So what does it all mean, Jan. 6, one year later? As House investigators and, we pray (evidence is slim), Department of Justice prosecutors sift through their interviews and forensic data, what all of us want to know is: Will we be OK?

Or are the people amping themselves up for a civil war really up to fighting one? If so, how? And to what end?

Michelle Goldberg consulted a couple of academic authorities on the subject and came away unconvinced that end is inevitable. It’s “absurd to treat civil war as a foregone conclusion,” she writes despite parallels elsewhere referenced by scholars. Still, this metric catches one’s attention:

The sort of civil war that Walter and Marche worry about wouldn’t involve red and blue armies facing off on some battlefield. If it happens, it will be more of a guerrilla insurgency. As Walter told me, she, like Marche, relies on an academic definition of “major armed conflict” as one that causes at least 1,000 deaths per year. A “minor armed conflict” is one that kills at least 25 people a year. By this definition, as Marche argues, “America is already in a state of civil strife.” According to the Anti-Defamation League, extremists, most of them right-wing, killed 54 people in 2018 and 45 people in 2019. (They killed 17 people in 2020, a figure that was low due to the absence of extremist mass shootings, possibly because of the pandemic.)

“Walter” is Barbara F. Walter, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego:

Instigators of civil violence, she writes, tend to be previously dominant groups who see their status slipping away. “The ethnic groups that start wars are those claiming that the country ‘is or ought to be theirs,’” she writes. This is one reason, although there are violent actors on the left, neither she nor Marche believe the left will start a civil war. As [novelist Stephen] Marche writes, “Left-wing radicalism matters mostly because it creates the conditions for right-wing radicalization.”

Clearly, status anxiety is a driver for white insurrectionists, especially in areas where they see their numbers in decline. That’s why fewer of them came from regions Trump won handily. But while scenarios Marche lays out for how a civil war might begin seem to her implausible, they are “more imaginable than a future in which Jan. 6 turns out to be the peak of right-wing insurrection, and America ends up basically OK.”

Over at Politico magazine, John. F. Harris (whom Goldberg simply references) contends that civil wars tend to be about something. Civil war talk in this country is less about any issue of substance. It is not about ending slavery or segregation or a war in Vietnam. No, it is more about the fact that we don’t like each other.

Efforts to explain Trump and Trumpism end up in speculation about the psychological and emotional stuntedness behind the man’s narcissism, cruelty, and will-to-power. He hates the people his followers hate, the non-white ones moving into suburban neighborhoods from whence cometh, studies find, most Jan. 6 insurrectionists. Is that enough?

The transcendent issue of this time — no matter the specific raw material of any given news cycle — is the belief that one half of the country suspects the other half is contemptuous of them, and responds with contempt in turn. “Seinfeld” was not really, as was often said, “a show about nothing.” It demonstrated instead that with the right characters and frame of mind, you can make a show about anything that might happen in daily life. Donald Trump has shown that you can use the same approach to create a national crack-up. The violent rabble that crashed the Capitol a year ago showed that crack-ups are fertile ground for crackpots.

Are you starting 2022 in an optimistic mood? You might take solace in the argument that it’s hard to have a real civil war without a real cause — a great question that will be resolved by the outcome. Trump’s moment in national life will die out because he always has lots to say but no longer has anything meaningful to say.

Trump never did. Everything Trump says is Trump. If Trump crawled through that hidden Being John Malkovich passage, as Malkovich did, and entered a world in which everyone was Trump, even the women, he’d ejaculate into his shorts.

I don’t hate Trump fanatics. That requires more energy than I’m willing to expend. Harris believes civil wars have to be about something. The reasons for Trumpists’ anger are likely as inchoate to many of them as Trump’s motivations are to him. And he is a head case.

As we enter yet another general election cycle, our focus is better spent on what we, each of us, can do to prevent the further of erosion of the country precipitated by Trumpism. Be about that.

