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The January 6 hearings aren’t acknowledging the elephant in the room | Thomas Zimmer
The attack on the US Capitol wasn’t the isolated doing of Trump and a few loyalists. Nearly the entire Republican party is now united behind it – and the attack on democracy hasn’t ended
The January 6 hearings have been more impressive and more forceful than anyone could have reasonably expected – definitely worthy of the nation’s continued prime-time attention. Yet so far the hearings have been narrowly focused on Donald Trump and the past – rather than the continuing assault on the democratic system that the Republican party has fully embraced.
The committee’s core task is to investigate the January 6 attack on the US Capitol and what led to it, of course. But everyone who believes in democracy needs to recognize that, in a very concrete sense, there is a continuing insurrection that far surpasses Trump.
Thomas Zimmer is a visiting professor at Georgetown University, focused on the history of democracy and its discontents in the United States, and a Guardian US contributing opinion writer
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