Letter to the Editor PBS News Hour

Comments on your June 8, 2022, NYT column: “The Jan 6 Committee Has Already Blown it” and your PBS News Hour comments yesterday, Friday, June 10th.

Dear Mr. Brooks,

Your opinion piece in the NYT and comments on the PBS News Hour about the goals of the January 6th Committee both miss the crucial point.  If the former President of the United States is not held accountable for his lawless actions, any future investigation of the causes of January 6th and election difficulties will be ineffective and too late.  Nothing other than fully holding accountable the former President and members of his administration who aided and abetted the uprising with a lie about a stolen election will save our democracy. Saving our democracy begins with the hearings. No peaceful transition of power can be assumed unless the hearings are successful.  You can help this happen. 

You say you want the Committee to focus on how to avoid another January 6th and keep our elections legitimate.   If these are your goals we must start with indictments, in criminal court or in public opinion with those stoking the rebellion.   Follow your own arguments and hopes for the Committee in how they can and must begin with a careful analysis of all the players and factors creating the uprising. A historical record will help guarantee that even if people are not moved now to change their minds there will be a reckoning with the truth at some point. Making a political point for either Party is not the goal, truth is principle here.  The reality is that even those standing for truth now may not gain politically. They are willing to sacrifice their political futures by holding on to principle.  We must help them do this.  

You say you want to find out what caused the insurrections and make sure our future elections are safe and free.  You say you already know the facts of the uprising, maybe so, maybe not.  Why not let the Committee do their work?  Of course, all those who will be exposed do not want this current investigation.  They will not even want the type of Committee you suggest coming into being for the same reasons. There are many new damning facts that have come out during the first public hearing.  There will be more.  But we need reminders.  We must face the truth.  Yes, this was a dramatic public event that was visible for all to see.  But there were so many private machinations that we need to find out.  We must be clear.  The lie about a stolen election was cynically conjured up by people who did not even believe it.  Behind the whole January 6th event was a seditious desire to overturn an election. We cannot forget this.  For your goal to make sure future elections are transparent and fair, we need to start with this truth of sedition.  People need to be punished for this breach not only so honesty prevails but also so that sedition will be punished.  If a former President and his collaborators get away with it, we open the door for others to follow.

I feel you already know the answer to your question about what will be the factors that will make future elections a safe for our democracy and avoid the criminal behavior of our last election. Many of these points you have made in your editorial column and on the News Hour.

Let me list them:

1. A mobilized angry minority of the population that have legitimate grievances about not having their concerns addressed by elites of all political stripes, especially the financial drivers of the economy that hold politician’s hostage.

2. An autocratic narcissist willing to lie and manipulate the sentiments of this population. Yes, it is happening all over the world. But to a large degree their actions are being supported by the playbook used in this country.

3. A delegitimating of all the institutions that are supposed to enshrine the values of democracy and make sure the rule of law prevails, the courts, the media, governmental agencies that became the so-called “deep state.”

4. A media that willingly and unwillingly promulgates narratives that serve these forces, especially those that keep saying we are polarized and divided.  There is a minority of individuals, now dwindling, that capture via their noise and the megaphone of dishonest cable news, that reinforces an incomplete definition of who we are as a nation.  I submit, and you have even stated that on key issues we have a consensus.  This is what the media should be reporting.  A new narrative that exposes that this false narrative is fostered by a manipulative minority Party and movement.  Yes of course there are legitimate issues at stake, but not at the expense of greater social solidarity and drowning out the larger reality of greater agreement.

5. The name of the game is to stay in power at all costs to the health of the nation and their own integrity.  Yes, now both Parties have been captured in this dynamic.  But the minority Party has gone to greater lengths to stay in power.  Your move to embrace the moderate wing of the Democratic Party is an illustration of which Party at least tries on occasion to step out of this dynamic.  You have a role to play here.

6. In order to stay in power the minority Party must: a) make alliances with right wing extremists, typically white nationalists; b) pander to evangelical religious groups even though the core of the Republican Party elite are not religious; c) constrain the voting rights of people who are likely to vote against them; d) unlawfully gerrymander congressional districts in their favor; e) manipulate the undemocratic elements of our federalism that gives greater representation to the minority, the electoral college and the US Senate.  Yes, there are analogies to this power game that the Democratic Party must play to ensure their ability to be the Party of the majority with power. These actions must be identified and resisted. In each case they give a bad name to “politics.”  It has been reduced to staying in power rather than civil discourse with rational arguments and compromise for a greater good, both in policies and process. 

There are more factors that I know you can add. Over the years you have made similar analyses with even greater passion. So, what do you think a new Committee will add to this?  Of course, a serious congressional study or an independent commission would be wise. But it is not an either-or proposition.  Support and help direct the current Committee.  Let it be a foundation for something more.

If another Committee or commission does exist, I would hope that it would also document how we are all complicit in some way. I know that I and my cohort of progressives are living contradictory lives, with our consumption patterns and willingness to be in bed with neo-liberal policies that help our privilege and foster greater inequality. We will have our own crucible.  

If I may be so bold, I believe you are now complicit with your comments to minimize the importance of finding out all the details of the uprising, and its driving force, the lie that the election was stolen.  I wonder, why?  My own complicities are complicated; I assume so are yours, even if you agree with me.  But let me take a stab at a way for you to stop and take stock of this moment and re-evaluate viewpoints that I believe go against your basic sense of fair play and an intelligent understanding of the world we live in.   

As a professor of Ethics and Religion I taught a course with a neuroscientist, on “Ethics and Neuroscience.”  It was the Neuroscientist who suggested we use your book, The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement. I was convinced by your book that it is difficult to change ingrained and well patterned mind-dictated behavior. The wisdom of the young women, Erica,  knew she could only change from her life spinning into a dysfunctional lifestyle by being admitted to a charter school which would give her a new environment to become a new person with new brain patterns.  Your portrayal of this women has remained with me.  We can make a “willful” change, but it is hard.  There is no selfish gene. There is no complete determinism.  

I would like to suggest that this is the time for you to get yourself out of the beltway echo chamber, take a leave from the News Hour and put yourself in new contexts to be able to see the world in new ways.  I believe you have made trips around the country before to gain greater insights; but I am suggesting something more radical. Go live with common non elite people and listen to their voices and understand how the parsing of the world by pundits does not capture a deeper sense of our country.  Tell a story about how we are not so divided.  Don’t allow yourself to fall into this common wisdom about polarization that keeps appearing in our news.  A radical thought: go to the Ukraine, to Estonia, to Montenegro and listen to people who are now teaching us about the importance of democracy, motivating us be our better selves and a better nation.   

Be a deep conservative voice that lifts our best instincts and traditions with a new lens and convictions.  Give voice to the majority seeking to be heard. I would maintain that within each thoughtful individual there is more than just the identity that is forced on us by polarizing narratives that do not tell the whole story. Help tell the whole story. You have done this in the past.    

This is a time of trial that is testing all of us.  You still have a special role to play.  I encourage you to play that role.

Sincerely,  

Harlan Stelmach

Emeritus Professor, Humanities

Dominican University of California

San Rafael, California

PS: Thanks for signing my marked up and devoured copy of The Social Animal when visiting Dominican University on a book tour.