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“During the 1950s, Senator Joe McCarthy convened hearings
to discover Soviet moles in Hollywood, the State Department and the U.S. Army.
The Army-McCarthy Hearings led to his downfall. Abusive practices by Committee
and Subcommittee chairmen (no women) were reined in. Occasionally, hearings even
became vehicles for serious and sustained investigations. Senator J. William
Fulbright of the Foreign Relations Committee held extended hearings on the extent
of U.S. security commitments abroad – uncovering facts that came as an unwelcome
surprise to many of his colleagues and an interested public. Senator Sam Irvin of
the Judiciary Committee conducted impeachment hearings with courtesy and restraint
on President Richard M. Nixon’s fitness for office. The biggest and the best hearings
of this era pursued fact-finding in a balanced way.
“These days are long gone. Hearings on Capitol Hill have
again become inquisitions – yet another indicator of poisonous partisanship.
. . .
“There are few outlets on Capitol Hill to reduce toxicity
levels. One release valve would be to pass meaningful legislation, but Republicans
would need to join with Democrats to do this, {which has so proved impossible}
“The vacuum created by not passing bills into law has been
filled with hot air . . .
- - -
“. . . {Congressional} hearings have again become auto-da-fés.
One purpose of hearings is to drive up political resentments and negatives under the
guise of fact-finding. . . .” (Ref. 1)
Many of the hearings held in the Senate of the House are
nothing but showcasing, publicity, celebrity and grandstanding hearings which most
often involve some type of unique or controversial issue, or some significant
public figure who can be hectored and pilloried before television cameras.
Congressional Hearings have too often been nothing but a modern form of the
medieval inquisition.
Most often these days, Congressional hearings are not
impartial hearings. They are designed to gather publicity for the politicians and
they present little opportunity for those being queried to properly defend themselves
against the charges, inuendoes and misrepresentations being hurled at them by
unscrupulous publicity hungry politicians.
“The pillory or public whipping post went out of
fashion in England and Europe by the 1830’s but non-public whippings, usually in
prisons, occurred until the 1960’s in various jurisdictions including the US.
However, the US has not abandoned Verbal Whippings in Congress. Congress
has used its Congressional Hearings mechanisms to whip verbally and chastise
publicly various targets stretching back to the Credit Mobilier case of post
Civil War Reconstruction through the Teapot Dome scandal of the 1920’s to the
more recent Army-McCarthy, Watergate, Iran Contra among others. But with decline
of Congress to some of the lowest poll ratings in decades, action has to be taken.
Hence the rise in Public Verbal Whippings by various Congressional Committees.”
(Ref. 2) These “public whippings” are not so
much to punish the alleged perpetrators of what is charged as they are intended
to satisfy the appetite of the voting public for a spectacle similar to that of
the deadly games in the Coliseum of ancient Rome that garnered public support for
the emperors who provided the spectacles.
Besides being venues for inquisitional-type kangaroo
courts, publicity seeking and public floggings, congressional hearings have also
often devolved into pulpits for conspiracy theorists. “Stanley Kubrick helped
the US government fake the moon landing. Beyoncé and Jay-Z are in the Illuminati.
These stories are so well-worn that folks know them by heart. By now, conspiracy
theories are a part of everyday American life—so much so that they even come from
the mouths of besuited members of Congress on live television.
- - -
“Yet, all of this should leave you flabbergasted.
Members of Congress ought to come armed with evidence—any evidence—before
they air out a theory in such a formal setting. But these things go largely unchecked,
because more and more often no one is surprised; they're inoculated to it. For some
committee members, demonstrating that they're hep to their constituents' online
musings seems to supersede congressional hearings' purpose: fact-finding. We've
now entered the age of conspiracy politics.
“Even before they became a Trump-era norm, conspiracy-minded
congressional hearings were something of an American political tradition. In 1954,
as the Red Scare reached its panic point and the McCarthy hearings began, the
stakes for what had been dry and wonkish inquiries changed forever: For the
first time, hearings would be televised, live and in their entirety. Scholars
at the time argued that the broadcasts were making a spectacle of governance,
that providing politicians opportunities for televised grandstanding would leave the
public (and congressional investigators) short on facts and long on partisan
rhetoric.
“They were right. By the mid-1970s, congressional hearings
were no longer just about information gathering—they had become . . . ‘ritual
performance’ of participants' ideologies. Whether there's real truth to uncover
is irrelevant: Watergate (and the Iran-Contra affair and President
George W. Bush's Iraq exaggerations) were as rife with conspiratorial
partisan snipery as Benghazi. ‘A party out of power will often push
far-fetched claims about the president and his party. Sometimes it's a necessary
counterweight,’ says {the} author of American Conspiracy Theories. That's
the argument Democrats might make for their own conspiracy-driven windmill tilting.
‘What's changed in the Trump era is Donald Trump.’
“Even before they became a Trump-era norm, conspiracy-minded
congressional hearings were something of an American political tradition.
“Typically, the party of the president (and the president
himself) eschew conspiracy narratives. Breaking that rule used to come with swift
penalty. As First Lady, Hillary Clinton was mocked for claiming she and President
Clinton were the victims of a ‘vast right-wing conspiracy,’ and so was
President Obama when a 2012 campaign ad insinuated ‘secretive oil billionaires’
were out to get him. Not so with President Trump. ‘Conspiracy theorists brought him
to the prom, so now he has to dance with them,’ . . . Politicians who want to
escape the president's Twitter-amplified ire (and please Trump-voting constituents)
have to step in time. The echoes of ‘deep state’ anxieties and other
right-wing conspiracy theories that echoed through the hearings of James Comey,
William Barr, Peter Strzok, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Facebook CEO Mark
Zuckerberg, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Michael Cohen, and just about
anybody who's sat before Congress in the last two years, weren't made by
disconnected congresspeople left in the sun too long. They were made by canny
politicians toeing a new party line more confidently with each hearing.
