by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Let me indulge myself in some of my usual “hysterical doom shit.” Tonight, a lot of the usual Twitter liberal suspects are all excited that the January 6th Commission has subpoena a clutch of Trump associated who were involved in the January 6th Insurrection.
To me, this is no boom. It’s a lulz.
History has shown that all the people that Congress has subpoenaed will either ignore it or fight it in the courts. There is only one way they will show up — and even then they will invoke the 5th — and that’s if House Democrats used Congress’ “inherent contempt” powers.
The only way we would get to the “I plead the 5th point” would be if they got fined and stuck in the tiny Capitol brig for a few weeks until they broke. We’re not exactly dealing with people who give a shit about allowing the public find out the truth about their nefarious January 6th plans.
The reason why House Democrats won’t do what they should do, is they know the moment they break the modern seal on the use of inherent contempt, that’s the moment that House Republicans will use it when they inevitable begin to impeach Biden and Harris in January 2023.
Republicans are so radicalized on an institutional level, that they’re just biding their time until they have power again. Once they do — and they inevitable will get power again — that’s it. The end of the Republic. That’s hysterical doom shit, but the only reason why that might not be the case is at first things won’t seem to change much.
Because traditional “personal responsibility” Republicans don’t notice anything has changed, it could be years before they sit up and taken notice that, “Hey, this kind of sucks.”
But by that point, it will be too late — or we’ll have had a civil war, bombed ourselves into the stone age and there will be some sort of massive political “reset” where we get back to the usual non-existential ebb-and-flow of a traditional liberal democracy.
Anyway, the point is — we’re fucked. Get your affairs in the real world. Decide what’s important to you and how much you’re willing to suffer for what you believe in. Bannon isn’t going anywhere and in the end, either we peacefully slip into some form of a “Very American Autocracy” or we have a fucking civil war.
But good luck on getting anyone around Trump to talk unless you’re willing to use inherent contempt.
