A black hole in place of a conscience
The January 6 committee wraps, and the GOP continues its and our slide toward authoritarianism
The January 6 Committee held its ninth and final hearing yesterday.1 Two of the main foci were 1) the growing worry of secret service personnel in the week leading up to the certification vote on January 6 that there could be significant violence at the Capitol, and 2) what was Donald Trump’s state of mind as the day approached. On the first point, I don’t think this part of the story has received the appropriate level of attention consistent with its gravity. It’s been much discussed, of course. But that there was a real possibility of mass killing of elected officials and what that says about the profundity of the events of that day has not fully sunk in. It’s well-established now that the shock troops of the attempted insurrection - including the Proud Boys and Oathkeepers - discussed very seriously killing significant numbers of government officials, including Vice President Pence, perhaps Nancy Pelosi, and others. We don’t know what might have happened at the moment of truth. But that possibility was a real one, and I think it’s been too hard to process what that would have meant for the country - for all of us - to have been fully reckoned with. And so it hasn’t.
About Donald Trump’s state of mind, as Vice Chair Liz Cheney made clear yesterday in her opening comments, and the subsequent presentation reaffirmed, that Trump knew very well that he lost. I’ve written previously about Trump’s singularly instrumental and self-serving relationship to reality. But there is no doubt that virtually every key official around him told him repeatedly that the claims of a stolen election were without merit. And as the committee showed yesterday, he himself acknowledged that fact, at times. This included, according to testimony by Cassidy Hutchinson, a conversation she says she witnessed, in which Trump whined about how “embarrassing” it would be for him to admit defeat. Hutchinson also added that Mark Meadows told her at other times that Trump knew he lost.
None of this is inconsistent with the notion that Trump has managed to “convince” himself that all of the lies are true. People lacking in conscience have capacities for compartmentalization and self-delusion that you and I can’t really fathom. And other actions he took after the election, the Committee pointed out, including orders to complete definitive drawdowns of overseas troops before January 20, also indicate Trump was aware that his window for conducting business as president was closing.
The GOP, as a whole, is becoming a pro-insurrection party. As we’ve discussed previously, a growing number of its aspirants for high office reject the possibility that elections they lose should be recognized as legitimate. American conservatism has increasingly openly embraced and fetishized Orbanism, as a viable path for America’s political future. Trump, the presumptive party leader, has become evermore unhinged, more openly espousing the deranged ideas of the Qanon conspiracy theory.
What all of these threads have in common is a basic assault on truth, facts and reality. Again, this isn’t a new feature of the Republican Party. But what’s so alarming is that reality-denial isn’t just a core feature of American conservatism now. It’s that you can scarcely even remain in the Republican party if you don’t accept it. That full frontal attack on reality and its role as a litmus test for viability in the party - is the necessary prelude to the GOP’s increasingly open disavowal of democracy itself. And of all of the information we’ve absorbed in the past 24 hours related to January 6, no single act of open contempt for facts has been more unsettling, nor better reflects that larger gathering storm, than the behavior of Louisiana Congressman Steve Scalise.
The committee released footage yesterday of congressional leaders, led by Nancy Pelosi, responding to the events of January 6 as they were unfolding. As many others have observed, her calm and poise as others were literally hiding from violent mobs, was striking. Pelosi is seen working the phones with everyone she can get a hold of, from the Pentagon and elsewhere, to plead for reinforcements to be sent to the Capitol to repel the violent mob. Among the congressional leaders standing literally by her side while she was doing all this is Steve Scalise. Indeed, one gets the impression, watching this footage, that while Pelosi is trying to problem solve in a crisis, all of those otherwise powerful men standing around her were doing nothing so much as rocking back and forth like fearful children, anxiously waiting for mommy to fix it.
I digress. Scalise, as I said, was standing right there while all of this was happening. And yet, Scalise subsequently did this:
Scalise himself is a lying piece of garbage. But that’s not the thing that makes me so sick. It’s that this brazen lying, emanating from the highest reaches of the GOP, and pervading its ranks at every level, is what happens when a political movement prepares itself to seize power and to reject the very idea that any mechanism for holding it accountable is legitimate. When Steve Scalise stood in front of a microphone on June 9, the first day of the January 6 hearings and said there were “serious questions” about whether Nancy Pelosi tried to delay intervention, he was one of a tiny handful of people in the world who had direct, firsthand knowledge that the opposite was true. He raised those “questions” anyway, both because he’s a pathological liar and because his only priority is to remain in good standing in a world in which such lying is what actually signals that you are a member in good standing.
Humans adapt to their circumstances. We can’t be in crisis mode all the time. When we first confront change we might feel a sense of alarm. But eventually we get used to it. We’ve been watching a slow motion disaster overtake the Republican Party for a long time now. That has made it easier to adjudge these more recent, deeply disturbing developments as part of a longer incremental arc of change, in which this cycle of alarm and adaptation recurs. All of the ways we’ve gotten used to Trump, normalized him as so many have said, in spite of what’s deeply aberrant about him, is a striking example. And we all have our own breaking points, the moments or events that convince us that we’re in new territory. I’ve experienced my own constant swirl of alarm, perspective-taking, reevaluation and recalibration of where exactly we are on the road to authoritarianism. And I don’t know for how long we can limp along the edge of the precipice it feels like we’re on.
But this Scalise incident still feels shocking to me, somehow (I know, I know). He’s the second ranking member of the House GOP. As Joe Scarborough pointed out this morning, Scalise is a victim of political violence, having been nearly fatally shot in 2017. And he was standing right fucking next to Pelosi when she was trying protect everyone in building, including freaking Steve Scalise himself. I just can’t get over that.
And I fear as I never have before for a country in which such behavior is not only normal, but is a prerequisite to remain a leader of one our two major political parties.
Technically, according to committee chair, Bennie Thompson, it wasn’t a hearing, but a meeting to conduct regular business, at which time it issued the subpoena to Trump. We’ll keep calling it a hearing.
For those of us who have been mumbling for decades that Rs want to rule, not govern, these past six years have been one horrifying confirmation after another. I hate being right.
Very interesting, thank you. Found the ‘not being able to get over’ the Scalise behaviour section very powerful. As a Brit, I’ve wanted to follow proceedings closer than I have done, mainly as I find it easier to read the detail instead of watching the hearings. Very much hoping they’ll publish it in some sort of Mueller report / 9/11 Commission fashion, but in the meantime do you have any recommendations from credible, impartial, sources? Hope you’ll do an overview / lessons learnt post as week... Thanks again.