It wasn’t all that shocking when Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol building last Wednesday. The entire event was chaos, but what confused me was how people could have possibly justified this. 

Due to the election results, many Republicans, specifically those who supported former President Donald Trump, were angry for lack of better terms, calling the election rigged and unfair. 

Those supporters ended up storming the Capitol Building in D.C. and entered the building. During this time, members of the Senate were discussing counting electoral college votes for confirmation of President-elect Joe Biden’s victory. The members hid behind chairs to protect themselves from what most would call the “mob.” A woman was shot inside the Capitol, and there was also a podium taken from the building during the protest.

The public’s reaction to this was divided. Some supported the breaching, or riot as many call it, while others were entirely opposed to what happened. Of course, Facebook is the one place you will find arguments and disagreements. 

Justifying this event wasn’t something I was expecting. The fact that people justified this, but not the Black Lives Matter protests that occurred last summer not only confuses me, but angers me. People called the storming a simple protest, but called the BLM protests “riots” and “violent” and continued to bash the movement. The problem I ran into is that people were using the burning of cities as a primary focus for the BLM protests, completely forgetting the fact that the majority of the protest, especially in the beginning, were peaceful. But then the same people are saying the events that recently occurred were “peaceful.” An overlooked detail about the breach is that at least one improvised explosive device, shortened to IED, was found at the Capitol. 

I ended up having to argue with some people, including people I am close to, about the event.  Someone I was close to reposted a tweet on Facebook that said, “Anyone who has ignored BLM and ANTIFA violence until now needs to remain silent. The rest of us can continue to be against violence.” My comment to that is that you can’t justify what happened at the Capitol while also bashing on BLM. I was then told that what happened at the Capitol wasn’t violent. They also brought up the point that the Trump supporters were protesting peacefully before the event, but then went on to say that BLM was violent the entire time. 

There was more to the argument, and the lack of research done by the other party was evident. They ended up using words that shouldn’t have been used and were used way out of context. This also relates back to a previous column I did, where I discussed the lack of research done during the elections. 

Also at issue was how the police handled the situation. The lack of responsibility allowed the breach to happen and people to get inside the building. Then there was the fact that the police, including the National Guard, just stood there and didn’t really try as hard to get them out of the building. 

The way it was handled has become another debate topic, even though it’s evident that there are massive differences between how police handled the BLM protests, and how the breach was handled. Once again, I had to get into an argument about it, and the other party asked me, “Isn’t this what you wanted? For the police to not be violent when handling crowds?” I then had to explain that the context in which the police handled each crowd, and the fact that they were violent with BLM protests, but stood by and barely pushed the crowd back, is what is angering people, including me. 

The argument didn’t go anywhere, considering the other party didn’t quite understand why people were mad about it, and even said that the crowds were the same. I just had to let the argument be, as most people will have to do with this topic. People aren’t going to agree, and it’s best to just provide the facts and let them make their opinion.