Draw the audience off the sidelines and into the game

Today’s weather forecast was for afternoon sun and highs up to 95F. Thankfully, my indoor-outdoor thermometer barely cracked 80F and did so late in the day. Tomorrow is supposed to be another hot one, maybe up to 92F. I hope they’re just as wrong. I’m rather enjoying some time without furnace or air conditioner. The January 6 Committee hearings are underway. I’m not watching, though I’m reading live blogging discussions. Brandi Buchman of Daily Kos discussed the three big lies that will be told about the committee and the events they are investigating. Keep these lies in mind while you watch or read summaries. Those passing on this misinformation have, of course, reasons to discredit the proceedings. 1. There was widespread fraud in the 2020 election. This is the lie, now 19 months old, that is the basis of what happened on January 6th and is still being claimed by Republican candidates for various levels of government who want the nasty guy’s blessing. I’ve written about this lie several times and Buchman provides several links to sites that debunk it. 2. It wasn’t an insurrection. A lie. Let’s see – lots of weapons and the intent to revolt against civil authority. And more than 800 people have been charged with crimes of varying degree associated with the effort, including Proud Boys and Oath Keepers charged with seditious conspiracy. 3. The Jan. 6 committee isn’t a real committee and has no power. Again, a lie. Courts have repeatedly affirmed the committee is valid and its powers were approved by the full vote of the House. This lie usually comes with the lie that it is a partisan witch hunt. When the committee was formed Republican members were included and Republican Liz Cheney is vice chair and a driving force. And a bipartisan committee had been shot down by Republicans. Buchman has been doing live blogging during the hearings. Her notes from the second hearing held yesterday showed how many people – including the pandemic price and princess – told the nasty guy that he lost the election and should give up the fight and not start the big lie. Many said there is no evidence for that lie and refuted every claim that the nasty guy tried to make. The nasty guy listened to one person, Rudy Giuliani, who was the only one who said there was fraud and the election could be overturned. Summary: Yes, he was repeatedly told he had lost and there was no evidence for fraud. And 62 cases before various courts were thrown out because they were unsupported by evidence. Joan McCarter of Kos discussed another topic of the hearings. This is a case of following the money. Shortly after the 2020 election the nasty guy sent out dozens of email solicitations a day asking donors to give to his Official Election Defense Fund to fight election fraud. They raised $100 million in the first week and $250 million overall. The committee found no such fund existed. It was a scam. Instead, the money went to a new PAC, various conservative institutes, and various ventures headed by the nasty guy, Paul Manafort, Mark Meadows, and others. And about $244 million unaccounted for. Rebekah Sager of Kos said that Attorney General Merrick Garland has a tough decision on whether to prosecute the nasty guy for the crimes documented in these hearings. She also wonders if he has the guts to do it. Garland has said he is watching the hearings and will follow the facts wherever they lead. That doesn’t say a whole lot. Sager wrote:

Barbara McQuade, an NBC legal analyst and former U.S. attorney warned that filing criminal charges against Trump in his attempt to subvert the elections “will very likely spark civil unrest, and maybe even civil war.” However, “not charging [Trump] is even worse because not charging means you failed to hold someone criminally accountable who tried to subvert our democracy,” she explained. ... The other issue Garland is likely facing is the ethics of whether or not prosecuting Trump is in the best interest of the nation—an issue that essentially pits the two parties against each other. “I don’t think we want to be the kind of country where this happens often,” McQuade told NBC News. Joyce Vance, a former U.S. attorney and NBC News legal analyst said, “Prosecuting Trump destabilizes the country more than it puts it upright.”

Andy Schmookler of the Kos community took on the rebuttal. He started with that quote from Vance.

Really, have we learned nothing? Is it not obvious that whatever the dangers involved in prosecuting a former president — We don’t want to become one of those countries where the law is used to destroy political opponents; The people on the right are going to be up in arms — by far the greater danger is that the rule of law will not be upheld even when a President blatantly attacks the very foundations of the Constitution he swore an oath to protect and defend? Is not the rule of law dangerously weakened, as the whole nation has watched when — again and again — people of power and privilege commit serious crimes and get away with it?

Schmookler discussed Obama deciding not to go after the crimes of the Bush II administration – such as that torture memo. Obama wanted peace to pull the nation together not figuring out Republicans had declared they would do all they could to obstruct his administration.

