Boy, do I feel like an idiot.

I honestly thought January 6th, 2021, was going to be a catalytic moment for our nation.

Five years ago, watching a vicious, snarling cosplay army emblazoned with his name breaking through the barricades around the Capitol, I thought for sure the almost unthinkable horrors of that day would be a dealbreaker for even the most devoted of his sycophantic rank-and-file.

Back then, I believed that witnessing law enforcement members being beaten on the steps of Congress with flags bearing his likeness would have fully sickened even his most ardent supporters to the point of defection.

I was certain that as the photos and the videos and the testimonies streamed in of officers being crushed by wild-eyed MAGA loyalists; of unhinged men and women prowling the very seat of our government with tear gas and zip ties and nooses, seeking members of Congress—that for perhaps only once in the four years since he had arrived, we would finally all be of one mind and that they, too, would declare this all fully unacceptable.

Five years ago, I would have bet my house that Republican voters’ patriotism, faith convictions, and simple humanity would have surfaced, and they would reject this violent lawlessness once and for all.

And as that January night turned to morning and as the scale and severity of what we’d witnessed and how close we all came to losing our Democracy became clear, I remember thinking to myself, “There is no way they will double down on this or on him now, or ever again.”

I was spectacularly wrong.

As we reach another January 6th, this one in the full throes of his horrific second term, what’s now impossible to deny is that the insurrection we thought was defeated four years ago was simply postponed.

Its victory is now all but complete, because 77 million of our family members, friends, neighbors, coworkers, and fellow citizens decided that overturning an election and installing a dictator was not only not a dealbreaker, but something they consented to.

77 million Americans passionately placed a lawless mobster on the throne of this nation.

That is perhaps the most sobering, heartbreaking realization among many that have come in the time since the 2024 election: we are as divided a people as we can be, not just along lines of politics, but of legality, morality, and human decency.

January 6th should have been, for any patriotic American (let alone any human being with a fully functioning soul), a chilling ice water bath of reality, shocking even the most partisan soul awake from the slumber of their fierce tribalism.

It should have been the decisive pivot point for our nation, away from this cancerous, craven cult of personality and its collective bloodlust for power, and into a compassionate, collaborative expression of our interdependence.

January 6th should have been America’s second chance at life; a moment for us to speak unequivocally that no one is above the law and no individual is greater than the whole.

That it became instead, a place for our fellow Americans to once again declare their undying allegiance to this man, and to an ugly, lumbering, violent march toward an ever-deepening bottom is one of the absolute most tragic realities of my lifetime.

Now, the engineer of this delayed but now completed insurrection has no limitations on his sociopathy.

His Congressional coconspirators have carte blanche and unchecked power in the very Capitol chambers they helped violate five years ago.

Their criminal civilian foot-soldiers, who figuratively and literally urinated on the halls of Congress, have been pardoned and lionized, rewarded for behavior that in any other iteration of America would have declared them traitors and criminals.

And we have to witness these perverse travesties and be subject to all that they will bring, knowing that those we live with and around willfully made it all happen.

Five years ago, a few thousand insurrectionists attempted to disregard the laws of this nation for a single career criminal.

And what they could not accomplish then in the Capitol rotunda on January 6th, 2021, 77 million Americans did at the voting booth a just over a year ago: the voices of our forebears have been rendered silent, the protections of our Constitution have been destroyed, and a convicted felon, adjudicated rapist, and wannabe dictator has been given the keys to the kingdom of this nation.

Where we go from here is anyone’s guess.

But the America we had will never be the same.