Don’t Look Away From How Bad This Was

“It was an unforgettable day that many, for various reasons, may try to forget. But I will remember Trump shouting into the cold wind as the clock hit the appointed hour of 1 p.m., urging his supporters to march on the Capitol, egging them on, inciting them with his hatred and grievance. I will remember the Trump flag, not the American flag, hanging off the Capitol balcony, and the fact that the rioters wore Trump’s name on their shirts and hats. And I will remember his video, as those rioters rampaged through the halls of Congress. “We love you,” Trump told them. This actually happened.” The New Yorker’s Susan B. Glasser: Trump’s Reckoning—and America’s.

+ “Americans are not the ones who will suffer most from the terrible damage that Trump and his enablers have done to the power of America’s example, to America’s reputation, and, more important, to the reputation of democracy itself. The callow insurrectionists who thought it would be amusing to break into the debating chambers might go to jail, but they will not pay any real price; neither will the conspiracy theorists who believed the president’s lies and flocked to Washington to act on them. Instead, the true cost will be borne by those other residents of Moscow, Beijing, Tehran, Caracas, Riyadh, and Minsk—the dissidents and the opponents, the would-be democrats who plan, organize, protest, and suffer, sacrificing their time and in some cases their life just because they want the right to vote, to live in a state governed by the rule of law, and to enjoy the things that Americans take for granted, and that Trump doesn’t value at all.” The Atlantic’s Anne Applebaum: What Trump and His Mob Taught the World About America.