Eighteen months after the defeat of Trump, the democratic balance in the United States remains very fragile.

The launch by the US Congress of hearings on the tragedy of January 6, 2021, when rioters, who are still President Donald Trump, stormed the Capitol is startling and ancient. Behind this solemn ritual, we witness the survival of endangered species: the democratic space, as the mind tries to seize this moment of madness that swept America, at the height of the Trump years.

The committee repeats these moments and these displayed pictures hundreds of times, but it sheds a harsh light on them to prove the responsibility of the billionaire and the helplessness (and blindness) of those around him. The commission investigated for more than a year, taking the time to persuade witnesses to speak, in an effort to establish an accurate chronology of the January 6 political and deadly spiral. The state of mind is quite different from the two impeachment proceedings unsuccessfully launched against the former president, in which elected officials were pressed for time and were more interested in the political presentation than the outcome.

The first trial in 2019 — which has lit up a bizarre retrospective since Ukraine invaded Russia — was about Donald Trump’s alleged pressure on new President Volodymyr Zelensky to implicate Joe Biden’s son Hunter, who has done business in the region. But the approach of the Democratic primaries and then the elections (November) and Republican resistance prevented the calm of the debates.

This was even more evident with the second instigation measure, a week after January 6, 2021, which was intended to act before the defeated president’s term officially expires, to prevent him from running again. Justice, even parliamentary, does not go immediately.

What is emerging today in Congress is precisely the slow, meticulous work of a committee that has been able to question a large portion of the partisans out of public view. The great strength of the payback in the first two days, June 9 and 13, is due to the diversity of these personalities who supported Donald Trump and agreed to testify.

“You will be shamed”

For four years, they swallowed many snakes without reeling, but stopped before those that made American democracy falter: questioning election results and regulating what is described as “sedition,” with strong presumptions to believe that it was the act of 2017’s swearing in of the Constitution.

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