EXTRA EXTRA: the events of the first week of 2021

Y'all feel like 2021 looked at 2020 and said, "hold my beer" ? Cause I kinda do.

This is what I have to say, friends. I'll say it once and you take it for what it's worth.

The storming of the Capitol was absolutely, 100% an act of domestic terrorism.

I am a scholar of terrorism. I've spent six years of higher education focusing on terrorism, and I have written and published scholarly articles on terrorism. I won't say I'm an expert, but I'll say I'm knowledgeable. I'm humble like that ;)

Every single person has a right to protest, okay? No doubt about that. Ask my daddy and he says: he fights for your right to believe how you want.

What is NOT ok was how these domestic terrorists behaved.

Now I'll make this distinction as well- we have a right to hold our government accountable. Further, we have a right to revolt against our government. Our country would not be here if not for the revolutions of our forefathers, if not for governments being overthrown. That's not what we saw, though, in spite of that woman with the onion in her towel crying about "tHe ReVoLuTiOn".

What happened this week was a group temper tantrum, the result of inflammatory rhetoric from numerous "leaders", and was completely pointless. Oh, and was an attempt to interfere with a legitimate act of a democratic republic- confirmation of a democratic election. Intimidation, further fearmongering, and orchestrated by QANON far-right extremists.

So, like I said- terrorism.

(PS, these people are fascists. FYI.)

Now, Twitter and Facebook banning Pres. Trump from their platforms- that is a major issue.

Not because I don't think his rhetoric had anything to do with this- in fact, purposefully or not I do think he holds some accountability for this act of terror.

Instead, because banning him from a platform sets a VERY dangerous precedent in a nation which supposedly values free speech.

This is not to say that hate speech has a place here, because it doesn't. But banning someone from a platform like this- I mean this is what dictatorial regimes do. That is not America; well, at least, it shouldn't be.