Trump contented himself with sending out puerile statements and appearing on OAN late in the day rather than face the criticisms around the January 6th insurrections. And the Republicans all slithered out of DC today rather than be faced with their own cowardice. All Republicans, that is, except for MAGA Bonnie and Clyde:

So into the void stepped Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene to deliver “a Republican response” for the anniversary, which ended up serving as a de facto official one. They are not in the mainstream of the party — at least not yet — but they were able to fill the vacuum left by more senior and more conventional figures.

“We did not want the Republican voice to go unheard and have today’s historical narrative be hijacked by those who were the true insurrectionists,” Gaetz proclaimed during a press conference inside the Capitol, inside a tiny, stuffy room where their aides scoffed at requests from photographers to don masks.

The two Republican members of Congress used footage of several participants in the attack to insinuate that the people were federal agents who had lured naïve Trump supporters into the Capitol. “I do not believe that there would have been the same level of criminal acuity on January 6 of last year but for the involvement of the federal government,” Gaetz told reporters. “This was not an insurrection,” he said, but “it may been a fedsurrection.”

Gatez was coy about why federal law enforcement would undertake such a conspiracy. ​​“The motive of the federal government may not have been to disrupt the debate [to overturn the election] but to ensnare, target, and trash a political movement we saw during the civil-rights era.” In other words, the attack on the Capitol was simply the logical and direct extension of J. Edgar Hoover tapping Martin Luther King’s phones in the 1960s.

The argument laid out by the two is a perverse mirror image of the actual events. January 6 did represent the culmination of an effort to overturn a presidential election and install the losing candidate by government actors. But in their view, the losing candidate was Joe Biden, not Trump. It wasn’t a failed autogolpe by an increasingly desperate losing candidate advised by figures ranging from a television pillow salesman to Rudy Giuliani. Instead, it was a sophisticated deep-state effort that marked the culmination of a four-year effort to undermine the Trump administration. In fact, Greene even mourned that the attack prevented her from making the case in the joint session that day that Michigan’s electoral votes should be tossed out. “I was very upset,” she said.

This was the only narrative of January 6 presented in person at the Capitol by Republican elected officials on Thursday.

This is not to say that mainstream Republicans were silent. Instead, the attack’s anniversary was treated gingerly, with every potential response presenting its own political pitfalls. After all, Ted Cruz, a leader of the effort to overturn the election results, had come under fire from the MAGA right in recent days simply for referring to January 6 as “a terrorist attack.” Gaetz suggested that Cruz was “bending over” to appeal to the “Establishment” and the media with that comment.

While a number of Republican senators attended the funeral of a former colleague in Georgia, many prominent GOP elected officials retreated to the safest citadel in politics: Whataboutism. House Republican whip Steve Scalise compared the attack on the Capitol to the riots linked with Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020. Florida governor Ron DeSantis said the anniversary was simply being used by the corporate media to manufacture consent for their narratives. Senator Lindsey Graham’s immediate thought in the aftermath of President Biden’s remarks condemning the riot was about the bungled withdrawal from Afghanistan. On Fox News, there were criticisms of Kamala Harris comparing the attack to Pearl Harbor or September 11. After all, the casualty list on January 6, 2021 was far lower than those days, the pundits said.

But these were all statements, tweets, and punditry. It left Greene and Gaetz as the Republicans to rebut Biden. They may not be the leaders of their party but, on the anniversary of the attack on the Capitol, they were the party’s spokespeople.

Let’s face it, they are the true leaders of the Party .

Former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham told CNN that a group of former Trump administration officials plan to meet in the coming weeks to "try and stop" Trump as he continues to “manipulate people and divide our country.”https://t.co/tJBeFi0zKS pic.twitter.com/jJPV4Vuc8s

— CNN This Morning with Kasie Hunt (@CNNThisMorning) January 6, 2022

 “He was in the dining room gleefully watching on his TV as he often did, [saying] ‘Look at all the people fighting for me,’ hitting rewind, watching it again, that’s all that I know.’

