The January 6 Hearings Are Feckless Political Theater
The January 6 Hearings Are Feckless Political Theater
The Democratic leaders who are supposedly “defending democracy” spent the Trump years enabling him, and have perpetuated his policies.
The January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol was a condemnable, criminal, murderous act, aided and abetted at the highest levels of the Republican Party.
So what makes the January 6 Committee hearings such a farce?
The Democratic leaders who are supposedly “defending democracy” spent the Trump years enabling him and his thugs, funding his policies, and giving him expanded powers. And despite having majority control, the Democratic Party has perpetuated some of Trump’s worst policies.
The hearings have become an opportunity for Trump’s associates to repair their public image. Liz Cheney voted with Trump 93% of the time, but is now a liberal hero. Even contemptible GOP stalwart Mike Pence, one of Trump’s most loyal accomplices, is being lauded as a “patriot.”
Over the past few years, Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden have repeatedly called for a stronger GOP. This, after having rehabilitated George W. Bush and his war criminal buddies. In recent months, Biden has called Mitch McConnell a “rational Republican” and a “man of honor.”
Simply put: The duopoly will never hold itself accountable.
As Chris Hedges eloquently explains:
The committee, which most Republicans boycotted, hired James Goldston, a documentary producer and former president of ABC News, to turn the hearings into engaging television with slick packaging and an array of pithy soundbites. The result is, and was meant to be, politics as reality television, a media diversion that will change nothing in the dismal American landscape. What should have been a serious bipartisan inquiry into an array of constitutional violations by the Trump administration has been turned into a prime-time campaign commercial for a Democratic Party running on fumes. The epistemology of television is complete. So is its artifice.
On June 17, Peter Daou spoke to Senate candidate Matthew Hoh (Green Party), and WA-02 congressional candidate Jason Call about current events through an anti-establishment lens. In particular, the January 6 hearings and how the ruling parties shield one another from meaningful consequences.