17 June—Driving back to Litchfield from Torrington yesterday, I was being entertained by the latest episode of the congressional hearing on the 6 January 2021 Capitol kerfuffle. I needed the diversion because I was still recovering from pump shock at BJ’s and shelf-card shock at Aldi’s.

$75 for 15 gallons of premium. Forgive my Schadenfreude, but that would have cost at least $125 in the UK. And $1.79 for a pound of strawberries that last year at this time were going for 99 cents.

Back on point, listening to the remarkable cordiality and collegiality of the so-called Select Committee as they stroked the cooperative prosecution witnesses laying into Donald Trump—with some justification, mind you—it struck me that we’re just getting the prosecution’s side now, so when will we be getting the defense’s?

But then it occurred to me that we won’t be getting the or any defense at all. Because this is a hearing, not a trial. And hearings—at all levels of government, by any and all legislative and administrative bodies—are conducted primarily to further the self-interest of the conducting body and/or delude the electorate into believing that any part of government actually gives a damn about what the great unwashed think.

That’s one of the reasons taking the trouble to appear and express your well-founded opinions (or simply feelings, as is often the case) at legislative and administrative hearings, unless you’ve been specifically invited to testify in agreement with the majority is a waste of time and energy.

Most elected pols and their cadres and coteries go to some lengths to convince impressionable, benighted constituents that they matter. But that’s only so the pols and their cadres and coteries can weasel their way into office and stay there.

As for Donald Trump, now that he’s no longer in the White House, he’s pretty well beyond the reach of Congress. So now it’s up to the Department of Justice, which is supposed to be insulated from politics. Supposed to be, never really has been, not just under Trump.

Will Attorney General Merrick Garland go after Trump? Trumpolaters and other Republicans certainly will accuse Garland of partisanship if he does. But that shouldn’t stop him. And to prove he’s not partisan, he should start by prosecuting the good people who unlawfully protested outside SCOTUS Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s home. They may have been well-intentioned and peaceful, but they broke the law. And, of course, they wasted their time . . .