The uniquely American fascism of the Senate

Der Fuhrerbuster, Mitch McConnell

I’ve been a writer for 54 years, and I don’t think I’ve ever come across anything so insane, so bloody unbelievable, so flatly inexplicable that I couldn’t find the words to write about it.  But what happened in the United States Senate yesterday has brought me there.  I spent several hours last night and several more this morning trying to write a headline for this story.  Here are a few I came up with:

“We’re letting the criminals vote to let themselves out of jail.”

“Why don’t we just invite the Proud Boys back in and give them a vote? OMG.  Mitch McConnell just did.”

“The al Qaeda exception.”

But none of these prospective headlines captures the absurdity of the Senate rules that allowed Republicans to use the filibuster to protect Donald Trump and themselves from an investigation into the attack on the Capitol on January 6. It was like letting the defendant sit on his own jury, vote “innocent,” and cause a hung jury.  

Perhaps the best way to understand how utterly un-American and anti-democratic Senate Republicans acted yesterday is to journey with me back through the mists of time to the year 2002, November 16, to be exact.  Do you remember what happened on that day?  I didn’t until I looked it up.  What happened on November 16, 2002 was that the United States senate voted to approve the legislation that created the commission “to prepare a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11 attacks.”

You’re going to just love this.  They did it on a voice vote.  No “nay” votes were recorded.  The senate voted unanimously in favor of the commission that looked into the worst attack by foreigners on the homeland since the founding of the country.

Yesterday, of course, the Senate voted against creating a similar bi-partisan commission to investigate the circumstances surrounding the worst domestic attack on our government since the country’s founding.  The legislation was stopped by a filibuster engendered by the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell.  He asked the members of his caucus “as a personal favor” not to vote to advance the legislation on the commission.  He filibustered the legislation establishing the commission.  He killed it.

Two things are striking about that vote yesterday:  the first is that those voting to establish the commission won by 19 votes.  In any democratic system other than that which rules in the United States Senate, the commission would have been voted into existence yesterday.  Only because 60 votes are needed to advance legislation if there is an objection from the Senate floor did the vote today count as a defeat.

The other thing that’s interesting is that if you compare the Senate vote to establish the 9/11 commission with its vote to reject the 1/6 commission, what happened is equivalent to what would have happened if the Senate gave al Qaeda veto power over the commission vote in 2002.  Effectively speaking, the Senate allowed the Republicans to say, no, we don’t think it’s a very good idea to investigate the attack on the Capitol incited by Donald Trump.  They voted “no” because the attack on the Capitol was a Republican attack. It was their people who attacked the Capitol on January 1.  It was Trump supporters, Republican Trump supporters, who broke down the doors and rushed into the Capitol and vandalized the place.  There were no Democrats who broke down the doors of the Senate Chamber and looted the desks of the Senators who had fled in advance, and in fear of, the attack.  There were no Democrats who have been arrested for assaulting the Capitol.  It was all arch-conservative Trump supporting Republicans.

It was a mob of Trump supporters, Republican voters, who were unhappy that their man lost the election, who wanted to stop the certification of the Electoral College ballots and try to put in a fix to return their man to the White House.

So in what was surely a nod to the rules of the monarchy we overthrew when a revolutionary war was undertaken to establish this country more than 200 years ago, the United States Senate instituted what should go down in history as the al Qaeda exception.  From now on, whenever legislation is undertaken by that august body that would, say, create a new law against robbing banks, the Senate should allow bank robbers on the floor of its chamber and give the bank robbers a vote on the legislation concerning them.  If the Senate is to consider federal laws against child abuse, they should invite child abusers onto the floor to vote to shut down debate on those laws.

Because that’s what the brilliant system that rules the United States Senate just did.  It allowed those with the most to lose from an honest, bi-partisan investigation of the assault on the Capitol to reject with a minority vote the commission that would have carried out the investigation into the crimes of their own supporters and the leader of their own party. 

Through this door ladies and gentlemen -- the door of the United States Senate – lies the self-destruction of our democracy and the end of the United States of America.  What happened yesterday in the Senate was fascism.  It was a uniquely American fascism with its roots in slavery and the Jim Crow years of using the Senate filibuster against civil rights and voting rights.  And now it is the fascism of Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell and the modern Republican Party.  

It will be our fascism, too, until we act to end the filibuster and take back our country.