The Jan. 6 Committee vs. the Bullshitters

“Real America doesn’t care about the January 6th Committee,” Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, tweeted Thursday. “Gas is over $5 per gallon!”

If those two sentences make your head hurt, you’ve probably got a head worth protecting from such things.

If they don’t, you may live in Ohio’s 4th Congressional District.

Jordan is actually quite popular there, despite a career and personality that inspire shudders.

He has somehow escaped a contempt of Congress vote despite aggressively dodging a subpoena to testify at the Jan. 6 Committee. His testimony might be pretty interesting, considering there are significant indications that he conspired to subvert the 2020 election. 

Some committee witnesses have been fond of calling the claims that Donald Trump was cheated out of reelection “bullshit.” But the truth is that bullshit works for some of their more effective people, including Jordan.

When Jordan was asked repeatedly by the House Rules Committee last fall to merely tell it when, on Jan. 6, he actually talked to President Trump, he finally responded by loudly berating the committee chairman about bothering him with questions instead of investigating the police on the scene that day. He baffled everybody with total bullshit.

It’s the same way he has defended himself against other credible accusations, including that he abandoned wrestlers who were sexually assaulted when he was their assistant coach at Ohio State.

He deflects attacks by turning them back on the innocent, and he demands that everybody ignore obvious evidence against him.

As Chico Marx challenged Margaret Dumont, “Who ya gonna believe, me or your own eyes?”

If Jordan and other worms who personally, delightedly tunneled through the mire of the coup can stay in power through bombast and deflection, what do congresscreatures who merely voted traitorously have to worry about in November?

Not much.

The hearings are compelling, but they are unlikely to change anyone’s mind unless Republican lawmakers turn against Trump in significant numbers.

Don’t hold your breath.

Republicans measure everything by whether it will help them win a primary. And for now, The Big Lie wins GOP primaries.

They don’t think they can lose in general elections because their constituents follow them around like puppies.

Republican voters rarely bolt on their own. They’re committed to their party leaders as long as they’re not currently in prison, aren’t dead, continue to wear clothes and are white.

There’s only one way that the hearings can offset disaster for the Democratic Party in November, and it ain’t by moving Republican voters off the dime. It’s not so much about independents, either.

The hearings might help convince independents, but keep in mind that half of those are intellectually challenged.

If you don’t know which side you’re on nowadays, you may have significant difficulty paying attention.

The only possibility for Democrats controlling Congress is that liberal voters be giddily inspired, by the hearings or perhaps the abominable legislative activity of Republicans. They have to enthusiastically overwhelm the GOP, despite the efforts that party has made to make it difficult for them to vote and for those votes to matter.

But if past is prologue, that’s not happening. 

In 2016, a dread of Hillary Clinton led to many liberals in battleground states staying home for the election. I guess they weren’t concerned, since the alternative to her promised to be so much fun. 

Something similar may happen in November’s mid-terms. 

Dissatisfaction with Joe Biden now seems to discourage a blue wave from reasonably throwing out the bums, who are as bad a bunch as anyone has ever seen. Or imagined.

But Jordan and his pals are winning the national argument. Inflation is insane, and the supply chain is incredibly challenged, so it must be the fault of Biden and the Democrats.

Polled Democratic voters seem to agree.

This is less than cogent because there are factors affecting the economy that have nothing to do with politics or even the Fed.

Pent-up demand from our pandemic-ruled lives has driven up U.S. consumer spending a whopping 18 percent since the doldrums of 2020. We seem to want stuff badly, and we’re willing to pay more, despite the pain.

We continue to supply ourselves largely with Chinese stuff, and it can’t get here fast enough. Especially since for quite awhile, China shut itself down.

How many of us stayed home for two years, then traveled after the pandemic stabilized itself somewhat? I’ve taken two trips, and that kind of thing can’t help but drive up fuel prices. Not to mention worldwide sanctions on the number two oil producer in the world.

Scarcity means the housing market is no longer about homeowners selling to other families. It’s about speculation. Pretty soon, home purchases may be largely the province of the rich.

Last November, I talked to a Chicago restaurant owner, who is required by ordinance to buy meat from a wholesale supplier. He was being charged twice as much for outer skirt steak as the same cut was going for in Jewel, he said.

Prices go up like skyrockets, but they come down like feathers.

One would think that with all the licenses to drill for oil granted by the Trump administration, oil companies would be going nuts in this country (which produces more oil than any other.)

If they did that, oil prices would go down. But they’re not. The oil companies are perfectly satisfied with the way things are.

Many people like Biden, but he seems to be the nice guy who finishes last. He looked bad in the way he ran the evacuation of Afghanistan. Few seemed to notice that he got U.S. military advisors out of Ukraine well before the invasion.

If some of them had been killed by the Russians, what might we have been compelled to do?

But inflation is what seems to be draining liberals of their enthusiasm. It’s a dinner-table issue.

We shouldn’t worry about Democrats going hungry, however. They can always eat their own young.

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