Trump is a very violent man, we know this, and nothing could have pleased him more than having his MAGA cult storm the capitol on his behalf. He loved seeing them beat people up. He was rooting for them to find some lawmakers and do them harm.

This, you see, shows dominance and that is his raison d’etre.

Emptywheel is closely following the details of the January 6th prosecutions. Here is where she thinks we are:

Court filings are the way I go about understanding January 6. Sedition Hunters, by contrast, have worked via faces in photos, from which they effectively create dossiers on suspects of interest.

From their home offices, couches, kitchen tables, bedrooms and garages, these independent investigators have played a remarkable role in archiving and preserving digital evidence. Often operating under the “Sedition Hunters” moniker, they’ve archived more than 2,000 Facebook accounts, over 1,125 YouTube channels, 500-plus Instagram accounts, nearly 1,000 Twitter feeds, more than 100 Rumble profiles and over 250 TikTok accounts. They’ve gathered more than 4.1 terabytes ― 4,100 gigabytes ― of data, enough to fill dozens of new iPhones with standard-issue storage.

Both approaches have come to a similar understanding of the attack: that the Proud Boys led a multi-pronged assault on the building, one that is most easily seen on the coordinated assault from the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, America Firsters, and Alex Jones on the East door. That assault on the East door appears after 22:30 on NYT’s Day of Rage on the riot, which remains the most accessible way for people to try to understand the riot. That assault on the East door, because of Pied Piper Alex Jones’ role in providing bodies, leads directly back to Trump’s request that Jones lead rally attendees from the Ellipse to the Capitol. And there are militia and localized networks that are also critical to understanding how all those bodies worked in concert on January 6. Here’s a summary of the Sedition Hunters’ understanding, which is well worth reviewing in depth.

But even though what we’re seeing is quite similar, there are gaps. Because I’m working from dockets, I’m aware of only the most important people who have yet to be arrested, whereas the Sedition Hunters have a long list, including assault suspects, prominent participants, and militia members, who remain at large. Meanwhile, I’ve identified a handful of defendants whose accomplices on January 6 are obviously of great interest to DOJ, but the Sedition Hunters aren’t always able to reverse engineer who those accomplices are based off their work.

And dockets are only useful for certain kinds of information. I track each arrest affidavit and statement of offense closely. I try to keep a close eye on changes in legal teams and developments (like continuances) that deviate from the norm, which are often the first sign that a case is getting interesting. You learn the most from detention hearings and sentencing memos. But for defendants charged by indictment and released pre-trial, the government can hide most of what it knows. And that’s assuming DOJ makes an arrest or unseals it, which it might not do if someone cooperates from the start.

The government has announced nine cooperation deals (one four months after it happened), and the subject of cooperation for two of them — Jon Schaffer and Klete Keller (whom I often get confused with the five Kellys) — is not known. It wasn’t clear that Jacob Hiles was the defendant who had gotten Capitol Police cop Michael Riley indicted until Hiles’ sentencing memo. And Hiles is not the only one being charged with a misdemeanor who cooperated to end up that way. It’s often not clear whether a delayed misdemeanor charge reflects really good lawyering or cooperation (and in the case of Brandon Straka, it seems to have been really good lawyer that nevertheless resulted in some key disclosures to DOJ).

There is a growing list of Person Ones described in court filings, Stewart Rhodes, Enrique Tarrio, Aaron Whallon-Wolkind, Alex Jones, and Morton Irvine Smith, all of whom were clearly involved in January 6 but haven’t been charged yet. Roger Stone never got referred to as Person One, but he is all over the Oath Keepers’ court filings. DOJ hasn’t named people like Mo Brooks and Rudy Giuliani when they include them in Statements of Offense, but they’re in there. So are other people who spoke on January 5.

