JAN. 6 FINDINGS WILL SWAY NO ONE

Eighteen months after the attack on the United States' Capitol, the descent of democracy continues. It raises unprecedented questions about the future of the republic.

Will the country's two major parties honour the mid-term elections this November and condemn violence among those who don't?

Will the loser accept the winner of the presidency in 2024? If not, will that bring protests in the streets, challenges in the courts and disinformation in the media — as well as strikes, bombings and assassinations?

This is the institutional challenge today troubling many Americans. It is unfolding for dozens of

“stop the steal” Republicans nominated in primaries; in the restrictive electoral laws passed by state legislatures; and in the curdling cultural wars over critical race theory, abortion and transgender rights.

And now, most graphically, the future of American democracy is at the heart of the proceedings of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.

There isn't much new in what is being presented in a series of highly publicized hearings.

The purpose of the polished, theatrical exercise is to recount what happened, who was behind it, and what it means.

Well, we know all that, you might say. We know that William Barr, the former attorney general, called Trump's election claims “bulls—.”

We know the scene was “carnage” and “chaos,” as a police officer described it. Although we had not seen all the images the committee has shown in its first two hearings, in one sense, we have, and they've lost their ability to shock.

So, what's left, really? To hear another insider say Trump was “unhinged”? To learn that Trump raised US$250 million to fight “election fraud,” which enriched the breathless Kimberly Guilfoyle, who got US$60,000 for her two-minute rally appearance on

Jan. 6?

Or to hear the story — reported by The Washington Post — of a jumped-up mandarin in the Justice Department named Jeffrey Clark, who asked Trump to appoint him attorney general to try to reverse the result? Really. Here was a mid-level environmental lawyer whose appointment would have triggered mass resignations, recalling Watergate's Saturday Night Massacre.

No matter. “History is calling,” declared the confident Clark, as if he were Cincinnatus saving Rome. His superior sniffed: “How about you go back to your office and we'll call you when there is an oil spill.”

There are more horror stories like this. It doesn't mean this reportage or investigation is unimportant, just that it is unlikely to change minds.

As the committee deconstructs the last election, the forces of authoritarianism are fixed on the next. In state after state, Republicans are nominating denialists to run this November.

In Congress, the Republican leadership pays no penalty for its indifference and falsehoods.

As for all those former administration officials now expressing incredulity, such as Barr, there's no attack of conscience. If it was so bad, why didn't they resign then? Barr and company now fill the front pew in the college of cowards.

The committee is doing extraordinary work, offering a narrative of the events and providing history with what will be seen as the origins of the republic's undoing. As two esteemed scholars describe it, the U.S. can now expect “a period of protracted regime instability, marked by repeated constitutional crises, heightened political violence, and possibly, periods of authoritarian rule.”

It will become the practice to use the machinery of government against political rivals, to stack elections, to threaten to pack the court, to investigate and impeach, as House Republicans will try to do to Joe Biden.

Given the threat, the committee can do more than educate. It can recommend the prosecution of Donald Trump on charges of sedition.

It will be up to Merrick Garland, the attorney general, and the Department of Justice to contain this trend by silencing its loudest champion — without whom, it can be said, there would be no dispute over the 2020 election.

It is that simple and that hard.

If the republic is to endure, it cannot — cannot — allow the restoration of Donald J. Trump.