“The result is a constant hail of conspiracy theories
beating down from political elites on both sides of the aisle. That worries . . .
an American public policy and misinformation researcher at Boston University.
‘What's scary is that there's spillover,’ . . . ‘Exposure to conspiracy theories
about any aspect of government reduces your trust in its institutions overall.
These hearings are going to diminish trust in the House and Senate.’ What other
reasonable reaction could there be to a fact-finding squad with members doing their
best to deflect attention from the facts?
“In a way, the internet dumped butane on the fire started
by televising the Red Scare. It's now possible to consume only curated snippets of
the news that suit your own mores and biases, and conspiracy theorists have never
been so able to easily rally together or had access to a wider swathe of humanity
to sway. That's when objective reality starts to slip. ‘We're not able to decide
when something is a conspiracy anymore,’ . . . ‘The stigma of believing in
a conspiracy theory might start going away because people disagree about basic
reality, and have very partisan ideas about who the conspirators are.’
"This, of course, is the danger. If everyone can occupy a
universe of information of their own choosing, it's not just politicians who are
apt to fall prey to bias-confirming conspiracies—we all are. But that's just a
theory.” (Ref. 3)
In a recent demonstration of the sorry state of
congressional hearings, “Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified before the House
Financial Services Committee on Wednesday {23 October 2019}. The hearing was
supposed to be about his planned cryptocurrency, Libra, but the proceedings
frequently felt like a show trial for Facebook's beleaguered CEO, who was
repeatedly asked loaded gotcha questions. [Emphasis mine]
" ‘Have you learned that you should not lie?’ asked
Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D–N.Y.). It was a surprise she didn't add: And have you
stopped beating your wife?
“Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.) attacked
Zuckerberg for allowing misleading political ads to appear on Facebook,
something that has increasingly irritated high-profile Democrats as of late—most
notably regulation-obsessed Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.), who recently
warned that ‘Facebook is actively helping Trump spread lies and misinformation.
Facebook already helped elect Donald Trump once. They might do it again—and profit
off of it.’
" ‘I'm not talking about spin, I'm talking about actual
disinformation,’ said Ocasio-Cortez, as if these are two things that Facebook
content moderators could both easily distinguish and police in a fair and
unbiased way.
“Zuckerberg responded that he believed ‘in a democracy,
people should be able to see for themselves what politicians which they may or
may not vote for are saying, and judge their character for themselves.’
Ocasio-Cortez then pivoted to interrogating him about his ‘ongoing dinner
parties with far-right figures, some of whom advance the conspiracy theory
that white supremacy is a hoax.’
“The idea that Facebook's misleading political ads
are any more threatening to democracy than the hours of ideological, agenda-driven
advocacy for one party or another that appear on television and the radio every
day is a kind of moral panic. Social media is certainly the newer phenomenon,
and that has made it the object of hatred for legislators who reflexively fear
something they don't understand and can't control.
“Many Republicans were also inclined to meddle in
Facebook's affairs. Rep. Bill Posey (R–Fla.) criticized Zuckerberg for policing
anti-vaxxer content. Rep. Patrick McHenry (R–N.C.), the committee's ranking
Republican, said he had ‘qualms’ about Facebook's practices, though he did not
wish to side against ‘American innovation.’
“But some of the most absurd questions came from Reps.
Maxine Waters (D–Calif.) and Al Green (D–Texas), who went after the CEO for not
doing more to promote diversity. Green asked how many of the people working on
the Libra project were members of the LGBTQ+ community, raising the question of
whether Congress expected Zuckerberg to interrogate his employees regarding
their sexuality.
“Rep. Waters to Zuckerberg: ‘Since Reverend Jesse Jackson
and the Rainbow Push Coalition called upon Silicon Valley companies to release its
diversity statistics more than five years ago, the representation of African-Americans
and Hispanics has increased by less than 2 percent.’
“Waters urged Zuckerberg to hit pause on Libra, saying:
‘As I have examined Facebook's various problems, I have come to the conclusion
that it would be beneficial for all if Facebook concentrates on addressing its
many existing deficiencies and failures before proceeding any further on the
Libra project.’ One could have forgiven Zuckerberg if he'd curtly reminded the
representative that Facebook is his company, not hers.” (Ref. 4)
All in all, the hearing on Libra and the inquisition-like
treatment of Mark Zuckerberg was nothing more than a public lynching
and an embarrassing example of political showboating in
front of the television cameras. The abominable behavior of the members of Congress
who participated in the fiasco provided more proof of the depths to which politicians
in both parties have fallen. For Shame!
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References:
- Congressional Hearings as Inquisitions, Michael Krepon,
stimson.org, 16 July 2016.
- The Public Whippings of Goldman Sachs, takethe5th.com,
April 2010.
- Trump-Era Congressional Hearings Have Succumbed to Conspiracy Politics,
Emma Grey Ellis, wired.com, 1 March 2019.
- Congress Asked Mark Zuckerberg a Bunch of Really, Really Stupid
Questions at the Libra Hearing, Robby Soave, reason.com,
23 October 2019.
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