Lessons Of January 6

 

If the January 6 Committee hearings have changed minds, there’s only one direction they can have gone. But people who needed to watch probably didn’t. Taking cues from Trucker -- partisan witch hunt, fake news -- despite the fact that the witnesses were lifelong Republicans, they stayed away.

Maybe some second-thoughting Trump voters tuned in. If so, they’d have learned plenty. For those who haven’t had time to watch them, last week’s is all it should take to convince anyone of Trump’s and his cohorts’ deceptions and outright lies. Every American who values democracy ought to see it. Here’s a few of the salient revelations:

A persistent Foxian theme blames it all on Nancy Pelosi. Didn’t act, didn’t call for the National Guard. It’s a now-obvious lie promulgated even by R leaders whom we saw standing right there in their insurrection hideout, listening as she called various officials asking for that, and more. It’s on video!! Which, yet again, confirms the bottomlessly low regard they have for their voters and for the truth. How many times have the Foxotrumpified repeated it; swallowed it like steak and potatoes?

Also made clear were the many times, many ways Trump was told he’d lost the election fair and square. And that he’d privately acknowledged it, refusing a public admission because it was “too embarrassing.” Repeatedly, he was told his claims of fraud were false; repeatedly, he told his rally-goers he’d won in a “landslide” anyway. For that, there are only two possible explanations: he’s clinically insane or he’s the worst, most dangerous kind of liar. Either way, he should never be allowed within a Pinocchio-nose of the Oval Office again; the fact that he was ever there is an irremovable stain on our country’s electoral processes and enduring proof of right-wing susceptibility to calculated misinformation.

Those who still support him, ignoring the irrefutable evidence, are the political equivalent of flat-earthers; or believing there are litter boxes in schools for kids who identify as cats. It’s hard to accept that, in exceptional America, there are so many and that they were made to submit so easily. But there they are. Ready to vote in less than three weeks. 

Even the right-wing Wall Street Journal came around, writing: “…What the committee has accomplished is to cement the facts surrounding Mr. Trump’s recklessness after Nov. 3 and his dereliction of duty on Jan. 6. The Justice Department and Mr. Trump’s own campaign repeatedly told him that his fraud claims were without basis. Whether it was willful blindness or intentional strategy, he kept repeating them…” Welcome back, WSJ.

The Committee also made clear that the Secret Service knew, days in advance, of plans for violence on January 6. Which means Trump knew, too; yet he ordered metal detectors removed from entry points to his up-whipping of the crowd that day. Makes one wish those texts and emails hadn’t been “accidentally” erased, doesn’t it?

Worse, a top-level aide has opined that Trump wanted elected officials to be killed, so he could invoke the Insurrection Act, declaring martial law, as a path to maintaining power. Hard to believe? Consider the deaths resulting from Trump’s and his aides’ efforts to squelch Covid-19 truth, because it “reflected badly” on the “president.”  

R leaders don’t call out Trump’s lies because they’re an excuse to impede Democratic votes. Justified by whipped-up belief in non-existent voter fraud, election deniers are being put in charge of elections, while thousands of “poll watchers” are training to intimidate selected people at polling places. Candidates such as Kari Lake, running for governor of Arizona, are already saying they’ll only accept results if they win. Senator (!) Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) says President Biden wants to keep the pandemic going so more people will vote by mail.

No one should fail to see where this leads: non-acceptance of any election they lose; discouraging all voters but theirs. Ending democracy by default and discouraged disengagement.

Another example: Trump-successor hopeful, Florida’s Ron DeSantis, just brazenly eased post-hurricane voting rules in three Republican districts but not a single Democratic one. How confident he must be in the right-wing disinformation machine’s ability to deceive voters nationwide. 

Meanwhile, getting things done, “soft on China” President Biden, who’d previously rescued Trump’s imploding economy and created millions of jobs, just crushed China’s semiconductor industry, and “anti-Israel” President Biden achieved a significant diplomatic agreement between Israel and Lebanon that had eluded prior presidents (and one “president”) for decades. Has anyone heard about them?  

If all Americans valued truth-telling, competence, and bettering lives, every Republican running in November would lose. Then, to the sound of pig wings flapping, their party might reengage in the business of our democratic republic.