I have been working on the book by Representative Jamie Raskin (Unthinkable). Raskin weaves together two themes – his experiences related to the suicide of his adult son and the Jan. 6 insurrection. He buried his son on Jan. 5 and experienced the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6. I have been waiting for library access to this book for at least 6 months and now am experiencing the book at the same time I am watching the Jan. 6 Committee hearings.
The book and the hearings compliment each other to a remarkable degree and lead me to believe most of what has been presented to the public in the hearings has been common knowledge in Washington for some time.
One episode from the book offers an example I found exemplary of the problem of Republic indifference to the fraudulent behavior of the denial of the Biden victory and acceptance of Trump behavior. The incident I relay seems to replicated with variations many times.
Raskin describes the final deliberations before the reassembled politicians certify the results of the election. The politicians are going through any state challenges to the election results and are considering the final challenge related to the acceptance of Pennsylvania delegates. Raskin had been speaking and was followed by Republican Max Gaetz. After offering sympathetic comments to Raskin, Gaetz launches into comments irrelevant to the issue associated with Pennsylvania. Gaetz starts talking about the Jan. 6 insurrection claiming that facial recognition software had identified ANTIFA operatives among those attacking Capitol. Of course because of recent events, this claim is picked up by most news services.
Raskin offers this story to make a point. First, the claim was a complete fabrication. Second, within 24 hours, the claim also appeared online more than 400,000 times as determined by NPR. Raskin describes the frustration of dealing with such frequently shared conspiracies and the challenge of convincing the public that so much of what they have heard was false but is out there circulating among true believers who tend to engage little with real news sources and want to believe what they encounter elsewhere.
Perhaps little has changed. I have long been baffled by the staunch Republicans who embraced Trump despite the obvious character flaws and atrocious and self-aggrandizing behavior. Disinformation is accepted and embraced and refutations are ignored. False claims linger in the minds of true believers supported by those who they rely on for acceptance and information sharing.
The book I describe is well written and a good summary of the events we all have experienced and continue to deal with. Like I said, it is a reminder of what happened and correlates amazingly well with the review described by the Jan. 6 Committee hearings.
As a side note – the hearings today revealed that Gaetz was one of the Republican politicians who had sought a pardon from Trump. Just in case – I guess.