Let me open this with the first stanza of the 1988 song “Cult of Personality” by the band Living Colour:
Look in my eyes,
what do you see?
The cult of personality
I know your anger, I know your dreams
I've been everything you want to be
I'm the cult of personality
Like Mussolini and Kennedy
I'm the cult of personality
The cult of personality
The cult of personality
On January 6th, 2021, Ashli Babbitt was shot and killed by Lt Michael Byrd of the capital police, trying to storm the Capital building to overturn the election of President Joe Biden. Mrs. Babbitt was a supporter of former President Donald Trump, who likely now hold the title of the most controversial President ever elected to that office. The question now rages, was she a Martyr, Traitor, or Victim?
The election of Trump in 2016 was no ordinary election, nor were the four years that followed an ordinary Presidency; with lightning speed, Democrats and frustrated Republicans sought to do everything in their power to remove him, resulting in two failed impeachments, and the media moved with lightspeed, first to spew doom saying and then to eviscerate him, a bombing campaign that would make Sir Arthur “Bomber” Harris blush.
To quote the father of physics, Sir Isaac Newton, “Everybody continues in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a right line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed upon it.”
Amid the chaos and ensuing political and media war that followed, the average American became the victim in his moronic conflict. Some picked sides, while others picked apathy. Ashli Babbitt chose a side, an unwavering support for the cult of personality woven around Trump. A cult built through years by him as a TV personality, and conservative frustration brought on by an increasing partisan dupoloy. A cult pushed to the brink over 4 years by media political attacks (recall that Newton quote?).
To simplify, the old physics adage “every action has an opposite but equal reaction”. And not that I am justifying the actions of the mod of idiots that attempted to sack the Capital Building, but it was a reaction to 4 years of fire and anger.
Mrs. Babbitt is neither a traitor nor a martyr, but a victim of a political state redesigned to put everyone at each other’ throats, rather than find common ground. A state where people’s political affiliations is seemingly more important than our identity as American, even if the parties frame loyalty to them as “patriotic”. And that framing has led to leaders on the left praising her death as justice, then tragedy it is, while trying to elevate Biden as a new cult to follow; as the song says, “Like Mussolini and Kennedy”.
Finally, as they raise Lt Michael Byrd, the officer who shot Ashli Babbit, to status of a hero of the Republic, even though he was doing the duty he was paid and sworn to do; remember, the people he was protecting, Republican and Democrat, are the one who caused they’re fateful meeting that January. They are the cult leaders who push us and watch us tear at each other for their amusement.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xxgRUyzgs0