It turns out that one means of accessing the January 6 is my forté, documents, and that of citizen researchers, collaborative research. But partly because Merrick Garland referred Michael Sherwin for an Office of Professional Responsibility investigation for publicly commenting on the investigation improperly, the normal way things get reported — by quoting sources — largely isn’t yet accessible for the criminal side of the investigation. That leads to misleading reporting like the famous Reuters article that didn’t understand the role of crimes of terrorism or a WaPo piece yesterday that unbelievably quoted Jonathan Turley claiming, “There’s no grand conspiracy that the FBI found, despite arresting hundreds of people, investigating thousands,” without labeling him as the former President’s impeachment lawyer, which is the only way Turley would be marginally competent to make such a claim. There are defense attorneys talking to the press — but the chattiest defense lawyers are the ones setting new standards for bullshit claims. The ones I’ve heard from are themselves drowning in their attempts to understand the larger investigation, both because of the sheer amount of discovery and because that discovery doesn’t tell them what is going on legally with one of the other Dunbar numbers of defendants. But in general, the ordinary sources for typical reporting aren’t talking, leading to a lot more mystery about the event.

One thing I find most striking from those who were present is their blindness. I’m haunted by something Daniel Hodges said in his testimony to the January 6 Committee: that the men and women who fought insurrectionists for hours in the Tunnel through which Joe Biden would walk to take the Oath of Office two weeks later had no idea, during that fight, that the Capitol had already been breached, and then cleared, as they continued to fight a battle of inches.

It was a battle of inches, with one side pushing the other a few and then the other side regaining their ground. At the time I (and I suspect many others in the hallway) did not know that the terrorists had gained entry to the building by breaking in doors and windows elsewhere, so we believed ours to be the last line of defense before the terrorists had true access to the building, and potentially our elected representatives.

There are similar accounts from other direct witnesses — like this chilling piece from Matt Fuller — who huddled feet away from where Ashli Babbitt was killed without knowing what was happening. Grace Segers, in her second telling of surviving that day, describes how there was no way to tell maintenance workers (there must be ten Dunbar numbers of support staff who were there that day) to take cover from the mobsters.

I have spent the better part of the year working full time, with few days off, trying to understand (and help others understand) January 6. I’ve got a clear (though undoubtedly partial) vision of how it all works — how the tactical developments in the assault on the Capitol connect directly back to actions Donald Trump took. Zoe Tillman, one of a handful of other journalists who is attempting to track all these cases (while parenting a toddler and covering other major judicial developments) has a piece attempting to do so with a summary of the numbers. But both those methods are inadequate to the task.

But thus far, that clear vision remains largely unknowable via the normal ways the general public learns. That’s why, I think, people like Lawrence Tribe are so panicked: because even beginning to understand this thing is, quite literally, a full time job, even for those of us with the luxury of living an ocean away. In Tribe’s case, he has manufactured neglect out of what he hasn’t done the work to know. To have something that poses such an obvious risk to American democracy remain so unknowable, so mysterious — to not be able to make sense of the mob that threatens democracy — makes it far more terrifying.

I know a whole lot about what is knowable about the January 6 investigation. But one thing I keep realizing is that it remains unknowable.

This is very frustrating, for sure. Let’s hope the great work of people like Marcy Wheeler will provide some context for history.

But let’s not forget that we do know a whole lot about what Donald Trump and his henchmen were doing. They were attempting a coup d’etat. That much is crystal clear.

There is always a loser in any election. Until Trump, all losers in presidential elections gracefully conceded, even in races that were a lot closer than 2020.

In fact, two of the closest losses in history were suffered by Vice presidents who had to certify their own losses in the electoral college:

How about this guy, formerly the most corrupt politician in modern memory:

That’s right. Even Richard Nixon was more graceful than Donald Trump.

Mike Pence did his duty, although he certainly didn’t seem to be 100% sure that he would do it until he spoke with a bunch of other people. I’m grateful that he did it but the fact that he wasn’t against it on principle instead of being persuaded that it wouldn’t be constitutional says something about his character too.

