Coop Scoop: "A clear and present danger to American democracy"
The 1/6 Committee hearings defy expectations
June 17, 2022
By Marc Cooper
Shall we we even bother to count the many ways the punditocracy got the 1/6 Committee hearings wrong? Probably don’t have enough space to do so but we can rehearse the highlights.
“Nobody is gonna watch this.” No, just 20 million viewers. Twice the TV audience of the World Series. “It’s all old news.” Except for the revelations that are new: the way the Proud Boys assembled before the Trump rally at the Capitol. The Georgia congressman giving recon tours. Ginni Thomas splashing around in the soup again. This time working with Coup Master John Eastman and egging on legislators to break the law. And most importantly, the high pressure campaign run by Trump against Pence and how Trump ordered him to block certification of Biden. “It’s not gonna have any impact.” A survey of leading regional newspapers this week showed extensive front page coverage of the hearings in every part of the country. “The average American voter is more interested in kitchen table issues.” As if Andrea Mitchell or Gloria Borger or Chuck Todd would as much as recognize an average American voter if one fell on them in the bathtub. What those voters are going to do or not going to do in November or any other time is something these clowns have no idea about and will learn about only after the fact.
The hearings have exceeded my expectations at just about every level. We don’t have to sit through the horrid perorations of the Gentleman from There or the Gentle Lady from over here. Nor have the hearings been over-produced by that Hollywood guy they brought in, and as many pundits mistakenly predicted.
They are successfully laying out for the country to marvel at the entire gangrenous half-baked conspiracy at the highest levels of the government to block the legitimate election of Joe Biden and to keep Donald Trump in power illegally. Hey, and they are ALL involved. All three branches of our democratic oasis. We’ve got several GOP congress-members up to their eyeballs in the plotting, execution and support of the proposed coup. We’ve got operatives from the White House, the Pentagon and DOJ lending their hands, and even the judicial branch got its licks in via the participation of Mrs. Clarence Thomas in the exercises.
On full display is an administration run exactly like a New York mafia cell with a half-mad, narcissistic, money-sick bully boss at the top and surrounded by a motley crew of incompetents, zealots, cast outs and hucksters.
Perhaps, most importantly, it is difficult for me, almost impossible, to see how Merrick Garland cannot prosecute these guys after so much of their criminality has been put out there and shoved right under his nose. I think the only question is whether DOJ indictments will come before or after the mid-terms. It’s a target-rich environment: Mark Meadows. John Eastman. Jeffrey Clark. These guys are going down.
And Trump? Well, contrary to popular opinion, he is neither immortal nor untouchable. He’s got a lot of incoming and to me it is a question of the law of probabilities as to whether he gets tagged. The Committee is putting a lot of emphasis on him having raised, in bad faith, $250 million to stop a steal he knew was not real. Nor did the money go to where it was supposed to. Out in the real world, this is known as interstate wire fraud a felony that can carry up to 20 yrs. In the clink. Trump is prima fascia guilty of this crime, just as he clearly broke the law in asking the Georgia Secretary of State to find 11,000 votes for him.
The most striking takeaway I got from the hearings was a sense of bewilderment. How could a country, for that matter, how could even 45% of the electorate give their vote and their support to such a miserable, broken and dishonest crook like Trump. It’s all so transparent and yet…and yet… you know the rest.
We can speculate over the coming months over those bigger questions raised by the pundits before the hearings happened, Precisely, just what difference these hearings will make. Well, history is made up by a lot more than electoral jockeying and it is obvious that history is well-served by the 1/6 committee. They are providing a needed antidote to the false narrative pushed by the Trumplicans. Just as we can speculate over what the future course of the DOJ will be and will Trump get his ticket punched.
To me, the bigger question is just how do the rest of us, how does American civil society assimilate this collection of rather astounding and frightening facts. What are we going to do about it? Are we going to leave the defense of basic democratic rights solely in the hands of Democratic Party electeds? Is there local organization we should be taking up in defense of democracy? What would a national movement look like that counters the fascists and the authoritarians? It certainly isn’t ANTIFA, but aberrations like ANTIFA can only exist when a vacuum is left by more serious and effective currents and organizers.
The next move in this saga is not Merrick Garland’s. The next move should be ours.
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