The ongoing COVID pandemic and the federal response thereto cannot be allowed to slip into the background as the summer arrives and immunizations begin to offer the prospect of a return to something like normalcy. Half-a-million people have died, the economy was slowed, civil society was strained, and in all likelihood, an administration was brought down as a result of what at least appears to have been a sub-optimal response.
On 6 January, a summoned, directed mob descended upon the Capitol in order to stop the constitutionally-mandated counting of certified Electoral College votes submitted by the several states. This followed two months of public propaganda designed to incite them and to undercut confidence in our election system. In the five months leading up to election day in November, then President Trump began to lay the seeds for all that later bloomed by asserting time and again that the only way he could lose would be if the election were stolen.
In both cases, there is a good bit to be learned from the actions of government and private actors throughout. In the latter, a half-hearted effort at impeachment left more questions than it answered, and in the former, elation that the former President was replaced should not be allowed to dim either the obvious failures in his administration’s response or the just as obvious successes (the vaccine/Warp-speed development program seems a flat-out success).
The problem is that not only is the Congress not cut out for the work of deep fact-finding required to learn from these experiences, but also that there are too many people in Congress with vested interests in not learning those lessons at all. It is time for the Congress to appoint commissions with subpoena power and task them with writing full investigative reports on what happened and why. The American people have a right to a common set of facts, and there simply is no such record to speak of.
Putting together such a commission is always a tough job, as to have credibility, it must reach (generally) non-partisan conclusions while employing a number of partisan commissioners. This trick is usually solved by appointing leaders of “unimpeachable” quality and discernment, but these seem in short supply of late.
Just Peaceful Protesters
As the dust clears on the 6 January insurrection and the man who planned, summoned, and directed it hunkers down for the really fun part of his post-presidency (fighting all manner of tax evasion and tax fraud charges that could bring him and his DNA-sharing minions down with him), a new narrative is developing among the Trumpenproletariat. Ironically, it is a version of the narrative that accompanied last summer’s riots, which apologists explained away with the whole notion of “most people were peaceful” and did not burn, loot, or destroy. This was of course, both mathematically and factually correct, but beside the point. Plenty of people WERE looting and burning and destroying, and if they weren’t, no one would have given a rip about the peaceful protesters.
Yes, there were plenty of people in the vicinity of the Capitol who did not break into the Capitol building, destroy property, rifle through desks, pose for selfies, and defecate in corners. There were plenty of people who stayed outside cheering them on. Mathematically and factually, this narrative points at these peace-loving citizens and because they seemingly outnumbered those who entered the Capitol, the “few bad apples” consideration should be applied.
This is of course, inane. Every one of those people were there for a rally called “Stop the Steal”. At the time they were rallying, there was in the entire world, only one place where an action was underway, the stopping of which would enable their desires. That was the counting of certified Electoral College ballots from all 50 states. And that is why their more aggressive friends committed the insurrection for which hundreds of them now face the criminal justice system. Those who did not enter the Capitol were not “peaceful protesters”. They were accessories to insurrection. And every one of them should be ashamed, were they capable of advanced human emotions.
Parting Shots
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