Trump lost the election and Antifa was not responsible for the violence in Capitol Building

I had my first experience with protesting back in 1968 or 1969.

It wasn't the Vietnam War that caused me and a group of my friends to take to the streets. It was the decision of Carroll Gum, the owner of Gum Mercantile in Newtonia to charge deposit on pop bottles.

It was bad enough having to plunk down a dime for a Doctor Pepper that used to cost three cents less, but now we had to fork over a couple of pennies more for deposit.

About five or six of us rode our bicycles to Gum's store and for the better part of a half hour we rode around the store chanting our slogans and waving our signs to the aggravation and/or amusement of Carroll Gum's customers. Our signs carried the message "No deposit," "Don't charge deposit," and Danny Hilton's plaintive cry to "Bring back the days of seven cent pop."

Finally, Carroll Gum stepped through the door of the post office, which was located on the east side of the store and confronted the protesters and he brought a weapon- a camera.

We didn't know what to think.

Was he going to take our picture and give it to the Newton County Sheriff's Office? Would we all wind up facing the juvenile authorities?

"Boys, I'd like to take your picture and put in the Neosho Daily News," Gum said and he convinced us to climb off our bicycles and pose for a picture.

After he took the picture, we lost interest in the protest, a response Carroll Gum probably anticipated, and went home. The photo never appeared in the Daily.

Quietly, though, without making a big deal about it, Gum stopped charging deposit and trusted us to return our bottles.

Looking back on that incident that occurred more than half a century ago, I always was a bit embarrassed that pop bottle deposit was the only wrong that I protested during the turbulent '60s.

I am not embarrassed any more.

Paying two cents extra for a Coke or a Dr. Pepper was a righteous cause compared to the clown caravan that took to the streets in Washington, D. C. Wednesday to "stop the steal."

In the first place, there was no steal.

Joe Biden won the election.

Donald Trump, who has whined his way through the four years of his presidency, insulting anyone who disagrees with him, started complaining about the results of the election months ago and telling us exactly what he was going to do.

If he won, there was no problem with the election. If he lost, it was rigged.

For some reason, Trump's followers have bought into the idea that everyone from the FBI to the CIA to judges that Trump himself appointed are members of the "Deep State."

The only "Deep State" in our nation's capital is the Deep State of Denial that brought thousands of protesters to Washington, D. C. Wednesday with the idea that somehow electoral college results that had been certified in all 50 states could be tossed out.

There were Proud Boys who were so proud that they disguised themselves, there was the Gravette, Arkansas man who invaded House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office and made himself at home, even taking a souvenir with him.

There was the Joplin woman taking her "righteous" anger at a supposedly stolen election to Washington, who insisted as so many other Trump supporters have been doing that it wasn't any of them that burst into the Capitol Building, it was Antifa.

Sure, it was.

Not one reputable news source has uncovered any evidence that Antifa blended in with the protesters and was responsible for the violence, but that doesn't matter to the people who are insisting that is what happened.

They seek their own news sources, none of which deal in anything resembling the truth and none of which deals in anything that resembles news, and parrot each other's claims. And they use the same type of fact-free bullying that the president uses, insulting anyone who dares dispute their twisted version of the truth.

Think about the things that Americans have protested in recent years- the Vietnam War, the right to vote, the killing of unarmed African Americans by police. No matter what side of those issues you take, there is no doubt that they are weighty, important issues.

What happened Wednesday was anything but that.

Thousands of people took to the street because Donald Trump is not man enough to admit that he lost  election and it was not due to any fraud.

Still, it would be too simplistic to place all of the blame for these thousands of people who took to the streets and the hundreds who felt it was their right to invade the Capitol Building on Donald Trump.

And it would be letting these people off the hook. 

Quite simply, their candidate lost. No election was stolen. 

Grow up.

Work harder and try to win the next election. Protest when injustice is done, not when you're inconvenienced because you have to wear a mask or when your candidate loses an election.

And stop blaming the violent portion of what happened yesterday on Antifa.

Take some responsibility and stop acting like the 45th president.