The Final J6 Hearing: The Glorious Feeling of Holding the Powerful Accountable
And the Awe of Living through Big History
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The January 6th Committee held its final meeting today. If you haven’t followed the hearings, they were a masterclass in the effective use of Congressional time and resources. Eighteen months, 1,000,000 documents, 1,000 interviews. The work was professional, exacting, and powerful. And it needed to be. We’ve never been here before as a country. We desperately needed excellence in this moment, and, much like my Minnesota Vikings over the weekend, we got it. That, in itself, is a rarity worth celebrating.
Today, members recapped the plot that Trump and his co-conspirators carried out to overturn the election via corrupt lies, pressure campaigns, fraud, and a violent insurrection. The Committee also listed the specific crimes they will refer to the Department of Justice for prosecution.
Behold Big History!
This is the first time in American history that a former President of the United States has been criminally referred to the Justice Department for prosecution. Holy shit. Today’s short meeting was filled with reminders that this moment is no less significant than the civil war era.
Liz Cheney used her introductory remarks to tell us about her great-great-grandfather, who fought all four years of the Civil War. She tied a love of this country’s ideals to every generation. Every generation sacrifices in ways big and small to maintain this Republic’s institutions. To strive toward our status as a beacon for Democracy and human rights. And today, it’s our turn.
She didn’t say the human rights thing; that was me. Also me: It’s terribly important to draw an ideal for what we want to be and scream it out loud to everyone who will listen. We will never reach it, but the meaning is in the striving. As go individual lives, so goes groups and society at large.
Amid this historic moment, two high-level members of the Oath Keepers militia were convicted last month of seditious conspiracy for their role in…
