My Blog Week: May 16 to May 22

A Word on the Week

It Never Hurts to Ask

And the party that found the wherewithal to stage the Maricopa County audit in Arizona is unwilling to support the January 6 commission.

From Axios, a May 19th article, “McConnell formally announces opposition…”, I take the following:

Can a proposal be slanted and unbalanced? An allegation can be. But a proposal is, “Let’s do a particular thing.” In response can be said, yes, no, or, “Let’s do this other thing instead.” McConnell’s words create a false air of grievance at the outset. Also, no commission has yet been created. By “another”, does he mean the second Trump impeachment?

The first of the bullet points is really a statement of facts. It would be as though you’d asked: “Can we get a banana split?” and the answer was: “Hundreds of bananas have been purchased, and many have been opened and cut in half. The efforts of ice cream shops to assemble banana splits are ongoing.”

Of interest, maybe, but a failure to address the question.

With the second bullet point, we have more facts presented as argument. There is a question buried in this statement, one not raised as a contention: that somehow the commission is wanted merely to bulk up a dearth of investigations. A commission would serve as a clearinghouse for gathering and distributing information, both evidence and testimony obtained by other investigations, and its own fresh findings, based on its greater subpoena power. And yes, a higher profile brings the power of the public eye, with television coverage, including those indelible MAGA impressions on the public mind. But also, top-down organization of disparate work by varied groups is a good thing. It has to be done anyway, and will be, by the writers of books on the subject.

The third point is only the culmination of circular reasoning. A return to the unsubstantiated allegation of bias, as though saying it at the beginning and end amounted to proof, and a bromide about the nature of facts: that they exist, and “come out” as more are produced.

GOP members of the Senate Ben Sasse and John Thune, quoted this week by Axios and Politico, expressed concern the commission was a political strategy. Which assertion raises (not begs) the question of, “Can you tell the difference between one thing and another?” “Can you tell when something that began under a favorable representation, shifted, becoming unfavorable?”

If you haven’t got those basic skills, or aren’t confident you do, it’s true you aren’t much use on an investigative commission. You should be able to, when you see behavior that looks like political strategizing, bring out statements of record (which like the video coverage of January 6, count as factual evidence), and reviewing these, ask for (of course, listen to before speaking) the explanations.

Then summarize your conclusions, by reiterating your arguments, the counters to your arguments, your evidence, and by the use of reason, determine whether in the light of your own work, your proposition still holds.