Hard and soft threats to democracy

Which raises the question: How does this get better? When will the Capitol stop looking like a prison or a military outpost?

One would be hard-pressed to find anything reassuring in the ongoing Senate hearings dissecting the law enforcement response to January 6. At Wednesday’s hearing with FBI Director Christopher Wray, for example, instead of focusing on the individuals who planned the attack and the spectacular security failures that allowed it to unfold, senators spent much of their time promoting or refuting, depending on their party affiliation, the claim that Antifa was responsible.

The crucial things that Wray had to say about how domestic terrorism is “metastasizing” barely made headlines. The fact that, for some reason, it took President Trump’s Department of Defense more than three hours to deploy the National Guard to the Capitol on January 6 doesn’t concern former Vice President Mike Pence, who was targeted by the mob. He finally broke his silence on Wednesday—only to push an op-ed based on the big election lie and blasting “leftists” who “want you powerless at the ballot box.”