I’ve noticed that members of the January 6 committee are being careful not to say that Donald Trump should be prosecuted. Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, in particular, has stated that there should be a norm against the legislative or executive branch of government telling the Department of Justice who they should investigate. Trump destroyed this norm, including by interjecting to tell the DOJ who not to investigate (because they are “a good guy”), and Raskin doesn’t want to perpetuate that practice. I think this is an admirable position to take and I won’t criticize it.

What concerns me is the idea that the Establishment (and I use that term in the positive sense) thinking that they can turn back the tide of Trumpian fascism simply by exposing the truth. Like it or not, the Murdoch media empire is part of the Establishment and CNN’s Reliable Sources reports that they’re beginning to act like it, at least on the print side.

This happens from time to time, but it’s still notable: Rupert Murdoch-controlled publications are taking a tougher line against Trump than Murdoch-owned TV. The Wall Street Journal’s most-read Opinion piece this weekend was the Friday editorial that concluded, “Trump betrayed his supporters by conning them on Jan. 6, and he is still doing it.” The New York Post’s editorial board struck a somewhat different tone, but urged readers to “unsubscribe from Trump’s daily emails begging for money” and “pick your favorite from a new crop of conservatives.” Move on from Trump, the editors wrote, and “Let’s make America sane again.”

In 2016, no major newspaper in the country endorsed Trump’s candidacy, including some who could fairly be called a part of the “right-wing media apparatus” dedicated to electing Republicans to office. It didn’t matter. And it might not matter now that some of the elite directors of the apparatus are eager to move on from Trump. Fascism has crept in so deeply to the GOP’s zeitgeist that truthful and accurate editorials aren’t going to move the needle.

As former Obama aide Dan Pfeiffer, author of the new book “Battling the Big Lie,” said on Sunday’s “Reliable Sources,” “this entire right-wing media apparatus was designed for one purpose, to elect Republicans to office.” So “this is not a moral statement from Rupert Murdoch’s papers,” he said, it’s a practical statement to get a new crop of GOP leaders elected.

Pfeiffer talked about 1/6 in the sweep of history and argued that “January 6 is a shorthand for what is happening right now. You have a Republican gubernatorial candidate in Michigan arrested in his house for participating in the insurrection,” he said. “You have a Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate who’s [running] on the platform of giving Pennsylvania’s electoral votes to Donald Trump, no matter what the voters say. This is a clear and present danger,” so the hearings are “focusing the mind on what is coming, not just what happened.”

The January 6 hearings are not designed to make a prosecutorial case against anyone, so they are inadequate to change the trajectory we’re on. They may very well change more minds than cynics anticipate, but what is needed is swift accountability, and that can only be provided by the Justice Department.

So far, the first two hearings have resembled a prosecutorial case, and a pretty compelling one. I am sure this is adding pressure and probably also creating some cover for the DOJ to act against Donald Trump. One reason this is important is because there’s no guarantee that the Establishment will prove more popular at the ballot box than fascism. This might sound like I am arguing that we should try to win an election by preemptively prosecuting our opponents, which is a very Putinesque thing to do. But what I’m actually arguing is that to fail to prosecute actual and very serious crimes out of some deference to norms or concerns about precedent, is risking losing the entire system to dictatorship. Remember that Adolf Hitler was asked to form a government after his party won a 33 percent plurality in the 1932 elections. It was the last free election a united Germany enjoyed until 1990.

Fascism defeated democracy at the ballot box, and this is always possible because under certain conditions fascism can temporarily be more popular than the status quo, particularly if the Established is gridlocked an ineffectual. Our situation is dire in large part because the Republican half of the Establishment lost control of their party and can no longer prevent people like Trump from winning primaries. The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post can’t fix that problem.

In a democracy, the people get what they ask for, and if they want candidates who will take away their freedom to choose their leaders, then it’s up to courts to try to save democracy. We can’t take away freedom of speech in order to save it, or ban whole categories of candidates. But we absolutely can prosecute people who have provably committed crimes, including crimes against the U.S. government and the U.S. Constitution. And this must be done. It is the only available remedy, and even if it is pursued as it should be, it may not be adequate.