One year ago, a violent attack on our Capitol made it clear just how fragile the American experiment in democracy really is. Here’s my statement on what the anniversary means, and what we need to do today. pic.twitter.com/9rjbjPLwLH

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) January 6, 2022

ICYMI – From Tuesday, @SenBrianSchatz: "A year ago there was an attempted overthrow of American democracy right here in this building…it was a physical siege on the United States Capitol…we were perilously close to losing everything that night, and some did." pic.twitter.com/zhXoW2ZdCO

— CSPAN (@cspan) January 5, 2022

And then there’s this:

One year ago today, Mike Fanone, a plainclothes narcotics officer with the DC Metropolitan Police Department, reported to work and answered the call to the Capitol.

What happened next is well known by now: a Trump-voting redneck cop was beaten nearly to death by rioters brandishing Blue Lives Matter flags and calling him a traitor.

Fanone didn’t have to be there—he voluntarily deployed, wearing his 10-year-old uniform for the first time. He received arguably the most severe non-lethal injuries of any officer that day. But it was what he did next that made him extraordinary.

He’d voted for Trump in 2016 because he was tired of Democrats’ anti-police rhetoric. So when he saw commentators questioning the police response to the Capitol, he got pissed and decided to do something.

He decided to speak up—in the Washington Post a series of network appearances, a conversation with @CNN‘s @donlemon.

Fanone believed he was sticking up for his fellow cops. He went to Congress to confront the Republicans trying to whitewash the insurrection, particularly the 21 Reps who voted against medals for the officers who defended them.

None would meet with him. One of them wouldn’t even shake his hand.

Democratic politicians said the right things but didn’t necessarily rush to embrace him. The DC mayor’s office sent catering, with no note, and eventually honored the MPD responders at a regular municipal employee appreciation day, like high-performing sanitation workers.

For months, the White House didn’t respond to a letter he sent, though @PressSec acknowledged it was received. A few days after I started asking why—the day Fanone appeared on the cover of @TIME—he and his fellow officers were finally honored at a Rose Garden ceremony.

“We cannot allow the heroism of these officers to be forgotten,” @POTUS said that August day. “We have to understand what happened—the honest and unvarnished truth. We have to face it. That’s what great nations do, and we are a great nation.”

The officers met with the President before the ceremony, and Biden singled Fanone out for praise. He replied, “Why didn’t you answer my letter?” Biden chuckled and said, “You’re a tough one.”

But the hardest thing for Fanone was the response from his fellow cops—the ones he thought he was sticking up for. They called him names behind his back. They stopped returning his calls. Even the detective assigned to investigate his assault talked shit.

After he testified before the Jan. 6 Committee, cop forums lit up with right-wing memes calling him a liberal plant.

The Trump-supporting @GLFOP union, which often defends police against liberal politicians, has repeatedly refused to denounce the GOP pols who downplay Jan. 6—even as it defends some off-duty officers who participated in the insurrection.

(They did, at least, denounce @gregkellyusa

When Fanone was cleared to return to work in September, he was assigned to a desk job in a civilian department—for his own protection. When he went to the First District to clear out his old locker, his former brothers-in-arms taunted him: “Suck any liberal dicks lately?”

I’ve thought a lot about this: Was Jan. 6 an attempted coup or just a police breakdown? If the police had been properly prepared, Jan. 6 would have been just another rally, a day no one remembers.

I wasn’t surprised that Trump tried to overturn the election, summoned his followers to DC or even sicced them on the Capitol, but I was shocked they got in the building.

What Fanone made me realize was that the police breakdown and the attempted coup were the same thing. Jan. 6 was a test of which side the police were on: Trump’s, or America’s? Not all of them passed the test.

Speaking out was therapeutic for Fanone, but he also saw it as a continuation of his service, the same way officers regularly go to court to testify against the criminals they’ve arrested. Telling the story of what happened is how justice gets done.

Fanone came to realize that it was lies that caused Jan. 6, lies he felt a responsibility to combat. His outspokenness helped embolden others, like @SergeantAqGo and @libradunn, to speak out and keep speaking out.

