The Jan. 6 insurrection and investigation have shown us the enemy. If only we would say so
The institutions that make up this rickety democracy barely weathered the blitzkrieg that culminated on Jan. 6, as a House committee just reminded us, and may be ill-equipped to respond. My own institution, the press, is no exception.
Many journalists have been constant, clever and even courageous in documenting the particulars of this existential national disaster. But the day-to-day downplaying of its import and implications is excruciating — even, or especially, in the ostensibly objective corners of the media that remain. The treatment of the beginning of the Jan. 6 committee’s hearings this week was a case in point.
Sure, the then-president of the United States and one of our two major political parties fomented a political and physical assault on the foundations of our government, but would the hearing tell us anything new? Would the committee come up with a bombshell — other than, of course, the bit about an act of war on the constitutional order from within? Would the hearing make any impression on desensitized Americans, and shouldn’t we mistrust efforts to ensure that it would make an impression on desensitized Americans?
And what did the people responsible for this attack on our country think about it? Doesn’t everyone deserve their say, even treasonous liars? Shouldn’t we be talking more about inflation and crime — namely, every crime other than the one committed against our country?
And now on to sports. How about those Warriors? No, not the civil warriors — the basketball ones.
Media objectivity, which is more business plan than journalistic method, often comes down to crude, simplistic practice. We judge stories by newness more than consequence. We treat the major political parties as roughly equivalent in the face of all reason.
It runs afoul of such objective shorthand to point out that the Republican Party’s attempt to overthrow the government a year and a half ago remains the most important problem in this country now and for the foreseeable future because the party’s leaders are persisting in and perfecting the sabotage. It violates these customs outright to acknowledge that the only response with any hope of being effective is to vote against establishment Republicans, which in this country almost always means voting for Democrats.
No, not every registered rank-and-file Republican has anything to do with it. Yes, the party contains a minority of politicians who have to an extent recognized the truth and stood up for democracy — chief among them Jan. 6 committee members Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois — and who have to one degree or another been excommunicated for doing so. And of course even some of former President Donald Trump’s loyal lieutenants defected in a last-ditch effort to save their reputations (former Attorney General Bill Barr) or persons (former Vice President Mike Pence).
Others, like California’s own Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader who tried to kill this investigation in the crib, found their consciences for little more than the hours when their party and its mob put them in bodily jeopardy. That’s because the Republican Party proper, the one that holds power and seeks to retain or regain it by any means, can’t be separated from the continuing coup. Its indispensable ally is our failure to say so.