The biggest correction to my worldview due to COVID is that in the before-times, I thought people will generally do the right thing. I now know that people will generally do what they see other people doing.

2016 allowed everyone with antisocial, fascist worldviews to ape the behavior of their leader. January 6 was all about "who is leader." Everything since has been about showing the MAGAts that they are once again leaderless.

Our culture has, since Reconstruction, been about defining our politics as chocolate or vanilla. Red or blue. Left or right. Barry Goldwater started the slide towards "right or wrong" but it was arrested for a time by the embarrassment of Nixon. Fast forward to Richard Mellon Scaife and the Endless Quest To Destroy The Clintons and the right fully normalized "right or wrong."

Trump took it an extra step - it went from "right or wrong" to "good or evil." The press is still recoiling from Watergate; you gotta give both sides or you're partisan. The Republicans care more about unity than philosophy; a democrat has to be correct to be followed while a Republican who is followed must be correct.

It's okay being called evil by your enemies when you have a team. It's quite another when you're all alone. A bunch of MAGAts together will shit on Nancy Pelosi's desk. A lone MAGAt crouched over his phone?

History records the Beer Hall Putsch as a failed coup attempt that magnified the legend of Adolf Hitler. History records the Battle of Cable Street as a protest that led to the decline of Oswald Mosely. I think we'll see January 6th as both a failed coup attempt that led to the decline of Donald Trump. More importantly, however, I think we'll see it as the moment the Republican Party corrected from grievance politics. Not completely? Not immediately? But I think they're out of road on this one. If your current platform attracts Laura Loomer and Marjorie Taylor Greene, you have no future in legislature.