Over the past year I’ve become more and more of a fan of Dr Karlyn Borysenko, an organisational psychologist of good standing and reputation, who became,in her words, an ‘accidental political commentator’. Part of the reason why I’m a great admirer of Dr Borysenko is that she is not a ranting partisan screamer who points out the motes in the eyes of her opponents whilst ignoring the massive great planks in the eyes of those on her political side. Her arguments are often reasonable and as far as I can see based on fact and her statements are based on the gathering and examination of knowledge, rather than mere gut feeling or thoughtless emoting.
Another reason why I admire Dr Borysenko is that she and myself have something in common in that we have both crossed a political Rubicon in our lives because we have been presented with evidence that changed our minds. For me it was realising that Leftist economic and political ideas didn’t bring things like freedom or justice and also because I saw leftist policies hurting my own family. In the case of Dr Borysenko she was a lifelong supporter of the Democrat Party in the USA and like me a supporter of equality for gays and women and was generally a live and let live liberal (that’s liberal in the British rather than the American sense). This all changed when she was confronted with far left politics encroaching in areas where politics really should not have been an issue, in her case knitting and needlecraft, where she saw outrageous censorship of creators who wanted to create things like pro-Donald Trump knitted items. This caused her to speak up about such censorship and eventually become a supporter of President Trump, possibly not because she agreed with everything that Mr Trump said, but because the alternative, offered by the Left, was so damned awful.
Dr Borysenko has written what I believe is one of the better articles concerning the events of January 6th in the USA. It is a first hand account of what she saw and it makes for fascinating reading. It was published on the uncoverdc.com site on the 8th January and is a far more nuanced account of the incidents than I have seen from coming from most other outlets. I concur with Dr Borysenko’s statement in her article that the violence was wrong and needs to be condemned just as all incidents of political violence whether they be done by Trump supporters or by the Black Lives Matter/Marxists grouping.
I’ll put up a couple of excerpt from Dr Borysenko’s article but I would most strongly counsel that you go and read the full article in order to get the article’s full impact. As usual the original text from Dr Borysenko is in italics whereas my comments are in plain text.
Dr Borysenko said:
It’s been almost a year since I attended my first Trump rally and left the Democratic party after being a member for 20 years.
I never expected to become a Trump supporter and I certainly never expected to be part of a protest that stormed the United States Capital Building. But that’s exactly where I ended up on January 6th, 2021. In the last day, we’ve seen a lot of reporting about what happened at the Capital, some of it true and some not. I want to offer a different perspective based on my experience there.
Before we get started, I have to offer the compulsory disclaimer: I condemn the violence that occurred and break-in into the capital building, absolutely and unequivocally. I condemn it in exactly the same way that I condemn Antifa and BLM’s violence for months after the death of George Floyd.
But the reality is that, just like the BLM protests, there were many more people who were there peacefully than those who were rioting. Our first amendment protects our right to peaceful protest. That’s true if you’re peacefully protesting for BLM, and that’s true if you are protesting to support Donald Trump. It doesn’t matter if you like the cause that someone is a protestor for or not. Their rights are still protected.
I’ve been at all sorts of public disorder incidents when I was a press photographer. I’ve been to Greenham Common and Molesworth anti nuclear weapons protests, the Poll Tax riot the Wapping Riot and at all sorts of other similar incidents of public disorder. Because of my experience I can attest to what Dr Borysenko has said. The usual pattern with a very large demonstration is for the vast majority to be peaceful but for there to be a tiny number of hotheads who want nothing more than a fight. This is not something that is confined to either the Right of the Left, it is I believe in the nature of crowds when that crowd is motivated by anger over some issue or another.
Dr Borysenko then goes on to describe her experience of January 6th, the nature of the crowd and what she saw of the violent incidents that occurred. She like any normal person, wanted to flee the scene when the violence occurred, but decided to stay and watch in order to report matters as she observed them as she knew instinctively that what the MSM would report would be considerably different from reality. She also spoke about how the MSM that rightly condemned the violence of some Trump supporters or alleged Trump supporters, was the same MSM that said bugger all about the violence that scarred America for months that was caused by the BLM/Marxists.
Dr Borysenko said:
But the second reason I continued was actually more important. We’ve talked about how Trump supporters have been beaten down, demeaned, and insulted for years. Think of a woman who was in an abusive relationship, and finally, one day, she realizes that she deserves better and finds the courage to fight back. That’s the day she finds her inner strength, and that is a sight to behold.
On January 6th, I watched many Trump supporters find their inner strength. I’m not talking about the ones who were violent or broke into the building. I’m talking about the average people who were just there to stand their ground and say to the most powerful people in the world, “you answer to us.” It was an exquisitely beautiful thing to watch little old ladies, decked out in their finest fur to spend a day out in the cold weather and who had probably never done anything like this in their lives, to be the most passionate ones there. They love their country so much and were there to demand the attention of their government.
The analogy between the Trump supporters who have been constantly been demonised by MSM and by the Left and a battered spouse is I’m afraid a highly accurate one. Dr Borysenko is also correct in pointing out that this was an absolute minority of demonstrators who acted in a violent manner and that the destruction was far worse when BLM/Marxists have taken to the streets and whose violence has been all but ignored by the MSM.
As I said earlier. Dr Borysenko’s coverage of this incident is not as overtly partisan as it could have been and it is reporting that contains much nuance about what happened. If you are looking for an account of this horrible incident that is not tainted by the bias if the MSM or by those with an agenda either of the Left or of the Right to push, then you could do little better than to read the entirety of Dr Borysenko’s article via the link below.
https://uncoverdc.com/2021/01/08/the-media-is-not-telling-the-whole-story-about-january-6/