Lesson learned: the liberals are so afraid of the fight that the Republicans can get away with anything. All of which helped clear the way for someone so unthinkable as Trump to be invested with the powers of the Presidency, which he abused to a degree orders of magnitude beyond Nixon or any other American President. ... If a battle must be fought, what better ground to fight it on than upholding the rule of law, and defending the Constitution against a conspiracy to seize power against the “will of the people”? Something has arisen on the right — in part because of the chronic weakness with which the Democratic side has opposed it — that truly needs to be fought and defeated. It now profoundly endangers the very survival of American democracy.

Mark Sumner of Kos wrote that Putin may be the only world leader outraged at the committee’s investigation of the nasty guy. Sure, there were reports that Putin meddled in the 2016 and 2020 elections, but that was quickly ignored. Even though these hearings have said nothing about Putin (so far?) ...

But for Putin, there’s one thing that really stands out as a disappointment—Jan. 6. After all, Trump may have been this close to becoming dictator for whatever remains of his life, but Putin was about to really win it all. If things had gone the other way on Jan. 6, it would have been a victory beyond Vladimir Lenin’s wildest dream. An authoritarian United States that breaks away from democracy, ditches NATO, and embraces an isolationist white nationalist leader with a fondness for big military parades? The effect on domestic politics in the United States might have been shattering; for the rest of the world, it would have been an absolute reset of history. Putin was one moment away from hanging a Soviet banner over an endless empire.

Though Putin is angry at the revelations, he’s staying quiet. He knows his fortunes in Ukraine can change a lot if Republicans control a chamber of Congress – money and support for Ukraine would dry up quickly. So Russian media is contemplating how to meddle to save the nasty guy, or at least flip Congress. That’s their key to winning in Ukraine. Even better (for Putin) would be to get the nasty guy back in the Oval Office. Sarah Binder tweeted:

Public, primetime show offers Jan6 panel chance to socialize the conflict: Draw the audience off the sidelines and into the game. As Schattschneider wrote (1960!):"Watch the crowd, because the crowd plays the decisive role.

A bit of searching showed the book to be The Semisoverign People: A Realist’s View of Democracy in America by Elmer Eric Schattschneider. Binder included this excerpt (and I think it is referring to what Americans call soccer):

Political conflict is not like a football game, played on a measured field by a fixed number of players in the presence of an audience scrupulously excluded from the playing field. Politics is much more like the original primitive game of football in which everybody was free to join, a game in which the whole population of one town might play the entire population of another town, moving freely back and forth across the countryside. Many conflicts are narrowly confined by a variety of devices, but the distinctive quality of political conflicts is that the relations between the players and the audience have not been well defined and there is usually nothing to keep the audience from getting into the game.

So get in the game. About a month ago I wrote about a white nationalist group intending to disrupt and intimidate a Pride event in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Yes, an attempt to make a safe space less so. The event is now history and David Neiwert of Kos reported on what happened. The Pride event took place as planned and several hundred people joyously celebrated. Yeah, there were a few people who wandered around with AR-15s, but did nothing else with them. A few people around the perimeter spouted “groomer” nonsense, but easily ignored. Then late in the day the local police pulled over a U-Haul van. They were a block away from the park entrance. Inside were 31 members of the Patriot Front fascist organization. The Southern Poverty Law Center declares they are a hate group. Police said they came to riot through the Pride celebration, then riot through downtown. Police swarmed them, put on flex cuffs, ordered them to kneel or sit. Then in full public view pulled off their masks and took down names. A resident had spotted the men piling into the van when they were two miles from the park. Though the resident had notified the Kootenai County Sheriff, it was the Coeur d’Alene that did most of the response. Neiwert listed the names and home towns of those arrested. Only a couple of them were from Idaho. Six were from Texas. A few others came all the way from Alabama, Missouri, and Illinois. Those who were released on bail wandered downtown trying to proclaim their innocence and panhandle for money to get home. Neiwert also posted photos of the Pride event, the characters who wandered around with their AR-15s and other weapons, the protesters, and the arrested rioters. Lauren Sue of Kos reported Coeur d’Alene Police Chief Lee White said they got 149 calls after the Patriot Front arrests. Half of them were congratulatory. The other half, anonymous of course, screamed, yelled, and aimed death threats at the police for doing their jobs.