Last week, Fanone retired from the force and became a CNN analyst. He doesn’t have much hope that those who instigated Jan. 6 will be brought to justice. He fears something like it could happen again. He often feels hopeless about whether he’s making a difference.

But he’s determined to try.

Originally tweeted by Molly Ball (@mollyesque) on January 6, 2022.

The TIME interview is here.

I have worried about the right wing cop problem forever, but I thought after January 6th they might get a clue about their supposed allies. But it appears that was too optimistic.

If this devolves into more violence in the next few years as it seems poised to do, I have a strong feeling that the police are going to be, at best, divided and at worst totally on the other side. The military could go that way too. The radicalization of the right wing over the past couple of decades is not confined to the civilian population. In fact, the uniformed institutions are among the most likely to be radicalized with all the militarization of them that’s taken place over the past couple of decades of war.

Think about the cops who gave Rittenhouse water and thanked him and his armed yahoos for being in the streets. Or the ones who put on red MAGA hats and took selfies with Donald Trump. Whatever apolitical professionalism we may have thought these institutions had has been badly frayed.

It is a serious danger and very worrisome. If the attacks on the police on January 6th weren’t enough to shake their loyalties then I’m not sanguine that anything will be. If something like January 6th happens again I don’t know what will happen.

This was my first post about the insurrection that day:

My God

"Protesters are in the building" — the Senate is abrupt brought into recess pic.twitter.com/33m8Sht4Sm

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 6, 2021

Never forget. Trump did this. But the Republicans, every last one of them, even Mitt Romney who could have switched parties, collaborated.

This. Is. On. Them.

It is even more on them today than it was then. They re still genuflecting to that orange monster.

A snap poll from that night:

In fact, many Republicans (45%) actively support the actions of those at the Capitol, although as many expressed their opposition (43%). 

Among all voters, almost two-thirds (63%) say that they “strongly” oppose the actions taken by President Trump’s supporters, with another 8% say they “somewhat” oppose what has happened.  

Overall, one in five voters (21%) say they support the goings-on at the Capitol. Those who believe that voter fraud took place and affected the election outcome are especially likely to feel that today’s events were justified, at 56%. 

I guess that’s good? Only 21% of Americans — 45% of Republicans — think that an attempted coup is fine. How reassuring.

It’s on them too.

“In hindsight, Donald Trump’s intentions could not appear clearer,” writes The New Yorker‘s David Rohde of how Trump’s Big Lie led to the Jan. 6 insurrection. And Trump’s character? that has been on public display his entire life.

The problem facing Attorney General Merrick Garland, federal and state investigators from New York to Georgia, is that if they are not meticulous about assembling their cases, vague laws and legal loopholes may allow the slipperier-than-Willie former official “to escape being criminally charged for his role in events surrounding the attack.”

His whole life, Trump has been careful not to use email, and not to issue direct written or spoken orders to obsequious courtiers. “He speaks in code,” former Trump personal attorney Michael Cohen told Congress. “You don’t need to actually tell somebody to do it before which you create this belief that this is what Donald wants us to do.”

Thus, it is “too early to say” what the House investigation into Jan. 6 will yield, said one staffer with knowledge of the investigation:

Recent statements by the committee chair, Bennie Thompson, and the vice-chair, Liz Cheney—one of only two Republicans on the panel—have raised expectations that the panel will refer Trump to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution. Such a step would increase the political pressure on Attorney General Merrick Garland to prosecute Trump. In a television interview on Sunday, Thompson said that the panel is examining whether Trump committed a crime: “If there’s any confidence on the part of our committee that something criminal we believe has occurred, we’ll make the referral.” And Cheney, in a speech last month, mentioned a specific charge: “Did Donald Trump, through action or inaction, corruptly seek to obstruct or impede Congress’s official proceeding to count electoral votes?”

The staffer suggests, however, that “The criminal-referral stuff has gotten blown out of proportion” by the press.

Whether or not Trump explicitly ordered the attack, arrestees from one year ago claim they were at the Capitol at Trump’s direction to prevent the electoral vote count from going forward. Michael Cohen knows how they feel.

