“250 Years and Political Violence.” Recorded on June 23, 2026. As the United States approaches that 250-year-old mark, we also face a point of increasing division, a not-so-United States. In the past decade, one of the hot topics has been political violence, which every news anchor, politician, and pundit will tell you is entirely, in every way, inappropriate and wrong. They will tell you this in the same breath that [they] utter words of celebration for 250 years of Americanism. So, I think it is best to establish some basic truth and fact regarding what is generally referred to as hypocrisy.
While everyone is generally celebrating the founders of this country, it is important to make some basic and simple comparisons that are, in fact, quite timely, I would suggest. The founders were considered traitors; they were guilty of treason and sedition; they fomented riots; they committed acts of economic terrorism and the infamous Boston Tea Party was not the only instance of such sabotage. The good people of Concord and Lexington openly attacked and then specifically targeted every British soldier they saw. They then pursued them all the way back to Boston, while they retreated, killing as many as they were able. These are just some of the basics. There is so much more in all of them – acts of political violence.
If today you were to rally people to take down the government, you would be labeled a quote domestic terrorist and find yourself shipped off to one of the Federal Bureau of Prisons black sites, ATX or Terre Haute, held incommunicado. Ask members of the American Indian Movement who are still alive about such things, and they just wanted their rights and sovereignty. Ask people their opinions about the January 6 event, and the word treason is thrown in every direction. Let us compare the Boston Tea Party to any of the direct actions taken by a group known as the Earth Liberation Front. Idealistically, they are much the same, are they not? How about the good people of Concord and Lexington, who did, with all deliberate intent, attack and kill the king’s soldiers? We loudly applaud this as heroic and extraordinarily American— then, in the same breath, insult those who merely throw rocks or water bottles at armed and armored police.
In fact, the actions of modern-day police in American life are easily comparable to the actions of British troops, who believed that they could act with impunity. To deny any of these comparisons is to ignore the truth and facts of history. The only real difference was the time span between escalations and responses, a matter of technology, distance, and little else. Political violence is, apparently, acceptable as something to be loudly celebrated, unless you choose to exercise those loud statements from paragraph two of the Declaration of Independency in the modern day. Today we, that is, they, the new nobility, do not approve of the same actions. They frown on such exercises of liberty, free will, self-determination, and especially self-defense. Violence is only acceptable going down the hierarchical ladder, as the king and the king’s soldiers lord over the peasants. Violence of a political nature must never be allowed to go up the ladder, at least not again, and not to further the cause of liberty and justice.
My name is David Annarelli. You can find me on substack.com at David Annarelli, Instagram at david_annarelli, and you can Google me for more. Thank you very much.
These commentaries are recorded by Prison Radio.
