Service above power
This weekend, we can honor those who served by considering how we can elevate service above power.
Dear friends - we mark the start of summer with a long weekend and a holiday dedicated to those who died in military service to our country. It’s a reminder - or should be - that as a country, we value service of all kinds more than power.
And yet, this past week, Republican Senators stopped the formation of an independent, bipartisan commission to examine the events leading up to the violent attack on a sitting session of Congress on January 6, 2021. They stopped it using the filibuster, allowing a minority of Senators prevent debate on the measure. Thirty-five Senators stopped the country from learning what really happened on that date.
Here’s what it adds up to: Republican Senators, representing a minority of all Americans, sent a message to the majority who want accountability for the insurrection: our re-election is more important than your democracy.
What are they afraid a commission will discover? I don’t think it matters. Instead, they resist the very notion of accountability. After all, accountability indicates there is a higher authority, a standard by which actions can be judged. The Republican party leadership has shown, unequivocally, that their only goal, their north star, is power for its own sake. Power is judged by its sway, not by its motives or even its outcomes.
Dictators do not have to convince people that their lies are the truth. They only have to convince people that there is no way they (the people) will ever know the truth; or that the truth is not worth knowing, because power is the only thing that matters. Denying an independent investigation into the insurrection of January 6 advances both narratives.
This weekend, we can honor those who served by considering how we can elevate service above power again. Our representatives can and must be held accountable at the ballot box when they do not.
I wish you all a peaceful summer weekend.
More on how the Senate Republicans have represented a minority of Americans for most of the last 30 years:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/2/23/2013769/-How-minority-rule-plagues-Senate-Republicans-last-won-more-support-than-Democrats-two-decades-ago