And so should we take January 6. The January 6 minimizers will argue that this was not the first violent protest on the Capitol grounds. Puerto Rican terrorists opened fire in Congress in 1954, wounding five House members. The Weather Underground planted a bomb in a washroom beneath the Senate chamber in 1971, doing serious damage to the building. A Communist group detonated a bomb in the Senate in 1983 to protest the U.S. invasion of Grenada. That one did less damage. But unlike all those other incidents—and unlike the antifa attacks on the Portland courthouse or any of the other “what abouts” favored by the Trumpists—the January 6 attack was unique in American history in one fateful and terrible way: It came from the inside.

That attack was not the work of avowed adversaries of the American government, of clandestine dissidents, of radicals outside the system. The January 6 attack was incited by the head of the American government, the man who had sworn to protect and defend that government. It was the thing most feared by the authors of the U.S. Constitution: a betrayal of the highest office by the holder of that office.

It’s no mystery why pro-Trump partisans would excuse January 6. Trump incited the putsch; he continues to justify it. Of course those loyal to Trump would condone this latest outrage as they have previously condoned so many others. You sign with the Mafia, you don’t get squeamish about the crimes.