Why the January 6 Hearings Matter

A brief glance at the history of the United States shows that the Presidency, as well as control of Congress, has gone back and forth between the political parties over the years. This pattern will likely continue in the coming years, as the party in power often loses seats during the mid-term elections.

Based on the possibility that the Democrats lose control of Congress this November, and that the 2024 Presidential election is up for grabs, let’s imagine a scenario:

It’s 2024. The Democratic nominee for President, let’s say for now it’s Joe Biden, has lost both the popular vote and the Electoral College ballots. After numerous recounts and lawsuits, the legal consensus is that the election was fair and accurately reflected the will of the majority of voters. The vote was close, but he lost.

Joe Biden and his party claim that there was fraud even though no evidence has been found. They begin planning ways to overturn the election and retain power. A major part of their plan involves having Kamala Harris refuse to certify the electors chosen by the voters and to substitute her own slate of electors, who favor Joe Biden. January 2025 arrives and enraged Democrats, who believe deeply in Joe Biden and can’t accept the idea that he lost, storm the US Capitol to support overturning the election results. When they learn that Kamala Harris has refused to support their plans, they make death threats against her and try to hunt her down in the Capitol building that they are attempting to take by force.

You get the picture.

Now imagine that you are a Republican voter and you know your guy won fair and square. Do you think those Democrats should be allowed to take the law into their own hands like that? Of course you don’t. You would demand justice and you’d want to hold those people accountable for breaking the law.

My point isn’t to simply reverse the roles, although that is always a valuable technique when trying to understand why people do the things they do. My point is rather that this is simply how democracy works. This is what our soldiers fight and die for; this is why the US has often been a role-model for other nations trying to enshrine the freedom and justice created by our Constitution for the benefit of all citizens, not just a few.

If you can, try to zoom out to a broader view of what’s happening here and why it matters. Despite the claims that the January 6 Committee is finding nothing new, anyone who actually listens to the hearings is learning about a network of planning that went into a so-called “spontaneous” eruption of violence that threatened our lawmakers right up to the level of our Vice President.

This is illegal no matter who does it. If a gang of criminals moved into Bandera and started demanding that their members take over the mayor’s office, would it matter if they were Republicans or Democrats? They might believe sincerely that what they were doing would help Bandera become a better place, but they are still acting illegally. We don’t do things that way in our country.

In our country, if you don’t like decisions that are being made by our lawmakers, you can vote them out of office, if enough people agree with you. You can run for office and take a crack at problem-solving yourself, if enough people agree with you.

But if not enough people agree with you, you don’t get to pull out a gun and threaten people until you get your way. That’s not how a democracy works. That’s illegal no matter who does it.

Our democratic system has to stand for something. And we have to stand against criminal activity even if it’s supporting something we agree with. The poignant testimony of numerous Republicans at the hearings is demonstrating this point. They knew it wasn’t right.

Laws have to matter. They can be changed by following the steps our Constitution laid out. If someone is trying to change laws by using violence and intimidation, that is unconstitutional and illegal.

See the big picture, and support our democracy. Your party will get a turn at running things soon enough. Don’t compromise our Constitution because you don’t like how things are going. People broke the law and it doesn’t matter why.

That’s what the January 6 hearings are all about.

Susan Hull is an Independent voter who is old enough to remember people talking about moving to Canada when George Bush was declared President by the Supreme Court in December 2000. His inauguration took place amid angry but peaceful protests on January 20, 2001.