Did the Jan. 6 hearings even matter? Maybe to history — but they haven't turned the tide

With the House Jan. 6 committee hearings now behind us (in all probability), the question for history will be what they meant and what they accomplished. That question is impossible to answer now with any clarity. It will be answered by future historians, political scientists and other experts years or decades from now. 

In his influential 1961 book "What is History?" E.H. Carr answered the title question this way: History is a continuous "process of interaction between the historian and his facts, an unending dialogue between the present and the past." In other words, history is not a neutral set of facts separate from the observer. Historians, like other scholars, have agency and subjectivity. They inhabit, exercise, serve, and are driven and impacted by the currents of power (what have been described as "regimes of truth") in their societies.

With the understanding that the history of this chapter in America's democracy crisis is still being created, I have allowed myself to reach a tentative conclusion: The House Jan. 6 committee hearings were anticlimactic.

That may be an unpopular opinion, at least among many Democrats, centrists, and mainstream liberals and progressives. Some may feel that reaching such a conclusion — and then sharing it — is unhelpful or "defeatist." I believe that in a moment of crisis our first obligation must be to the truth, especially when it's uncomfortable. To ignore the truth will likely prove fatal. Moreover, the Age of Trump and America's worsening democracy crisis illustrate what happens to a society when it surrenders to denial and avoidance. Many other people, no doubt, will agree with my conclusion but feel reluctant to say so.

I would largely echo Lucian K. Truscott IV's column for Salon last weekend, where he observed that "Donald Trump's stranglehold on 40 percent of the electorate looks unassailable, since it hasn't been affected by the House committee hearings or a steady drumbeat of news about the DOJ investigation of Trump for possible serious felonies":

The select committee has proved to the public, or at least to those who were watching, that Donald Trump conspired to overturn the 2020 presidential election in multiple ways, including inciting an armed mob to attack the seat of federal government. He knew his vice president's life was in danger. He watched the insurrection on TV in the White House and listened to reports that Capitol and Metropolitan police were being attacked by his supporters, and he did nothing. The Department of Justice is amassing evidence of crimes that could end up with Trump being indicted. A conviction could send him to prison.

And here's the thing: Forty percent of the country is apparently just fine with all that. They will try to vote him back into office if he decides to run for president again. Given that Trump may end up convicted of a felony that could bar him from holding any federal office, the words "constitutional crisis" come to mind. So do the words, we're fucked.

For a few days I allowed myself to listen to the consensus opinion of the hope peddlers and happy-pill sellers of the mainstream media and larger political class who held that the committee hearings amounted to an explosive epiphany that might break through the fascist fever dream and return those tens of millions of Trump supporters to some version of collective sanity.

Then, last Friday night, I was riding the bus, sitting opposite an older Black man who reminded me of my late uncle. He was talking loudly on his phone about last Thursday's Jan. 6 hearing, exclaiming: "Donald Trump is a crook. You're surprised? Don't be stupid. What's new!" Just as my uncle would have, he followed that exclamation with some artfully delivered profanity.

His was the first voice that helped me regain perspective. As a Black working-class American I should know better than to be seduced into fantasies about this country and its politics and character. I do not have the privilege of believing the self-soothing fables promulgated by the mainstream media; I may travel in that world, but I will never fully belong to it. In many ways, I believe that is an advantage: Sometimes it allows me to see things more clearly, and not be led astray by chimeras and shadows. 

The second voice that returned me to clarity was that of Noam Chomsky, in his interview at Truthout earlier this year, before the House committee hearings had even begun. He suggested that the events of Jan. 6 had already been "investigated so fully... that nothing much of substance is likely to be revealed":

Republican elites who want to portray the insurrection as an innocent picnic in the park, with some staged violence by antifa to make decent law-abiding citizens look bad, will persist no matter what is revealed. ...

