The January 6th Senate Hearings

I am riveted and optimistic

I find myself caught off guard by the January 6th hearings. After watching the first hearing, something loosened in me and after the third, something rose up. I think it is hope.

I hadn’t planned on watching, but remembered being glued to the television during the Watergate hearings, so I thought I would see what these were like.

Although I have long known the makeup of the House Select Committee, seeing them live and in action mattered. There, before my eyes, were politicians from different parties working together to tell a story about January 6th based on evidence collected over months. Yes, Liz Cheney was sitting next to Bennie Thompson. They were cooperating, talking respectfully to each other, and making a case based, not on name calling or slippery slope reasoning, but on the slow accumulation of information collected from interviews, email exchanges, and court decisions. In the third hearing, almost all the evidence of wrongdoing came from Republicans.

Before the 2017 elections, I wrote an article about my parents’ Republicanism to describe why Trump would have been an anathema to them: https://readmedium.com/a7871895e9be Sorry now to say, that article did not deter people from voting for Trump. :) And it looks like many still want him to run again.

Especially given Judge Lutti’s closing statement about the continuing dangers we face as a democracy, these hearings might propel some people to think about the kind of democracy that they want to live in. If any line might crack a closed mind, it came inadvertently from Mike Pence’s lawyer Greg Jacob: not only could Al Gore have used the reasoning John Eastman and Trump were pressing about the power Mike Pence should take to overturn the election results, but it also could be used by Kamala Harris in 2024.

Even if the hearings don’t stop the lie about the last election and don’t result in criminal proceedings against Trump and John Eastman (the lawyer enabling Trump’s lie that the election was stolen), it is giving us the opportunity to watch civil discourse among politicians who have wildly different views about the role of the state in fostering community well-being, equality under the law and democracy.

As John Dewey said in Democracy and Education (1916), “A democracy is more than a form of government; it is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience.” That’s the gift this committee is giving me — dialogue — and the hope that I thought was buried too deeply to emerge again. I am hungry for more.