An anniversary to remember and deplore

On the second anniversary of Donald Trump's January 6  insurrection against a democratic election and Constitutional government, Yale historian of eastern Europe Timothy Snyder offers some thoughts which work for me:

...  giving money is an action, a commitment.  You don't give money to people you think are scamming you.  And once you have given the money, it becomes almost unthinkable that you have been scammed.  Once Trump’s supporters made a contribution, they had bought in to the Big Lie.  And once they had done something on that basis, they were probably more likely to do something else -- like storm the Capitol, or, later on, vote for Big Liars in the 2022 elections.

... And so, between early November [2020] and early January, the Big Rip-Off created two important emotional investments, one on the part of the scammers, another on the part of the scammed.  The Trump campaign was making so much money from defeat that it naturally wanted the propaganda machine to crank on for as long as possible.  Meanwhile, the victims of the scam continued to receive the same kinds of energizing emails and texts long after the election results were absolutely clear, furthering separating them from reality, solidifying their conviction that their cause must be righteous.  The endless stream of emails and texts, echoing what Trump said in public and tweeted, were an essential element of the alternative reality Trump sought to create.

The results of this became clear on January 6th, 2021. ...

How did we end up here?  It mattered a lot that Trump told a Big Lie.  But it also mattered a lot that Republicans chose not to correct him (or just mock him) when it mattered.  What people said and did in those first 24, 48, or 72 hours after Trump declared victory had tremendous importance, and too many people who mattered did nothing.  Much of what is wrong with this country now began just then.  In the first few days after the election, too few prominent Republican politicians did the right thing.  Had more such people spoken up right then, the Big Lie would never have gotten off the ground.

... That is a familiar story: a tiny bit of courage, a tiny bit of truth, can change history.  Unfortunately, this time around, that tiny bit of courage and that tiny bit of truth were utterly lacking.  With some honorable exceptions, the people who needed to take a stand did not do so.

This is not something we can look away from, mesmerized by today's antics from the seditious cuckoo bird caucus.