Suppose that the select committee were to come up with new and truly damning evidence about Trump's role or other high-level connivance in the coup attempt. The Rupert Murdoch-controlled mainstream media would have little difficulty in reshaping that as further proof that the "Deep State," along with the "Commie rats" and "sadistic pedophiles" who supposedly run the Democratic Party, have conspired to vilify the "Great Man." His adoring worshippers would probably be emboldened by this additional proof of the iniquity of the evil forces conniving at the "Great Replacement." Or whatever fabrication is contrived by those capable of converting critical race theory into an instrument for destroying the "embattled white race," among other propaganda triumphs.

My guess is that the committee's work will end up being a gift to the proto-fascist forces that are chipping away at what remains of formal democracy, much as the impeachment proceedings turned out to be.

It's worth proceeding for the sake of history — assuming that there will be any history that will even care if the plan to establish lasting Republican rule succeeds.

That prediction was largely correct — which does not mean the hearings were unimportant. They offered a crucial public accounting of what happened that day and the larger plot against democracy, and highlighted the growing neofascist threat to the continued existence of American democracy. They also served as a public civics lesson that facts and reality do exist independent of the toxic ideology, lies and distortions that Donald Trump and the Republican fascists have tried to force upon American society.

Indeed, it's fair to say that the House Jan. 6 hearings did essential work toward accountability, deterrence and justice — assuming that Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Department of Justice act on the evidence and prosecute Trump and others in his cabal to the full extent of the law.

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But the American mainstream media, which so visibly failed in its responsibility to warn the country and the world about the existential danger of the Trump presidency — relying on obsolete standards of "normal politics" and the supposed strength of "democratic institutions" — has largely repeated those bad habits in covering the House Jan. 6 hearings. The dominant narrative about the hearings is one of continual shock and surprise, as if the Trump regime's crimes were unimaginable or unbelievable. That is rhetorical, intellectual and moral laziness: There were plenty of public voices who tried to sound the alarm, and were largely not taken seriously. 

As philosopher Jason Stanley summarized on Twitter, those who said, "It's a fascist political movement" were told, "You're crazy" — and then, a year or two later, were told, "Oh, come on — that was obvious. Everyone knew that." The same pattern repeated itself when some of us warned that Trump was planning and executing a coup.

A similar problem arises with such empty questions as, "Who could possibly support Donald Trump now?" or the even more impossibly naive, "Who are these people?" This amounts to the assertion that knowable or obvious facts are instead incomprehensible or mysterious. It is a form of projection by mainstream liberals or moderates who are in deep denial about the realities of American fascism.

Too many such people have convinced themselves that most Americans share their values and beliefs when there is no evidence of that. Such denial and projection helps to explain why so many members of the media and the pundit class have been steamrolled by Trumpism. As a group (and as individuals), their collective hubris and denial make it impossible for them to see or understand what is happening before their eyes. 

Psychiatrist Justin Frank, author of the book "Trump on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President." discussed this dynamic in a July 2021 interview with Salon: 

One of the ways of managing their anxiety, especially among liberals, is to laugh at Donald Trump. Trump's power to stir up hatred scares a lot of people. When I see people laughing at Trump, it disturbs me. There is nothing funny about what he represents and what he is doing....

Most people do not want to believe that a person could be as destructive and evil as Donald Trump. That fact changes their worldview and their fantasies about life having a happy ending. The fantasy is that we are all protected, we are all going to be safe, which is a very childlike way of thinking. This is why many people do not want to acknowledge what Trump really is: They do not want to face the fact that Donald Trump, in my opinion, has shown himself to be a psychopath.

Political scientists, psychologists and other researchers have repeatedly documented how Trump's followers feel hatred and resentment toward the same people Trump hates and fears. These emotions unite the leader and his followers in a knot of collective narcissism and other pathologies. The Trumpists and Republican fascists have not been deluded or misled; they are eager to create an authoritarian America where white people like them (or so they imagine) will dominate society far into the future. Some are willing to kill and die for that mission.

