Just moments after the attack on the Capitol began on January 6 we wrote:
Our country and the world are watching, fearful and stunned, the attack of pro-Trump supporters invading the Capitol building. Today, January 6, 2021 a wild crowd following Trump’s unhinged call earlier to “Stop the Steal” invaded the building where top political leaders of this country have gathered today. Lawmakers have gathered in a joint session to certify President-elect Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory. The terrifying mob streamed into the building threatening the joint session of Congress including the Vice President, the Speaker and the leaders of the Senate. The mob endangered lives and threatened democracy.

Trump’s unhinged behavior has brought shame on this country for four years. Yet today is unbearably heartbreaking as we watch helplessly the sight of violence. As we write about this chaos aggression, the situation is still volatile and our hope joins the prayer of Americans that this invasion of the Capitol will end soon, safely and without bloodshed, and that Trump will be held responsible.”

Two days later, on January 8 we wrote:
The rioters entered fearlessly, looking straight into cameras as they destroyed and desecrated a people’s building. Urged and fired-up, by an unhinged Trump they stormed the Capitol building, smashing doors and windows and terrorizing those who were there to confirm the people’s presidential vote.
In Washington we saw with our own eyes how White Supremacists pushed and shoved and brutalized law officers with impunity.
And the truth emerged. Trump and a bunch of Republican House Members and Senators Cruz, Hawley, and their ilk gave the mob its power; from a literal fist-salute, to the gift of objecting to confirm Jo Biden as president. These Republicans, not just Trump, are the co-conspirators behind these Nazi thugs with fascist shirts and signs mocking the Holocaust and waving Confederate Flags. Republican elected officials fed the arrogance of the rioters by choosing to subvert the people’s vote betraying their own oath of office. They, and not just Trump, have been giving political sustenance to the attackers of democracy. These vote-objecting Republicans, and Trump of the wild lies, put the smirk on the face of the rioters as they smashed and punched and kicked democracy in broad daylight.

And now as we celebrate the new Biden-Harris administration and Georgia’s two senators, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, we must remember how perilously close we came to lose so much. If we want to support those who worked so hard for a democratic victory we must hold on to truth. There can be no two systems of justice in a democracy. Trump and all those who took part in the terrorizing act in the Capitol must be held accountable. No one, including elected officials, is above the law.”

“The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in its ability to repair its faults.” This was Alexis de Tocqueville’s observation of the backbone of American democracy. His discerning our ability to repair is still sustaining, powerful and promising as we face the one-year anniversary of the attack on the Capitol. Repair as Tocqueville notes requires recognizing, acknowledging and facing the fault, the truth that something has gone wrong, yet this is not that simple.

On the anniversary for January 6th, following the work of the Select Committee, more attention, rightly, is being paid to the organizers of the rally, and the people around Trump, and Trump himself, as the co-conspirators in a plot to prevent the orderly transfer of power to the president-elect. The people who stormed the Capitol were foot soldiers, pawns in a war planned and mapped out by others. This does not mean that they shouldn’t be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, but their guilt cannot be used to shield others.

In some ways, perhaps, the actual entrance of the rioters into the House and Senate chambers interfered with the plot, by forcing the House and the Senate to adjourn, and placing most Republicans (very temporarily) on the defensive. We are learning, and we need much more detail, about the plans, which involved airing the spurious election fraud charges for hours on end, putting continuous pressure on Pence and other Republicans to decertify the election.

What might have happened? We do not know. But we already know that the goal was to adjourn the joint session without having declared Biden the winner. And then it is likely that Trump would have either declared a state of emergency, or Republicans would have demanded that the election be given to the House of Representatives, where, as a result of the arcane rules of the Constitution, every state would have one vote, and Trump would have been victorious. We came very close to a coup on January 6th, and Republicans have spent the last year trying to ensure that if a similar situation happened again, the Republican presidential candidate would be victorious.

Our democracy, Tocqueville reminds us, is to repair the fault. We have repaired mighty faults in the past, ending slavery, dealing with the depression, defeating fascism, tackling racism, all of these victories were hard won and partial. Can we do it again, in a country that is exhausted by two years of a pandemic, a bitterly divided politics?

To move forward, we must look at the entire plot in its entirety and its full insidiousness. We can do it. We have done it throughout American history and just as previous generations have done it for us, we will do it for our children and grandchildren. Let us end with the famous words of the great Tom Paine, writing in December 1776, and apologies for his gendered language: “THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”