The utter futility of a 1/6 commission

Everything you need to know about the folly of appointing a so-called “independent commission” to investigate the insurrection at the Capitol on 1/6 is contained in the first sentence of a story in the Washington Post yesterday about the collapse of the effort.  Nancy Pelosi is having trouble finding b-partisan support for a commission because “…Republicans face sustained pressure to disavow that it was supporters of former president Donald Trump who attacked the U.S. Capitol.”

That’s a little basic, don’t you think?  They’re in the beginning stages of negotiation over the nature and make-up of whatever commission they can eventually agree on, and the position of the Republican Party has hardened around the idea that it wasn’t Trump supporters who attacked the Capitol.

Can’t you see the first meeting of the commission?  It’ll be like the so-called “trial” of Donald Trump in the Senate for inciting the insurrection.  Investigators will put up a couple of big flat screens and start playing the video footage of the attack showing hordes of Trump supporters waving Trump flags shouting Trump slogans, and Jim Jordan and Devin Nunes and whoever else the Republicans put on the commission will start asking endless questions about all the Antifa infiltrators they can see on the screen.

The model for an eventual 1/6 commission is of course the 9/11 commission.  You remember that jewel, don’t you?  It took the congress more than a year to agree on the make-up and goals of the commission, and then they took two years to conclude basically that the FBI and the CIA had fucked up by not sharing intelligence that might have prevented the attack on 9/11 if they had been in a more cooperative mood.  Whoop-de-doo.  My daughter’s second grade class, which was then meeting with more frequency and doubtlessly more comity than the 9/11 commission, could have come up with that conclusion with less expenditure of money and waste of political hot air.

Establishing a commission to look into the event that took place at the Capitol on 1/6 makes about as much sense as conducting hearings the day after a big rainstorm about whether or not it rained. The thing about the insurrection at the Capitol is that it was the most well-recorded crime in recent history.  The dull fuckers who attacked the Capitol filmed themselves doing it. 

Any potential 1/6 commission would face two more existential problems.  The first is that the entire day, from Trump’s speech on the Ellipse to the attack on the Capitol itself, was premised on what we now call The Big Lie that the election was stolen from Donald Trump and he was the real winner.  The Supreme Court just rejected the umpteenth challenge to the result of the election, so if the Republican Party can’t at least agree that the election is over and it was decided honestly and accurately, how are they going to agree to any sort of conclusion about the causes and nature of the assault on the Capitol.

The answer is, they won’t. 

The other problem Nancy Pelosi faces in negotiating some sort of reasonable compromise for a sane examination of 1/6 is the fact that the Republican Party is currently in the midst of raising obscene amounts of campaign cash pushing The Big Lie that Trump won and that the attack on the Capitol was a big hoax.  So long as they can fill their political coffers spreading that fiction, they have very little motivation to take part in any effort that might get in the way of their money train. 

The Democrats’ best hope is to sit back and watch unfolding of the de facto investigation of 1/6 being conducted by the FBI and Department of Justice as perpetrators are brought to trial and found guilty and sent to jail.  More than 400 of them are currently under indictment, and prosecutors just secured a guilty plea from one of the leaders of the Oath Keepers they had charged with conspiracy in the planning and carrying out of the Capitol attack.  Evidence in many of the other indictments has already been gathered from videos of the attacks.  It’s going to be more and more difficult for Republicans to deny that Trump supporters attacked the Capitol as one after another of them heads off to the hoosegow in orange jumpsuits and jangling chains.

Democrats already have a platform to run on in 2022 and 2024.  The attack on the Capitol on 1/6 was an attempt to bring down the government.  It didn’t work.  In fact, the government is working better than ever.  Democrats have already passed the massive stimulus that is helping to get the economy booming.  Passing some sort of infrastructure bill will provide more evidence that the government can do things that have real and beneficial effects on the individual lives of citizens.  Joe Biden has rocked Republicans back on their heels with the aggressive way he’s taken on the challenges of running the country and using the government as a force for good in people’s lives.  

Democrats don’t need a 1/6 commission to remind everyone what just happened.  Republicans are doing it for them by clinging to a “leader” whose approval ratings never got out of the 40’s and who lost the White House, Senate, and House.  They want to run on Ronald Reagan’s old chestnut that government isn’t the solution, it’s the problem.  Let them.