“Donald Trump will not be held accountable for the January 6 Insurrection.”
Let me say that again, Donald Trump will not be held accountable for his role in the January 6 Insurrection. The hard truth is that the key premise of democracy — the electorate holding the government accountable through the ballot box — has failed. In a functioning democracy, the three estates of the legislative, the executive, and the judiciary work in concert to advance the will of the people. The legislative sets the policies, the executive implements those policies, and the judiciary acts as the check on the abuses or excesses of the executive. Supported by the fourth estate, the free press, the actions of the government are made known to the voters and if they disapprove of the government’s policies and actions, they can take corrective action by voting the government out at the next election. It is this feedback loop that holds the government and politicians accountable.
As a communications professional, I study crisis communications so that I will be able to help my clients deal with challenges to their personal and brand reputations. Politics in democracies provide me the microcosm to learn, and hone my thinking, in this field of public relations because winning votes is akin to securing a sale — they both require gaining the trust and a commitment of another individual.
On paper, the concept of voters holding their governments and politicians accountable at the ballot boxes makes perfect sense. Unfortunately, this assumes that voters are not humans and are hence infallible. And, from experience, we all know that voters are indeed fallible and politicians like Trump exploit this. We only need to look at how Trump and his acolytes are dealing with the “fallout” of the January 6 Insurrection to see this in action.
January 6 Insurrection
Even as irrefutable evidence surface that Trump (and many Republican Senators and Congressmen) staged a coup, the…