Ultimately, the decision about whether to prosecute Trump lies with Garland, a former federal judge who has made restoring public faith in the political neutrality of the Justice Department his core goal. Despite Garland’s attempts to divorce the Justice Department from politically charged prosecutions, it is increasingly clear that investigating Trump is becoming the defining issue of his tenure. The continued defiance of Trump and his allies is forcing Garland to make a decision faced by none of his predecessors: whether to prosecute a former President who tried to subvert an election and appears ready to do so again. Democrats are demanding that Garland move more aggressively, with Representative Ruben Gallego, of Arizona, declaring his effort so far “weak” and “feckless,” and contending that there are “a lot more of the organizers of January 6th that should be arrested by now.”

That frustration is understandable. Critics slam investigators because Democrats make easier targets and because there is no chance their criticisms of Republicans will sting. They want heads on pikes, as if becoming their adversaries will reestablish the small-D democratic norms that undergird our formal political arrangements.

David Laufman, a former senior Justice Department official, said he disagreed with criticism of the Justice Department for not having already charged Trump criminally. “Notwithstanding the horrors of January 6th, D.O.J. should not be pursuing criminal investigations or prosecutions against former President Trump or others connected to the attack on the Capitol unless both the facts and the law support doing so under established policy,” he said. “It’s the ‘Department of Justice’—not the ‘Department of Retribution’—and we don’t want to see the rule of law eroded just to make us feel good.” But Laufman also called for prosecutors to not go easy on Trump, adding that the department shouldn’t “be shying away from using the full weight of its enforcement authorities against Trump or anyone else simply because doing so could be perceived as politically motivated.”

Rohde concludes:

In an era when the majority of Republicans falsely believe that the 2020 election was fraudulent and the majority of Democrats think that it was not, Garland will be demonized no matter what action he takes regarding Trump. The Attorney General, based on his speech, continues to believe that he can restore “normal order”—a Justice Department term for basing decisions on whether to charge defendants strictly on the facts of a case. He continues to believe that the majority of Americans still support the principle that all people should be treated fairly under the law, including Donald Trump. And that the majority will reject political violence and trust the judicial system. At the moment, that belief, for Garland and all Americans, is an enormous political gamble.

Ephesians 6:12 (KJV) For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

And, as President Biden said this morning, against “self-seeking autocrats.” With allies prone to violence.

“You come at the king, you best not miss.”

One year ago today, thousands of President Donald Trump’s supporters, “average” Americans by several surveys, overran thinly manned police lines, fought hand to hand with hundreds of U.S. Capitol police, broke windows and doors, entered the building chanting “Hang Mike Pence,” and interrupted the electoral vote counting process for hours. Security teams evacuated members of the House and Senate to secure rooms. Staffers sheltered in place. Insurrectionists sacked the building as the world watched in horror on live television. At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, the president watched it intently on TV for hours and resisted pleas from family, aides, and members of Congress to stop it.

To this day, Republicans sworn to uphold and defend the U.S. Constitution resist efforts to define for history the events of January 6, 2021, and to bring to justice those whose machinations led to the violence.

It was the first time in over 200 years that the building had been occupied, and then by foreign enemies. People died. Over a hundred police officers suffered injuries both minor and severe. Several officers later committed suicide.

Former president Jimmy Carter wrote Wednesday in the New York Times that Trump and promoters of his stolen-election lie have relentlessly stoked animosity to set American against American and to undermine faith in the electoral process.

Carter cites the Survey Center on American Life from February:

More than one in three (36 percent) Americans agree with the statement: “The traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it.” Six in 10 (60 percent) Americans reject the idea that the use of force is necessary, but there is significant partisan disagreement on this question.

A majority (56 percent) of Republicans support the use of force as a way to arrest the decline of the traditional American way of life. Forty-three percent of Republicans express opposition to this idea. Significantly fewer independents (35 percent) and Democrats (22 percent) say the use of force is necessary to stop the disappearance of traditional American values and way of life.

