to the treatment of the January 6th insurrectionists. John Zmirak needs to get a grip.

No one who compares the actions of the Justice Department (DOJ) with that of the Nazis can be taken seriously. So when Zmirak claims about Democrats, “we should simply call them what they are: Neo-Nazis,” all he’s doing is demonstrating how laughably ridiculous both he and his argument are.

Perhaps if he crawled out of his mother’s basement and regained contact with the real world, he might understand that nothing he’s claiming could or should be considered anything but a joke.

Except that no one’s laughing.