The recent 252-175 bipartisan House vote – 35 Republicans voted yea – was expected and extremely welcome, but the 50-50 Senate will once again provide sturdy opposition to forming the January 6th investigative commission. The last thing most GOP pols in Washington want is the evil spectre of former president Donald Trump returning like Christopher Lee in the HAMMER “Dracula” films in three years to run roughshod over the careers of any Republican who votes for its formation. And the reason for this ongoing burgeoning-Fascist nightmare is the millions of American voters who are champing at the bit to vote for Trump again if he runs in 2024, displaying both ignorance and contempt for the basic tenets of our Constitution.

Anyone with any common sense at all realizes that America simply cannot have the events of 4 months ago repeated, for both domestic and international reasons. And they WOULD’VE been repeated on Inauguration Day save for the over-and-above work done by Homeland Security, the FBI and all those 21,000 National Guard soldiers stationed in Washington D.C. that thankfully-eventless day.

But unfortunately Decent America needs at least 10 GOP senators to join a united Democrat party of 50 to pass the legislation through and get to president Joe Biden’s desk. And despite earlier approval from several of them including Senate Minority head Mitch McConnell (!) and an eminently-fair 10-person group proposal made up of 5 members of each party (a far more equitable deal that the Republican Party would EVER give the Democrats on ANY issue before the Biden victory), there’s virtually no chance of it getting through.

Capitol police, who faced death and injury defending the building from the insurrectionists’ takeover, were understandably disappointed by the GOP opposition to back them up by forming this new council designed to prevent future recurrences of January 6’s rampant violence. In a letter to members of Congress, a group of U.S. Capitol Police expressed “profound disappointment” with House Minority leader Kevin McCarthy and McConnell over their opposition.

“On Jan. 6, where some officers served their last day in a US Capitol Police uniform, and not by choice, we would hope that the Members whom we took an oath to protect, would at the very minimum support an investigation to get to the bottom of EVERYONE responsible and hold them 100% accountable no matter the title or position they hold or held”, their letter reads.

McCarthy’s stated desire to join the Jan. 6 investigation with a similar one involving the Black Lives Matter riots in response to the ongoing shootings of unarmed Black citizens is simply a smoke screen to try to somehow equate the 2 topics as being similarly motivated. They are not. The latter is our nation’s continuing racist screed written very, very large against the BLM movement created in 2013 in response to the Trayvon Martin murder/travesty of justice in Florida. The former was the ugliest example in US history of genuine domestic terrorism fomented by the words, actions and prompting by the worst man to ever inhabit our Oval Office, a demagogue who knows and understands his followers’ mind set extremely well.

A repeat of Jan. 6 would throw a huge wrench into the wonderful progress that has been made in 4 short months by the Biden Administration re: coronavirus vaccinations, job creation, opening healthcare up again to millions of people who lost it in the past four years, as well as America’s rank-and-file’s slowly reawakening optimism of the nation’s post-pandemic direction going forward. And the improvement of our fractured relationships with our European allies would receive the coldest slap in the face imaginable, as it would open up the wounds of last January and sow even more doubt in their minds about just how far America has recovered from the disaster of 2017-2021.

All eyes are on the Senate, and will be going forward. But it sadly doesn’t look good, as budget reconciliation to break the expected Senate GOP filibuster is not an option in this case.

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