As the U.S. Senate met recently to vote on whether they should “approve” a commission to investigate the riot which occurred on Jan. 6 at the U.S. Capitol, I half-hoped that the elite membership of mostly white men, party affiliation notwithstanding, would actually do the right thing.
In truth, I knew better.
But peeling back the inconsistencies and falsehoods behind a situation as grave as the January insurrection and getting to the truth of the matter – how it happened with such relative ease, who planned and led the insurrection, what laws were broken and who should be held responsible and how to ensure that a similar event could never happen again – should have been the goal of both Republicans and Democrats. But was it?
It shouldn’t matter which political party a U.S. senators represents. Each of them should be able to discern between right and wrong and govern themselves accordingly. After all, we hold our senators to a higher level of truth and justice than the common man. But perhaps that’s just an ideal … something that’s merely “blowing in the wind” as folk singer Bob Dylan asserted in his same-titled song during the 1960s.
Many political pundits suggest that so few Republicans voted against the establishing of a commission because they did not want to muddy the waters. They want us to begin looking forward at the next election cycle, not backwards when the Democrats swept the House, Senate and the White House.
Others say that the elephant in the room, that is, Donald Trump, led most GOP senators to vote against the commission because of their reluctance to be on his “hit list.” But that would suggest that most Republican senators would rather ignore or deny the truth, instead of uncovering all of the facts and then dealing with them. And that’s the real tragedy.
But as the old folks said, “what’s done in the dark will come to the light.”
There may not be a commission, for now, to dig deeply for the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But one day, the facts – all of them – will surely be revealed to the American public.
Back in the 1950, a popular television show featured a man with a cape of red, white and blue. His name was Superman and the slogan most frequently associated with him was “Truth, justice and the American way.”
Sounds familiar doesn’t it. It just doesn’t seem to be the mantra for many of our 21st century politicians. Now, the only thing that matters is winning. The truth remains irrelevant.