“The view that the political system is rigged against conservatives and people who hold traditional values is also widespread, particularly on the political right,” the survey reports.

But what do Trump’s overwhelmingly white-Christian followers mean by traditional American way of life? What America do they want to make great again? That is an open secret.

Researchers studying the insurrectionists at the University of Chicago estimate millions of Americans make up the insurrection movement:

In the CPOST polls, only one other statement won overwhelming support among the 21 million committed insurrectionists. Almost two-thirds of them agreed that “African American people or Hispanic people in our country will eventually have more rights than whites.” Slicing the data another way: Respondents who believed in the Great Replacement theory, regardless of their views on anything else, were nearly four times as likely as those who did not to support the violent removal of the president.

But by “more rights than whites,” respondents really fear equal rights with whites. And that Trump’s MAGA insurrectionists find unacceptable. That violates their traditional understanding that in this country, white Christians rule. All others should know their places and stay in them. “When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression,” goes a familiar expression.

The overwhelmingly white, middle-class and employed, 30% white-collar, and two-thirds over age 34 Americans behind the insurrection movement are experiencing status anxiety in this diversifying nation of immigrants. They feel oppressed, as if something is being taken from them: their economic, social, and religious dominance of others.

Millions of these nominal Americans, then, would accept using force to maintain that traditional arrangement. Even to the point of rejecting American democracy and replacing it with de facto if not de jure one-party rule. And with an autocrat in the White House.

One year ago today, thousands of Trump supporters acted on that belief. MAGA insurrectionists attempted a coup, egged on by the outgoing president, his allies and his aides, and predicated on the fiction that their white-nationalist president had the election stolen — from him and from them — by the diverse population encroaching on their turf.

The greater problem, then, is that many flag-waving neighbors no longer believe in the democratic principles embodied in the U.S. Constitution. Democracy for them is disposable, contingent on whether or not they can control the outcome of elections.

The Declaration of Independence states that “all men [persons] are created equal.” But have polling operations surveyed U.S. opinion on this foundational American tenet? By generation, by gender, by economic quintile, race and party? Because by their words and actions, insurrectionists and the Republican Party express their rejection of political equality as an American ideal.

Ask Republican candidates this fall if they believe “all men [persons] are created equal.” Watch them hem and haw. Ask again. If they agree, their base will disown them. If they dissemble, make them own it.

Fox News recently spent a week in Hungary lauding autocrat Viktor Orbán. Donald Trump just gave Orbán his enthusiastic endorsement for his reelection (that is not in doubt). What the insurrectionists want, what Carlson wants, what Trump wants, what Republican leaders across this country want is the appearance of democracy without the substance.

Therein lies a tale.

The dining hall staff was setting up for a Board of Trustees dinner.

The university was still nominally Baptist when I attended. Alcohol was forbidden on campus. Thus, I was stunned when after my Friday dinner shift I spotted a pallet in the kitchen stacked with cases of champagne. What?

Beside the pallet were glass racks filled with champagne glasses. Nearby were shining ice buckets.

One of the cases was open. I pulled out a bottle to examine.

Sparking Catawba. Non-alcoholic. Green bottle. Punt on the bottom. Wired and foiled cork on top.

The high-rollers would have a “champagne” toast that evening. There would be all the ceremony and trappings of the champagne ritual but without the fizzy alcohol. Their celebration would be within official rules, but phony.

Once Republican-led state legislatures reengineer election machinery nationwide, we will still have Fourth of July picnics, American flags, Pledges of Allegiance, the Star-Spangled Banner, and fireworks. Even elections. All the trappings of a democratic republic. Only without the democracy. It will still be the United States of America, but a Sparkling Catawba version.

That, after all, is what many conservatives always wanted: a tidy, monochrome U.S. with everything and everyone else in their proper places, and perfectly designed to keep them there.

That was the goal of the violent insurrection one year ago today.