It is clear that President Trump did not incite the riot and invasion of the capitol building. His language was clear, that they should cheer on Congress and go home peacefully. That’s a fact.
People died in D.C. Many died during the Obama years when the mob violence increased to the point where leftists were targeting police officers.
That said, it was clearly a really bad idea to get angry people together. We’ve seen this for several years now.
Was there an Antifa attack on federal offices? Yes. They trapped federal employees in their building in Seattle. The state and municipality did little or nothing. Just this weekend in NYC Antifa was on the march en masse. And in Seattle they were beating up people. They should wear brown instead of black.
Biden likes mob violence. He says that Antifa is just an idea, and if that’s not support and tolerance I don’t know what is. His people, plus a few Hollywood personalities, even bailed out of jail some of the perpetrators.
The angry mob that burned Kenosha has had little criticism. The majority of criticism has been leveled at a young man who defended himself from a beating. And that criticism and prosecution continues despite there being video of him defending himself.
Sure, there have been evil players on social media. At least that’s Amazon’s excuse for toppling Parler. But never mind Twitter being host to virulent anti-Semites and other evil leftist players who brand all who brand as “domestic terrorists” all who disagree. It’s not like Kathy Griffin got equal treatment to President Trump with her beheading image. Oh, boo hoo.
Both of these scenarios displayed that elected officials often make really bad choices. Trump should not have had the rally. But hindsight is 20/20.
“Christian nationalism,” a reviving of the old Reconstructionist mentality, played into the problem in D.C. Christian nationalism tries to establish a Christian ownership of the nation now. Reconstruction tried to revive what was lost. Both are essentially nostalgic and romanticized views of the past. (Not all, not even the majority of, evangelicals who support Trump subscribe to Christian nationalism.)
The Christian ought raise himself/herself (theologically, not socially) above these problems. If we identify directly with either conservative of liberal we make our worldview subject to these frameworks. But if we place these frameworks under the scruple of a Christian ethic then we can judge them fairly. Specifically, conservatism (with its accompanying capitalistic economic) can tend to be naive about social problems. That needs to change. Likewise the liberal can be naively optimistic about human capacities and that creates all sorts of issues. The leftist refuses to be criticized and that’s even more dangerous. We saw what happened with “scientific atheism” in the 20th c. Not good.
All of Antifa, Christian nationalism/Reconstructionism, Twitter, Amazon, Biden/Obama/Harris, and Facebook, amount to a magisterial (top-down) attempt at social reform. They may succeed (at least temporarily) should they receive enough money from communist China. But the Christian history in the NT and promoted in a number of books recently suggests a more “radical” (that is, popular) approach as the better solution. Home schooling, history, and culture coupled with a rich evangelism & theological training. We’ve been too much the imminent/immanent revivalists for more than two centuries.