The House voted mostly along party lines on Wednesday to create a select committee to investigate the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, pushing ahead over near-unanimous Republican opposition with a broad inquiry controlled by Democrats into the deadliest attack on Congress in centuries.
The panel, established at the behest of Speaker Nancy Pelosi after Senate Republicans blocked the formation of a bipartisan independent commission to scrutinize the assault, will investigate what its organizing resolution calls “the facts, circumstances and causes relating to the Jan. 6, 2021, domestic terrorist attack.”
The 13-member panel, which has subpoena power, will have eight members named by the majority party and five with input from Republicans, and is meant to examine President Donald J. Trump’s role in inspiring the riot. While the measure creating it does not mention him, it charges the committee with looking at the law enforcement and government response to the storming of the Capitol and “the influencing factors that fomented such an attack on American representative democracy while engaged in a constitutional process.”
By opposing an investigation, the Republican Party defends fascism and the opposes the rule of law and democracy.
A galling aspect of this is the obviousness of Republican contempt for democracy and the rule of law. The GOP is blatant about it. The only thing that matters now is power and wealth. Other than corrupting and destroying government, here is no Republican Party governing vision or concern with the public interest. Attaining and exercising raw power for party and donor advantage is the only morality and vision. In this regard, the Republican Party is uncompromisingly fascist and very much like any other purely self-centered special interest seeking wealth and power without much or any regard for the public interest, public opinion or democracy. The GOP doesn't do real compromise, it only does window dressing when needed.
A deeply troubling aspect of this is how some Republicans rationalize the 1/6 coup attempt into something it was not. One bemused congressional Republican characterized the attack on the capitol as just a bunch of innocent tourists being polite and taking selfies as they toured the capital building. Either that Republican was unaware of what happened on 1/6 or more likely, he is a cynical liar feeding a ridiculous excuse for consumption by rank and file populist Republicans to use to justify their continuing support of fascism and the ex-president, who is the epitome of modern American fascism.
Most rank and file conservatives seem to be comfortable with the coup attempt by rationalizing it into either insignificance or literal non-existence, e.g., ‘it could not have been a coup attempt because those people on 1/6 were disorganized fools who failed to overthrow the government and/or just harmless demonstrators expressing their unhappiness (about whatever they were unhappy about)’. The definition of a coup attempt does not take into account how inept it was. A coup attempt is a coup attempt. Period.
Even more troubling is that some independents and democrats also downplay or even deny the seriousness of the 1/6 attack and the now blatant and undeniable fascism of the Republican Party. This reflects the human condition from evolution. The human mind did not evolved such that different people observing the same thing see the same thing. This is particularly true of modern politics and American Christianity, both of which are awash in dark free speech that distorts reality and manipulated minds into false beliefs and irrational behaviors. This is what can take democracy down and give rise to the historical normal human condition, namely tyranny, plutocracy and kleptocracy. Put another way, the modern Republican Party has become the face of the historical normal human condition striving to free itself from the unspeakable horrors of democracy and civil liberties.
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