None Dare Call It Treason II
The non-debate in Congress is from one standpoint extraordinary. No one has anything to say about the painfully visible conspiracy that’s being analyzed and discussed in every nation where intellectuals aren’t in jail. Is the U.S. going to dissolve in civil warfare? Is this the end of the American republic? Is Democracy doomed? Even Joe Biden has finally broken bipartisan cover (and Kamala Harris), though without naming names or readjusting legislative priorities.
But after all, what they can’t do, in front of 50 Republican Senators, is stand up and say, “Your Party, and some of you in support, are doing this by promoting the treasonous Big Lie that Donald Trump really won the election, and thereby justifying all the efforts that officials of your Party are making to ensure that you don’t lose the next election: by making it so hard for millions of black people to vote including the deployment of police officers, that they are being effectively disenfranchised; by plotting how to take over the vote-counting process and the designation of Electors; and by preparing his followers to take up arms against democracy. To join in a treasonous conspiracy.
“That’s why this legislation is necessary: to prevent that attack, that metastasis of January 6th, from happening.”
No, they can’t say that in the Hallowed Halls. That would be what was once called “premature anti-Fascism.” I can’t blame them for holding back.
But you’d think that someone has said that to Joe Manchin and Kristen Sinema, wouldn’t you? But then, their invocation of “bipartisanship” is so obviously false as to be disingenuous or plain dishonest. The way Joe Manchin talks about the threat of “majorities” that have to be contained, you’d think he’s another Madison; or Calhoun.
As to the former, his notion of the greatest danger in the polity of factionalism. A faction is “a number of citizens, whether amounting to a minority or majority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.” (My emphasis)
E.g., the supporters of the Big Lie and disenfranchisement within the Republican Party. We don’t need to speculate or hypothesize: it’s happening right before your eyes, Senator. Back to Reconstruction, where Calhoun would have felt vindicated. As for the back-stabbing Kyrsten Sinema, with her crocodile tears about needing to use the filibuster some day: to do what? To protect democracy? To prevent the shutting down of the Government? To prevent passage, or repeal, of the Affordable Care Act? To deny one Party the right and duty of giving “consent” to the nomination of Supreme Court justices?
There has never been a better exemplar than these two of what Hannah Arendt meant by not thinking. Thoughtlessness. But that’s only true if they’re actually trying, and failing. Perhaps they’re actually succeeding in what they want to do. Which is to give aid and comfort to those around the nation, led by one of History’s monsters, who are, yes, engaged in what none dare call it, Treason:
“the crime of betraying one’s country, especially by attempting to kill the
sovereign or overthrow the government.”
