If you’re not the kind of person who watches C-SPAN, you might have missed this scene today: Bruce Fisher, the husband of brand-newly re-sworn-in U.S. senator Deb Fischer (R-NE), refusing to shake the hand of Vice President Kamala Harris. He offered a curt nod and returned her “thank you,” but could not manage the handshake. Just couldn’t do it, for reasons, none of which could possibly include misogyny or racism or anti-wokeism, which it hurts even to type, it’s so stupid.
I offer this:
Do I regret my response? Do I really wonder if it is ungenerous? I do not and I do not. (Do I regret the absence of a question mark? I also do not. It’s a convention of online style, grandpa.) On the 6th of January, four years to the day that Deb and Bruce’s Grand Oligarchy Party stormed the building that they were standing in this morning, bent on derailing the certification of the election of the other party’s nominee, the spouse of a senator Was Going to Show Them.
Deb Fisher is not a new senator. She defeated Bob Kerry in 2012 to win her seat, won another six year term in 2018, and won a third in November. I don’t know what her husband did the other times she was sworn in. I do know that his family owns a very large ranching operation in Nebraska, large enough for the family’s children to own the majority of the stock in the family corporation, while Deb and Bruce, who moved to Nebraska five years ago, have held on to a minority share. I don’t want to judge people for owning a giant cattle ranch in Nebraska, where I am sure they are very nice to their employees, the environment, their neighbors, and the cows and I am sure their politics have nothing to do with any of that.
I also know that in 2021, Deb condemned what happened on January 6. In a statement, she said, “These rioters have no constitutional right to harm law enforcement and storm our Capitol. We are a nation of laws, not some banana republic. This must end now.” She also said that although she didn’t like the outcome of the election, fraud had not been proven, and she voted to certify the results. I also know that by May, she voted against the creation of an independent commission to investigate the riot, and that three years after the riot, she endorsed the man behind the riot. Did she ever vote to impeach that man? She did not.
Do I know how Deb feels about her husband’s little tantrum this morning? I do not. But she married him and had no visible reaction to what he did, or didn’t do, though I do imagine she will be answering questions about it for a few days.
I do know that Deb doesn’t like abortion, so much so that she’s all for a ban without exceptions. Things she’s not for? The ACA, restrictions on gun ownership, or the scientific consensus on climate change (through an aide, she has said it’s happening but it’s due to “natural cycles,” which, thanks for sharing your expertise, Dr. Fischer).
To what does this all add up? I don’t know. I do know that this senator, whose generally execrable positions are standard for today’s GOP, still on one occasion–the events of four years ago today–stood up to the con man to whom her party sold whatever tiny soul it had. For about five minutes. I also know that her husband stood in the building attacked by rioters sent in by that con man and refused to shake the hand of half of the ticket they were trying to deny the White House to. I know that people died and our democracy will never be the same. I know that, as reported today, the amount of ammunition confiscated on that day was enough to have shot every sitting member of the House and Senate five times each.
Not shaking someone’s hand is the definition of petty. There’s a picture in the dictionary next to “petty” of someone not shaking someone else’s hand. I know it’s petty to not shake someone’s hand because I’m a petty person and have fantasized, repeatedly and lamely, about not shaking the hands of public figures I find awful, if given the chance. But to do it for real, today, there, at the scene of the crime? It’s still petty, but it’s also a reminder of something big–that the people who will be in charge in two weeks, the people who support them, the aggressive, sometimes violent movement of fake victims who shall not be tread upon unless it’s by the boot they choose, is big on ignoring the norms that hold democracies, however flawed and rigged and deeply undemocratic, together.
Do I think Harris should have called out Bruce Fischer? Delivered a sharp slap to his impressively pasty chops? I do not. She did what people do when they respect other people, occasions, norms. Do I think those of us who are not willing marks of the once and future con man in chief can afford to keep relying on norms and precedents and procedures and institutions and courts when the people we hope they’ll protect us from could manifestly give a shit about them?
I do not. On this fourth anniversary of the attempted insurrection of January 6, 2025, we should promise each other that we won’t comply in advance, that we won’t rely on norms, that we’ll fight Project 2025 and all the little local and state projects designed to support the GOP agenda in any way we have to. We can’t shake hands with the devil, the way any number of Democratic politicians seem eager to. There’s no working with a man like this man or with people who would help him do what he wants to do to us and for himself. Maybe Bruce Fischer has shown us something after all.
Samuel Cohen 