Opinion | The Jan. 6 Committee Has Already Blown It - The New York Times
By: David Brooks (nytimes)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
By David Brooks
Opinion Columnist
What is the Jan. 6 committee for? Committee members and Democratic operatives have been telling reporters what they hope to achieve with the hearings that begin Thursday evening. My Times colleagues Annie Karni and Luke Broadwater wrote an article with the headline, "Jan. 6 Hearings Give Democrats a Chance to Recast Midterm Message." Democrats, they reported, are hoping to use the hearings to show midterm voters how thoroughly Republicans are to blame for what happened that day.
Other reports have suggested other goals. The committee members are trying to show how much Donald Trump was involved with efforts to overturn the election, so he is forever discredited. They are expected to use witnesses like the former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson to show exactly what went on inside the administration that day and in the lead-up to it. One lawmaker told The Washington Post that voters have shifted their attention to issues like inflation and the pandemic, so it is key to tell a gripping story that "actually breaks through."
No offense, but these goals are pathetic.
Using the events of Jan. 6 as campaign fodder is small-minded and likely to be ineffective. If you think you can find the magic moment that will finally discredit Donald Trump in the eyes of the electorate, you haven't been paying attention over the last six years. Sorry, boomers, but this is not the Watergate scandal in which we need an investigation to find out who said what to whom in the Oval Office. The horrors of Jan. 6 were out in public. The shocking truth of it was what we all saw that day and what we've learned about the raw violence since.
We don't need a committee to simply regurgitate what happened on Jan. 6, 2021. We need a committee that will preserve democracy on Jan. 6, 2025, and Jan. 6, 2029. We need a committee to locate the weaknesses in our democratic system and society and find ways to address them.
The core problem here is not the minutiae of who texted what to chief of staff Mark Meadows on Jan. 6 last year. The core problem is that there are millions of Americans who have three convictions: that the election was stolen, that violence is justified in order to rectify it and that the rules and norms that hold our society together don't matter.
Those millions of Americans are out there right now. I care more about their present and future activities than about their past. Many of them are running for local office to be in a position to disrupt future elections. I'd like the committee to describe who they are, what motivates them and how much power they already have.
This is a movement, not a conspiracy. We don't need a criminal-type investigation looking for planners or masterminds as much as we need historians and scholars and journalists to help us understand why the American Republican Party, like the Polish Law and Justice party, or the Turkish Justice and Development Party, has become a predatory semi-democratic faction.
We need a committee to explore just how close America is to rampant political violence. I had some problems with Barbara F. Walter's recent book, "How Civil Wars Start," but I wish all the committee members would read it if only to expand their imaginations.
She demonstrates that the conditions for political violence are already all around us: The decline of state effectiveness and democratic norms. The rise of political factions that are not based on issues, but on ethnic identity and the preservation of racial and ethnic privilege. The existence of ferocious splits between urban and rural people. The existence of conflict entrepreneurs — political leaders and media folks who profit from whipping up apocalyptic frenzies. The widespread sense that our political opponents are out to destroy our way of life.
We need a committee to look at how conditions in America compare to conditions in countries around the world that have already seen their democracies slide into autocracy and violence.
We need a committee to explore what political violence might look like in this country. Writing in Foreign Affairs, Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way foresee a future of "endemic regime instability": frequent constitutional crises, contested or stolen elections, periods of dysfunctional democracy followed by periods of authoritarian rule.
Writing in The Atlantic, George Packer imagines what might happen if a contested election were finally decided by the Supreme Court or Congress: Half the country explodes in rage. Protests turn violent. Buildings get firebombed. Law enforcement officers take sides.
I'm trying to understand why committee members are not gripped by these realities. After more than a century of relative democratic stability maybe it's hard for some people to imagine precisely how the fits of political violence that bedevil other nations could hit our shores. Maybe the committee members are imprisoned in the categories set by past investigation committees — Watergate and 9/11.
Either way, we need a committee that will be focused not on the specific actions of this or that individual but on the broad social conditions that threaten to bring American democracy to its knees.
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David Brooks is a "both sides" - er from way back. It is not surprising that he views the Jan 6 issue from the perspective that we fail to give enough attention to people who
In his column today Brooks does not even once mention a major goal, and a correct goal, of these hearings, and that is making sure that Donald Trump never runs for public office again.
We don't need to hear any more about how many Americans believe the election was stolen from Trump. The vast majority of people who believe that are already lost to conspiracy thinking and are in effect in a cult. We can write them off with regret if you like, but they must be written off until they change themselves. It is not the job of the rest of us to change them.
Brooks also apparently doesnt understand, because he doesnt mention it, how much the "movement" he is talking about as being anti-democracy is steeped in white nationalism and religious (Christian) nationalism. The "fear" that "their country" is being taken away from them permeates throughout the social plague we call Trumpism. Trying to sympathize with their point of view is not only a waste of time it is un-American.
Bullshit on all counts. Speaking of un-American, the Biden regime has ignored the Constitution and we almost had a Supreme Court Justice killed yesterday. There is nothing more un-American than the radical left. American law has been subverted for liberal privilege. Wait until you see how the people vote in November!
Hyperbole, to the extreme...
Who is this "Radical left" you keep screaming about? Oh they are American citizens, just like you and I. Exactly what makes their actions un-American?
I don't suppose that you would like to try and prove that assertion?
Where do you think that he tried to do that?
He is saying that we need to understand these points of view rather than defeat them. David Brooks has been doing this for years.
I agree that there is a gap between a rural and urban point of view, but the remedy for that is not cultish conspiracy thinking that permeates "the right" these days. You dont like the government? Fine, but that doesnt mean you have to fall for the utter nonsense we see in Trumpist beliefs.
Well, he came close with this...
The news media, all of it, has participated in the manufacture of the new sport of Politics. What used to be the province of humdrum hearings and boring baby campaign stops has been ratcheted up by a 24 hour news cycle to a continual fight to "save" or "take back" our country with the appeals to emotive reasoning. The problem is, when we are at a heightened emotional state, us humans don't tend to think the same as we do when we are calm. Think college towns and winning a championship. Now apply someone telling people that their way of life is endangered by the "Others" and that we have to fight to save "our" (just who the hell is a "Real American" anyway?) country. People gonna be stirred up real quick-like.
What we really need to do is examine our priorities and ask if we are being led by our emotions instead of by examination of the facts as they exist. The former leads to episodes like we saw on January 6th, 2021, the latter we have not really seen much of because it doesn't sell advertisement space or lead to clicks.
It is vitally important that the public realize that they do have control and that control is in voting. We have voted for a long time now and have the process fairly well ironed out. Register. Vote. Follow all the directions. Simple. But don't vote for a feeling, vote for the candidate who will do the best job that they are elected to do.
If there were millions of Americans on the right that were ready to take down the government Democrats would be on the endangered species list; not trying to get Trump one more damn time!
This described the Democrat Party, their media shills, and leftists to a T. "The widespread sense that our political opponents are out to destroy our way of life." Oh the sweet, sweet, irony!
Funny, we already had that with the BLM and Antifa riots. Just need to substitute law enforcement officers with Democrat politicians; the FBI; and DOJ. Getting ready for more of the same once the Roe vs Wade decision is finally handed down and released. Where was he before Jan 6th? Did he have his head stuck in the sand for all of the 2020 BLM/Antifa riots?
What this dumbass is really asking for is for the committee to put out a hit list of Republican politicians that should be barred from holding office. No charges, no trials, no course of repeal. The one sided highly partisan Democrat committee would never think of abusing their power and overstepping their authority. Oh wait, they have already done that every step of the way.
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Democrats wet dream.
, "Jan. 6 Hearings Give Democrats a Chance to Recast Midterm Message
Thats all it is. An election campaign. Nice of the New York Times to report the truth for once.
Why are neoliberal intellectuals so clueless? Or is it because these clueless neoliberals have been suckered into believing the conventional wisdom that the American people are freakin' stupid.
Democracy is not under attack. Democracy is not going to collapse. What is being threatened is central government. Are we supposed to believe that an 'insurrection' or a 'coup' would cause state governments to collapse and go away? The United States does not depend upon a Federal government; the very name of the country explains that. The Federal government doesn't even run goddammed elections. The Federal government only meddles in elections and meddles in American democracy.
The House committee claiming to investigate Jan. 6 is really about defending central government. These politicians are desperately trying to protect the institutions of a central government that only meddles in American democracy. The specter of civil war is about the fear that state governments will reject the legitimacy of central government. That wouldn't necessarily tear down the Constitution but that would definitely take power away from neoliberal autocrats.
The United States has always been about state governments being united. That is what the name of the country says. There was never any intent to create one government that rules them all; that's how Europe does things. And the United States was never intended to become another Europe.
The United States is becoming as screwed up as Europe simply because the central government has been weakening the national charter of union among the states and assuming autocratic authority over the states. Central government autocrats are trying to break through the barrier created by the Constitution that makes it impossible to govern without compromise.
The Constitutional impediment to autocratic central government that what protects the American democracy. The Constitution only allows the central government to meddle in democracy. The House committee investigating Jan. 6 only protects central government meddling in state run elections.