The Atlantic: Democracy Defeated, 35–54

The grandstanding over the January 6th commission is nothing more than empty political theater like the original Stop the Steal rally which is only memorable because it unexpectedly spiraled into a riot. The way that the Democrats are dwelling on it months later is beating a dead horse.

The Atlantic:

“Three times in the past year, American democracy has been tested. Once, and most consequentially, it emerged victorious. The subsequent two tests have not turned out as well, and that is a bleak omen for whenever the next test arrives. …

A majority of senators, 54, voted for the commission, but the measure needed 60 votes to overcome a filibuster. Only 39 senators voted against. Eleven senators didn’t bother to cast a vote. (In their defense, the outcome was all but certain, and how do you weigh a violent attack on your workplace against wanting to get out of town for a holiday weekend?)

Republicans as a whole were not willing to examine what happened on January 6. They wouldn’t step aside and allow a majority of their colleagues to do it. They wouldn’t vote to let Collins introduce a measure that would have watered down the commission. The GOP was prepared to block any and every version of an investigation.

This, too, is a defeat for democracy. Protections of minority interests are essential, but nothing about a January 6 commission represented an infringement on the rights of any minority bloc (nor, for that matter, did certifying the election or impeaching the former president). …”

Why has the news cycle returned to January and February, anyway?

Luke Savage is angry that the Senate is working the way it is supposed to. After all, we live in a constitutional republic, not a direct democracy. The Founders were even less impressed with democracy which they chained down like a beast. They didn’t give women the right to vote. BIPOC people didn’t have the right to vote. Senators were also elected by state legislatures until the 20th century.

Jacobin:

“By virtually any metric, the United States Senate is one of the most undemocratic legislative bodies in the advanced capitalist world. Given the geographic distribution of America’s population, the majority living in nine states wields a mere eighteen votes to the minority’s eighty-two: a balance of forces so disproportionate, most citizens of other countries would probably find it incomprehensible. In no other country could a jurisdiction the size of California (home to nearly 40 million people) possess the same legislative clout as Wyoming (home to less than 600,000). The Senate, in fact, is not so much undemocratic as it is antidemocratic — its design acting as a check on majority rule by default.

All of this would remain the case without the chamber’s current filibuster rules in place: rules so absurdly obstructive that senators representing as little as 11 percent of the US population cannot only defeat any bill but prevent it from coming to the floor. Not without justification, this fact in particular is currently in the minds of many rank-and-file liberals and activists hoping to force Democratic leaders to actually approve the popular legislation for which some have voiced nominal support: the transformative PRO Act, health care reform, a $15 minimum wage, and democratic countermeasures to the state-level Republican assault on voting rights, to name just a few. On Friday, the Senate voted 54-35 in favor of establishing a commission to investigate the events of January 6 — an effort supported by many liberals and one destined to fail thanks to the legislature’s arcane sixty-vote requirement. …”

Where was all of this anger about democracy when Democrats repeatedly used the filibuster to block Trump’s agenda?

New York Times:

“WASHINGTON — Republicans on Friday blocked the creation of an independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, using their filibuster power in the Senate for the first time this year to doom a full accounting of the deadliest attack on Congress in centuries.

The vote was a stark display of loyalty to former President Donald J. Trump and political self-interest by Republicans determined to shield themselves from an inquiry that could tarnish their party. They feared an investigation that would remind voters of the consequences of Mr. Trump’s election lies and how Republican lawmakers indulged them, spurring their supporters to violence.

It all but guaranteed that there would be no comprehensive nonpartisan inquiry into the attack’s root causes, the former president’s conduct as his supporters threatened lawmakers and the vice president, or any connections between his allies in Congress and the rioters. …”

Who cares?

We’ve already had an impeachment over this in February.

The Democrats want to talk endlessly about this to distract attention from the fact that nothing else is getting though the Senate. Forget about the PRO Act. Forget about the Equality Act. Forget about HR 1. Forget about gun control. Forget about DC statehood. Forget about the George Floyd Act. Forget about the DREAM Act and the farmworker amnesty. Even infrastructure is stalled.

Note: BTW, the only thing that Republicans are good for is blocking the Democrat agenda, which we must admit is not nothing.

About Hunter Wallace 12379 Articles
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Occidental Dissent

17 Comments

  1. Democrats need it because it’s all they have to turn out voters. They were banking on milking this “threat of fascist insurrection” meme for the next four years, but that doesn’t seem like it will work. With Trump gone, people have lost interest and are a lot more concerned about the open border, skyrocketing crime, and $4 gas than they are about non-existent “fascism.”

  2. The Republicans don’t care about us, they are just looking out for themselves for future elections and the one coming up in 2022. If they supported this tyrannical commission they know they’re done. Meanwhile, blm and antifa can get away with actual crimes.

    • The Republicans survived this round, but their own immigration policies will ensure their parties self-inflicted obliteration soon enough. What the fuck these fools could possibly be thinking is anyone’s guess.

  3. Like that picture of John Wilkes Booth giving the tyrant Lincoln what he deserved, it took long enough.

  4. Basically, the Left just doesn’t like anything that gets in it’s way. It would be quite happy if things were the reverse. The system is just designed to throw monkey wrenches into the system. It’s a bit like how bitcoin works. Computers run a algorithm deliberately designed to be hard and complicated to do. If we get rid the system we have, all that would happen is a couple if coastel states would decide everything. Eventually, much of inland america would simply get tired of being rendered unimportant. And things would get interesting. The Left might not like how things turn out. The nations founders had their quirks, but even then they were afraid of the influence and power the big coastal urban states would have over less populated states.

  5. Yes, it’s hard for a Southern Nationalist to stop pretending he isn’t what he is.

  6. Ratifying a stolen election will never be Democratic, the people rising up spontaneously to protest it IS Democracy. The Capitol Hill servants of Jewry have a bitter contempt for the American people.

  7. The Atlantic used to be a venerable publication but is now nothing more than jew supremacist propaganda. Anything that even remotely threatens total jew control is condemned as a “danger to democracy”. A fig for your democracy, jews!

    • Democracy is just mob rule.
      That’s the reason the framers made a CONSTITUTIONAL Republic.
      The jews try to gaslight us into believing our war stallion is a mule.

  8. The hypocrisy of the libs is simply breathtaking. They blather about “democracy” after pushing the Russia collusion hoax and politically motivated impeachments to destroy a legitimately elected president.

  9. Democracy is a sh*tshow anyhow. It sucks. It never produces anything good and enduring. Voting has always been a mistake.

  10. While we’re talking commissions last year I was certain the Covid pandemic would be a a shoe-in for a 911 style commission. Odd theres no buzz about it now

    • There’s a quiet sense that covid19 was an excuse to crash the regime of Trump. And it did. The left will draw a line under it.

  11. Given the quiet treatment The Democrats gave the endless violent riots across their cities last year, they have absolutely no credibility when it comes to their carrying of about the quiet riot on Pennsylvania Avenue last year.

    That they feel wounded at seeing our battleflags in Congress is nothing compared to what they are going to feel as secession, battleflag or no battleflag, sweeps the land.

    That time is coming.

  12. So called “Legacy media” simply needs the Trump/”domestic extrimist”-boogyman to keep their pearl clutching wine mom reader/viewership. And for the DNC it’s a superb topic to divert the public from their failing policies.

    So the otherwise useless GOP did the right thing for once to shoot this farce down

  13. Damn “democracy” to hell anyway. The Founding Fathers set up a constitutional republic, which didn’t even make it a full eighty years. Now the Jews want to gaslight us about mob rule being sacred somehow. They can all go to hell and take their “democracy” with them.

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