I heard it while driving yesterday. It was one of those things that made me reconsider.
The insurrection of January 6 was one of the most awful events in our history. Of that, there can be little doubt. The storming of the U.S. Capitol to disrupt and potentially cancel the acceptance of the Electoral College vote, however perfunctory and functionally unnecessary, is an act of treason, whether its perpetrators understood it to be that or not (and I doubt that a majority of them did, caught up in the moment of hysteria; it would be pitiful if not so obnoxiously stupid and naive).
Now, Congress is trying to authorize a commission to study the event. On its face, it looks like overkill. We know what happened and why: the outgoing president, an evil and power-lusting man, tried to get someone to do his dirty work for him--certainly not new; it's his method of operation--and somehow get the presidency back, nullifying a fairly enforced election in which he lost.
His minions came close. They got inside the building and might have descended upon an ongoing session of the House and Senate had quick-thinking guards not diverted them in time. I almost wish they would have entered the chambers and been overwhelmed by the moment, as I think they might have been.
The FBI has taken control of the investigations of several hundred individuals who breached the building, violating federal law. Many of them will receive just punishment. They are certainly acting and saying things that indicate their remorse. I'm not sure I believe them. But it isn't like nobody's already looking into the event and analyzing it.
They came from all over the country; the clod who helped tear up House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office hailed from Arkansas, for instance. So a Congressional inquiry, representing the nation as a whole, isn't exaggerating the scope.
They laid ruin to the place, too, in a gesture of nihilistic devastation. Walls and windows were wrecked and smashed. Some people also decorated the premises with their bodily waste. I think a commission might remind us of the disrespect.
But I'm no longer sure it should stop there. I heard someone comment on Wisconsin Public Radio and, just the way he put it, it makes some sense. To summarize: After all, some people also wrecked federal buildings elsewhere in the country. Shouldn't that be investigated, too?
I found myself considering that. Before the assault, people had also attacked federal buildings in Portland, Oregon and Minneapolis, Minnesota--certainly not as bad as the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, but bad enough. Should that be simply written off as violent, inappropriate tributes to George Floyd and Black Lives Matter?
Little has been written as follow-up. But those buildings are federal property, too. Should those attacks be considered tolerable because their origins are more closely attached to justice as January 6's is? If not trumpeted as also wrong-headed, wouldn't that encourage others to renew those attacks in the near future?
If nothing else, the caller lit me up. I get it now. I get where they're coming from. To understand is not to agree, but it is to accept that a deeper explanation and exploration of events may be more valuable than once thought.
This is dangerous territory. Anyone advocating for a commission to include the earlier attacks stands to be accused of making them equivalent--and, rhetorically, anything can be twisted to make it so. And anything that makes Black Lives Matter look less than sincere, or ultimately harmful, runs the risk of being labeled racist. Nerves are still taut. Exaggerations are still close to the surface.
But the notion isn't absurd. The danger is in Republican spinning of such an allowance, making it sound equivalent to January 6. Granted, what happened in Portland and Minneapolis was serious and definitely destructive, not the kind of place you want to take protest. But paying 'official' attention to it won't necessarily blow it out of proportion. What it may do is, in fact, reduce the inclination to add those incidents to conversations unnecessarily. It may in fact add proportionality to them, not detract. That sunlight, too, may be an excellent disinfectant.
Of course, the mere suggestion that such investigations be added might also create a chat storm that can't be turned away. And, to be honest, Democrats haven't had the entire corner on definitive facts.
Take, for instance, the ever-invoked Steele Dossier, funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign to trash ex-, which Devin Nunes made a point to haul out whenever given the floor in the House investigation of ex-'s first impeachment. That's the one, if you recall, that had ex- peeing on some bed in Moscow that Barack Obama was said to sleep on. There is no reliable evidence of that, as well as some other corruptive tidbits that Steele tried to forward. While that didn't make other investigated facts wrong, it cast doubt in some eyes upon Democratic reliability.
But the absence of the Dossier, or even its accuracy, wouldn't have changed many Republican votes, either. They had their own nonsense machine based on their hysteria, which certainly churned out far more non-facts and questioning that tried to disguise innuendoes; you only needed to listen in to about half an hour of the hearings to conclude that.
So, if given the opportunity to investigate whatever makes them feel better, will Republicans conduct themselves with less vitriol, stick to reasonably determined facts, and make judicious conclusions? If you've seen Nunes, Louie Gohmert, Alex Gosar, Matt Gaetz, and Jim Jordan, and now the seriously unhinged Marjorie Taylor Greene, let me ask: Do you trust them to do that?
There is also, of course, the time factor, and what to consider first. If Portland and Minneapolis were on top of the docket, the Republicans would try to delay open hearings for weeks, maybe months (which they might try to do anyhow), leaning into the 2022 mid-terms, which most pundits believe will go in their favor. Their anxiety would disappear in a hurry. Delay is a powerful tool. If it were forced to go second, Republicans would accuse Democrats of diminishing their importance with protocol.
All of this would put Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer into a tough spot. But putting one's head down and forging ahead is proving, however justified, to be bad politics. The odds of the Senate approving a singularly-directed January 6 investigation appear to be long. Why approve of something awful done by people who would overwhelmingly vote for practitioners of your party, without demanding that the other side's folks stand accountable as well?
So there it is. If everybody would just behave, one might be able to the to the truth of the matter. But it's quite evident by now that Republicans don't care or even want to know the truth, at least not the whole truth, or enough of the truth, about anything as long as they can win anyhow. Some have tried to act like January 6 was a tourist venture gotten a little out of hand, and others keep counting their state's 2020 votes as if they will find several thousand errors after the actual results have been reviewed three times or more.
This continuation of matters long since decided, this commitment to find something wrong with something so as to cast tremendous doubt where none rationally exists is the newest justification for future meddling caused by them, not by others. Something as momentous as an investigation of the worst breach of our very Capitol since 1814 would be otherwise be an invitation to establish incontrovertible truth. But it's also a naive wish to the now ridiculous question, as said by Rodney King: "Can't we all just get along?"
We've known that answer for a while now. I wish it were otherwise. It isn't. Maybe there will be a commission on liberal outbursts as well, but I think we know what to expect from it.
Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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