Still no word from Salka

This is a follow-up to a letter I sent on Saturday, reproduced here.

Dear Assemblyman Salka,

I still don't really have an answer to my question as to whether you support insurrection or democratic government. I know you're busy, but the response seems both important and straightforward.

Returning to your thought that the attempted coup may have been the fault of leftists, is [WARNING: Link to Parler] this video the work of antifa?

For anyone who doesn't want to click on a Parler link, or in case it's no longer visible, the words are excerpts from Donald Trump speaking over the last four years, backed by dramatic videos and written text.

One example: there's a clip of Mr. Trump saying, "The time for empty talk is over. Now arrives the hour of action." The clip appears to be from his inauguration in 2017, in which context it is an entirely appropriate and moving sentiment. Used in the context of this video, following a lost election where Mr. Trump has failed to overturn the result by talking, and just days before the end of his term, the use of Mr. Trump's words can reasonably be interpreted as a call for violence.

Let's take up your contention that anti-Trump forces were behind Wednesday's insurrection, and extend that idea to this video. In other words, let's assume that it was made by "antifa" or someone other than Trump supporters, in order to lure otherwise-well-intentioned Trump supporters into betraying their country by resorting to violence to overturn an election.

I think that's an absurd set of assumptions, but it's the only way to continue your act of deflecting blame for the insurrection away from Trump supporters. And so, for the sake of argument and to be as generous as possible to your position, let's go with it.

Will this provocation work into tricking good Trump supporters into participating in a violent overthrow of the United States government?

Only if they believe the election was stolen from their hero.

And that's where you come in.

Local leader playing with fire

On Wednesday evening I wrote to Assemblyman John Salka asking whether he supported democratic governance or insurrection.

On Thursday morning I received a reply from Mr. Salka’s Community Relations Director who suggested that because it was such a hefty question and a nuanced topic, it would be best if I spoke with the assemblyman directly.

Although I agree that the question was hefty, I didn’t really see the nuance in the topic. A band of the president’s supporters had swarmed the Capitol to prevent the official confirmation of the legitimate election result. My question was in essence, “Do you think this is OK?” How much nuance was entailed in answering that?

Nonetheless, I appreciated the assemblyman’s willingness to talk with a random constituent, and we set up a time for yesterday afternoon.

My expectation was that Mr. Salka would make a clear and public statement about the legitimacy of President-elect Biden’s election as part of a clear and public denunciation of the insurrection that happened on Wednesday.

The short story is that he was not willing to do that.

He purports to believe that the election was stolen.

Regarding the insurrection, he doesn't want to be hasty with any public remarks before we really know  who was involved, because he heard that "antifa" or other leftists may have been involved.

The bulk of my long reply follows.

Dear Assemblyman Salka,

I appreciate you taking the time to talk with me yesterday.

I am disturbed, however, by how firmly you cling to hopes of narratives that will exonerate your political faction, in the absence of the least bit of substantive evidence for them.

Regarding your continued devotion to election conspiracies, I note your response in our exchange about affidavits, which you brought up as some of the evidence of wrongdoing. I pointed out that in some cases the affidavits were disregarded because the affiants hadn’t participated in observer-training sessions and therefore didn’t know that the behaviors they saw were absolutely routine.

This seemed like new information for you, but it gave you no pause. You learned that there was no substance in one of the things you thought discredited the election, and you didn’t reflect, you didn’t take a moment to ponder what other pieces of “evidence” might be equally worthless. You weren’t the least bit prepared to defend the position you were arguing. Nor did you care to. You abandoned that point and retreated to the platitude that we have no way of knowing what might be discovered eventually.

In other words, you have no evidence, and you don’t know of any evidence, but you’re still willing to question the integrity of the election.

In our call I mentioned Monday’s press conference by Gabriel Sterling, the elections manager for the state of Georgia, in which he systematically debunked President Trump’s baseless claims about the Georgia election. You can see it here. (And I made sure to find a clip with the awesome sign-language interpreter whom I mentioned.)

If you’ve got time to question the integrity of the election, you should be able to find 30 minutes to watch this. After you do, you should ask yourself the following questions: