Loose Talk Makes Things Even More Dangerous

We need to be careful about how we discuss politics precisely because the danger to democracy is so real.

Jun 9

No TNB tonight because you should watch the January 6 Committee hearing. And we’ll watch it, too. I’ll probably write something short afterwards for the site.

You can watch the hearing on most cable news networks—not on Fox News, obviously, they can’t upset any of their Boomer snowflakes. If you are a streaming-only house (like me) you can livestream the hearings here.

Check TheBulwark.com for our analysis tomorrow morning and Charlie will host a special Friday All-Star Bulwark podcast with reactions from the hearing.

1. Mike Pence: Hero

I wrote a piece for the Atlantic and I’m not going to beg for compliments, but I feel like one line isn’t being properly appreciated by their readers:

About one-fifth of Republican voters know that Joe Biden won a sacred landslide victory over Trump in 2020.

Tim and Amanda are not persuaded by my argument that Pelosi and Schumer ought to name a building after Pence and then force Republicans to vote on resolutions praising him for his actions on January 6. But I am serious. How many House Republicans do you think would vote in favor of such a resolution? Whatever number you suggest, I’ll take the under.

And it would be nice to have such a vote as a live issue that Republican Senate candidates to have to answer for. Ask Herschel Walker and the Thiel puppets if they think Mike Pence did the right thing on January 6. Make them explain why not.

As Amanda likes to say: Prosecute the damn case.

Mike Pence might be a hostile witness for the prosecution, but he’s a useful one. Democrats shouldn’t let him go to waste.

They should hug Mike Pence—no matter how much he tries to wriggle out of their embrace—and use him to wedge the small number of gettable swing voters away from MAGA candidates.

Now go ahead and flame me in the comments. I’m ready.

Upgrade Now - Get 30 Days Free

2. Violence

One of the hallmarks of 1930s Europe was running street violence between socialists and fascists. It was everywhere—big cities, small villages—it was explicitly political, and it became increasingly organized as the decade wore on.

The origins of this violence stretched back to the First World War. The Great War was such a cataclysmic rupture of the civilized world that ordinary people came to believe that the center could not hold and that they were willing to try any alternative belief set in order to avoid another world war.

And of course, this willingness to embrace toxic systems and to countenance any means, is precisely what led to the next world war.

The entire episode is an object lesson in the power of black swan events: World War I was essentially a perfect storm that shouldn’t have happened. But the fact that it did happen altered the future course of events in ways which could never be unwound.

But back to the street violence. Political violence became the norm in 1930s Europe. And political violence is one of the hallmarks of unstable societies. We’ve seen it in America most recently in the 1970s.

And beginning in 2016, it emerged again. It was brought to the surface by Donald Trump…