Senate Report
Yesterday, a combined committee of the United States Senate issued a report on the Insurrection. They outlined the failures in security that allowed a mob to breech the Capitol Building, vandalizing and searching for leaders. The report shows critical failures in the leadership of the Capitol Police and other law enforcement agencies. Those failures were so egregious, ignoring clear warnings for months about the upcoming “wild time”, that it’s hard to imagine them to be unintentional.
But the Senate committees intentionally did not examine the cause of the crisis in the first place.
Bipartisanship
We hear a lot about “bipartisan cooperation” these days. There is a group in the Senate, Democrats and Republicans, who are trying to find “common ground’ where they can work together. Senator Joe Manchin is willingly the “poster boy” for this bipartisanship, but he’s not the only one, and not even the only Democrat who longs for the time when the Senate worked “across the aisle” for the good of the nation.
And this committee report is an example of where bipartisanship stands today. They can blame the Capitol Police. They can blame the FBI, and Homeland Security, and the other intelligence gathering agencies that failed to prepare for January 6th. But blaming all of those folks for what are clear mistakes, fails to reach the most important conclusions: who caused those events.
Bomb Maker
When a bomb goes off in a downtown building, we can discuss failures in the metal detectors. We can blame the folks who examine the internet for hints and clues and bombings. But in the end, there’s the person who built the bomb, the person who planted the bomb, and the person who triggered the bomb. They are ultimately to blame.
Who built the Insurrection? Clearly it was the 45th President of the United States. He convinced his supporters that the election was stolen, a theme he repeated since before the 2016 election, and heightened after his failure in 2020. He invited those supporters to Washington on the day of the Electoral Vote certification. And he did it for the exact purpose of disrupting that certification process. The 45th President was the bomb maker.
He and his minions gathered those supporters on the Mall, and harangued them about the unfairness of the electoral process. He tried to convince them that they were acting as patriots, saving “their America” from “those others” who were “stealing the election”. It was the 45th President who planted to bomb.
And he literally sent them to the Capitol, promising to join them (of course, he didn’t show up). He told them to “convince” Vice President Mike Pence to disregard the Constitution and try to overthrow the election results, he sent them WITH PURPOSE to stop the United States Congress. And they did exactly that. The President triggered the bomb, he lit the fuse.
And while “the bomb” was going off, he refused to do anything to stop the struggle. Even when he finally sent a message telling the Insurrectionists to go home, he continued to express his “love” for them. He loved the bomb he created, he loved the disruption it caused. Like every crazed bomber, he didn’t mind that there were casualties along the way – they were “sacrifices” for his cause.
Infected
The United States, even the leaders of my own Party, have hoped that somehow, we would “get over” the Insurrection and Trumpism, and “go back” to the bygone days of bipartisan cooperation. But the Insurrectionists haven’t gone away. We all thought that those “Stop the Steal” supporters would dwindle, become a marginal fifteen percent that could be ignored and would ultimately disappear.
But like any infection, putting a Band-aid over it doesn’t solve the problem. The infection is festering and spreading, and we may be sure that it will poison our body politic for years to come. Infection requires clear acknowledgement of the disease, treatment, medication, and even surgery to cure.
And until we excise the infection, it will continue to poison every other aspect of our political discourse. President Biden’s and Senator Manchin’s longing for the “good old days” of collegiality can’t happen as long as our Democracy remains contaminated. It’s not their fault for wanting things to be better. But it’s their duty to recognize the symptoms, diagnose the problem, and cure the disease.
And it’s their duty to give up their dream of bipartisanship, and deal with our reality. It’s the only way to save the nation.
Although this may be an unpopular observation, the events of January 6 parallel events in Germany in the early 1930’s. Germany was a democracy, but a guy wanted to change that, and broke any roles to achieve that.
Our own Capitol was saved from “the burning of the Reichstag” only by pure luck.
Ironically, our democracy was saved by the incompetence of the leader who tried to overturn it. Just imagine if Trump’s “brownshirts” had been better organized and fully armed.