By the Way, They Knew
Published at 13:42 on 9 October 2021
The committee knew.
They knew their deadline would come on the eve of a holiday weekend. They knew their subpoenas’ recipients would probably ignore the documents. They never planned to enforce the “subpoenas” in the first place (it’s time for quote marks here, since a “subpoena” that is never intended to be enforced is a “subpoena” in name only).
I mean, really now: it is not unusual for me to slip up and forget about this or that schedule conflict, but I am just one individual, and someone for whom time management is not his strong suit as that. Am I to expect that every committee member is as pathetically disorganized as I am? Am I to expect that even if they are, no committee member (it would take just one) would notice the deadline falls right before a long weekend? And that’s just the committee members, then there’s all the staffers! Am I to expect that none of them would notice this, and flag it for attention?
No, it is pretty obvious: they knew. They knew, and they planned it this way. It is no coincidence they had no plans in place to enforce those “subpoenas,” because they were never intended to be enforced in the first place.
It was all a show. The Committee is nothing but a ruse (and a piss poor one at that) to pretend that the system cares about accountability.
Well, it doesn’t. If there’s one thing that’s clear about my fifty-eight years spent in the USA, is that this country has two sets of rules: one for the powerful, and one for everyone else, and that it is damn rare for any sufficiently powerful person to be held accountable for anything.
Trump is a noxious individual with loathsome goals, but the one thing he understands in spades is the total rottenness to the core of the whole system, and how utterly and thoroughly ripe it is for authoritarian takeover.
I am now more certain than just about anything that we will see just how ripe it indeed was in the coming years. The Republic is dead, and the corpse will soon enough start stinking to the point that even the dullest amongst us can no longer ignore this fact.
Oh, and one more thing: the Committee knew that, by the time the long weekend was over, the lapsed “subpoena” “deadlines” would mostly be forgotten by their constituents and by the media. Just wait and watch. You will see.