Pam Bondi, W. E. B. Du Bois, And America's Never-Ending Monkey Trial

For the Senate Judiciary Committee to work, there must be a gap between the requisite information and the Senate’s ultimate decision. The committee should have a concentrated body of senators to discover information about a candidate to make a just decision. Pam Bondi’s recent hearing would need to reveal something the Senate did not already know, and that new knowledge would have to play a decisive role in the political judgment. 

As expected, this did not occur. Instead, with Republican control, the Senate’s decision was made independently of Bondi’s hearing. Both parties knew, even before the meeting, that there was hardly anything they could say that would make a difference. Earlier this year, confirmation hearings for RFK Jr. and Pete Hegseth demonstrated that, regardless of candidates’ inexperience or incompetence, their loyalty to Trump would ensure their legislative confirmation. 

Bereft of any political power, democrats could turn to the court as an ideological terrain of struggle. Courts are broadcast live online, with viral clips shared on news channels, YouTube, and direct messages. The public nature of the hearing makes it an opportunity for senators to engage directly with the American public, potentially changing their political counterparts’ minds.

Again, in reality, democrats belie this innocent perspective. The actual monologues in the court hearings are not concerned with the other political side; instead, they see the court as a political theatre to perform for their own constituents. 

For instance, during Senator Adam Schiff’s hearing, he asked the chair, “This is supposed to be an oversight hearing when dozens of prosecutors have been fired simply because they worked on cases investigating the former president.” Interrupting Schiff’s tirade, Bondi asked, “What about the fires in California?” Rather than an ideological struggle against the opposing position, their speech is an effort to consolidate their pre-existing supporters. Left viewers will roll their eyes at Bondi’s interruptions, and right-wing viewers will ignore Schiff’s claims. Both Bondi and Schiff are aware that neither of their comments will change the Senate’s political decision or the viewer’s political allegiances.

While Trump’s tenure has been rightfully characterised as unprecedented, the Senate’s performance falls within an American tradition best exemplified by the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial. In response to the growing popularity of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, Tennessee lawmakers introduced the Butler Act, which outlawed any pedagogical departure from Genesis. The actual trial arose from the arrest of a schoolteacher, John T. Scopes, for teaching evolution. 

For the Scopes trial and Bondi’s hearing, the trial’s ultimate decision is arbitrary. Both the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the State of Tennessee knew that Scopes would be fine regardless of the sentence. Instead, the trial was a potential stage, alongside traditional media such as newspapers and the new radio, for pursuing their own interests through the juridical spectacle. For the prosecution, William Jennings Bryan played an instrumental role in galvanising political support for his upcoming presidential election. The ACLU saw the trial as an opportunity to popularise its platform. The town of Dayton, Tennessee, played a significant role in orchestrating the spectacle to attract attention and tourism. Lastly, the media itself, far from a neutral mediator, saw the trial as a gold mine. 

Similar to the Senate hearing, the Scopes trial, appearing as a dialectical confrontation of different positions to reach a sublimated truth, only reinforced political divisions. The ACLU and left-wing newspapers, such as H.L Mencken, appealed to a more urban, liberal base of voters concerned about the state of education in the country. Bryan appealed to rural, religious voters by securing the bible in the classroom. The chasm between these positions has yet to be bridged in American politics. 

A key reason behind the perpetuated divide between the positions lies within the nature of the juridical spectacle. Evident in both the Scopes Trial and Bondi’s hearing, the spectacle exists within the listener’s libidinal economy. The court, mimicking the classic jester, engages each listener through exciting, polarising language. The end of the court case is far from justice; instead, it lies in the viral accumulation of the viewer’s attention by any means necessary. The spectacle contains within itself a self-reproducing logic that subsumes any political position into its own profit-seeking direction. 

W. E. B. Du Bois, in his commentary on the trial, critiqued its nature. He agreed with urban, progressive criticisms of rural Southerners’ scientific ignorance and the absurdity of the trial. However, Du Bois’s concern was not to leave his audience with simply criticism, but instead asked,

“Who is to blame? They that know; they that teach; they that sit silent and enjoy… great rulers of wealth who fear understanding; and voluptuaries who have no wish to be disturbed by real democracy.”

In contrast to his contemporary journalists, and even to our own, Du Bois inverted the problem of ignorance onto the supposedly Enlightened reader. He refused the patronising distancing implicit in urban, liberal critiques by recognising that all American citizens held a democratic responsibility to uplift one another, to collectively abstain from the spectacle’s pleasurable cynicism.

Du Bois’s criticisms additionally called out the hypocrisy of white, urban critics through their position on the color line. Just as the Christian nationalists sought to abrogate Darwin in the classrooms with an irrational fanaticism, many of their rationally-minded white critics believed in a doctrine of pseudoscientific racial purity that justified the abhorrent practice of lynching. 

On the one hand, Du Bois pierced the court’s phantasmagoria to reveal the underlying structures of race and capitalism. On the other hand, reason alone cannot defeat the spectacle’s insidious logic. The Left can identify the correct social structures giving rise to the phenomenon, yet this will not Platonically actualise the truth. 

Du Bois was familiar with the emptiness of truth alone. His thorough journalistic career was part of his attempt to materialise the truth through action. The Crisis, where his Scopes piece was published, served as a democratic forum for black voices during segregation to collectively deliberate. Beyond simply reason, the magazine was also a forum for advertising black entertainment, including his own pageant, showcasing exciting images and celebrating black culture. Outside the spectacle’s insidious logic, The Crisis was a possible space to foster engagement and disseminate the truth through grounding information for black people’s betterment.

If the Left is to defeat fascism, it cannot attempt to outcompete the right virally. The ACLU might have shown moments of besting Bryan and his Christian nationalist supporters, but the election of Trump has demonstrated the short-lived nature of their victory. Senators can use hearings to illustrate the right’s absurdity, but it will not win over their supporters. Instead, Du Bois points to the possibility of balancing allurement with politics in meaningful ways. To end with a question from Walter Benjamin, is the left condemned to aestheticise politics (i.e., fascism), or will they find a way to politicise art?

Image: Flickr/Smithsonian Institution (Watson Davis)

Licence: public domain.

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