Know Your Enemy
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The January 6th Committee Report
🕑 Added 2023-04-29 16:05:37 +0000 UTCThe boys discuss Matt's recent Dissent essay on the 845-page report of the "Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol." What did the Jan 6 report — and the committee's work — achieve? Was the report a missed opportunity? How should political actors navigate the relationship between historical constraints and contingency? And is there a way to wed the Democrats' eagerness to "defend democracy," as such, with a more robust program for social and economic justice? We puzzle it out.
Sources:
Matthew Sitman, "Will Be Wild," Dissent, Apr 18, 2023.
Jill Lepore, "What the January 6th Report is Missing," The New Yorker, Jan 9, 2023.
David Sirota, "The Long American Meltdown Led to the January 6 Insurrection" Jacobin, Jan 6, 2022
Sam Adler-Bell, "Is the January 6 Committee Really Saving Democracy?" New York Magazine, Jul 11, 2022.
Executive Summary of the Jan 6 Report
Comments
Keith Morse
The portion about Democratic messaging advice reminded me a great deal of how Lawrence Lessig would frame his call for campaign finance reform as a sort of table stakes, a gate that you have to pass through before other issues could be addressed. This was a rhetorical move to build across activists coalitions by telling them "yes, (the environment/health care/criminal justice reform/etc is very important, but we can't address it if we have a corrupt political apparatus." This move to connect something abstract like "preserving democracy" to other ideas like bodily autonomy, economic inequality, and social justice might utilize the same pattern. You can frame the loss of democracy as a gate slamming shut in front of those other ideals, and the conspiracy to subvert or weaken democracy as part and parcel to taking those freedoms away. I love this, and I hope campaign strategists are listening.
Helena Latimer
excuse me, this isn't about Whittaker Chambers?
Chad Stanton
Highlighting Republicans threats to democracy and access to material interests was *the* message in Georgia through Abrams-Ossoff-Warnock-Abrams II run worked for Ossoff and Warnock but by the time Abrams ran again Kemp had been held as a paragon of integrity during J6, Trump was out of office so people felt less threatened, and people had really taken to mocking the message as “identatarian bullshit”etc, this in conjunction with misogyny is why she lost. I say all this to point out the pitfalls that repeatedly occur when we focus on Republicans targeting democracy. It is galvanizing when people feel like they’re under an acute threat but the solidarity falls apart when people feel safe and other groups under threat may be “overdoing it.”
Lou Guberti Ng
Love to learn new words at 33, and Mawkish is Adam Schiff to a T