Those who protest that Trump is a terrible person and a pathological liar, and that his followers must not understand that, are also willfully failing to understand the truth. This 2019 Pacific Standard article, addressing why so many right-wing evangelical Christians love Trump despite his blatant lying, offers a useful explanation:

Why are they so willing to discard the core principle of not bearing false witness? New research suggests the Ninth Commandment is subject to amendment when you hold an authoritarian mindset.

The research, published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, finds Republicans are more likely than Democrats or independents to consider overt lying on the part of a politician morally acceptable behavior. This difference is largely driven by Trump supporters' endorsement of authoritarianism.

While relatively few Americans find it acceptable, "these results suggest that right-wing individuals are more tolerant to the spreading of misinformation by politicians," write Jonas De keersmaecker and Arne Roets of Ghent University in Belgium….

The results provide new evidence that our current political polarization reflects deep-seated differences that extend far beyond individual issues. "Right-wing authoritarianism captures the tendency to defer to legitimized authority," the researchers write. If, in your mind, your leader can do no wrong, it follows that he can lie with impunity.

Relatedly, people who score high in social-dominance orientation "consider the social world as a competitive jungle," they add. It's easy to see how lying would be viewed as acceptable if you hold what the researchers describe as "the dog-eat-dog worldview where everyone does whatever is needed to get ahead."

The House Jan. 6 hearings, despite revealing a wealth of new details about Trump's coup plot and the attack on democracy, did not produce significant movement in public opinion. Yes, it appears that "democracy" has become a more prominent concern but whether that will translate to any tangible results in the midterm elections is still unclear.

Public reaction to the committee hearings is also highly divergent along lines of party and "ideology," as could be expected. Most Republicans and "conservatives" now live in an alternate reality where faith and ideology have supplanted facts and reason. In their malignant reality Jan. 6 was a mostly peaceful protest, Trump's terrorists were heroes (and are now political prisoners), the 2020 election was "stolen" by Biden and the Democrats, and the House hearings are a "witch hunt" aimed at persecuting and victimizing Trump and the "real Americans" who support him. 

Democrats and others who exist in reality as it actually exists have processed the information presented by the House hearings as yet more evidence that Trump and his cabal attempted a coup and must be held responsible. But considered in total, the American people's reaction suggests a deep immaturity a profound lack of civic engagement, civic literacy and responsible citizenship. As shown in a new Monmouth University poll more than half of all Americans want the hearings to end "as soon as possible"

Political expediency, partisanship and a limited attention span are more important to a large proportion of Americans than revealing the whole truth about Jan. 6 and its implications. It is impossible to have a healthy democratic culture in a climate of those beliefs and behavior.

In a new essay for the Atlantic, Tom Nichols writes:

In a country that still had a functional moral compass, citizens would watch the January 6 hearings, band together regardless of party or region, and refuse to vote for anyone remotely associated with Donald Trump, whom the committee has proved, I think, to be an enemy of the Constitution of the United States. His party, as an institution, supports him virtually unconditionally, and several GOP candidates around the country have already vowed to join Trump in his continuing attack on our democracy. To vote for any of these people is to vote against our constitutional order. ...

In the confusion of the moment back in January 2021, it was easier to believe that perhaps the mob was spontaneous, that elected Republicans were sincere in reviling Trump for his part in creating it, and that the GOP might come to its senses, at least where Trump is concerned. Today, thanks to the January 6 committee and the evidence it has amassed, we know better. To vote for anyone still loyal to a party led by the narcissistic sociopath who put our elected officials and our political system itself in peril is to abandon any pretense of caring whether the United States remains a constitutional democracy. The question is whether enough of us will care, in little more than three weeks from now, to make a difference.

Those Americans who convinced themselves that the House Jan. 6 hearings would somehow save the country from Trumpism and the Republican fascists will have their idealism and hope severely tested in just a few weeks. There is likely to be great disappointment and sorrow, as well as continued incomprehension, in the wake of the November midterm elections. I sincerely hope I am wrong, but we must also find a way to go forward if I am not.