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Dec. 7, 1941, isnt the only day that will live in infamy, as President Franklin D. Roosevelt eloquently put it in his historic speech to a joint session of Congress one day after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. Jan. 6, 2021, as far as many Americans are concerned, was another day of infamy, a horrible day in its own right.

And one year later, we cant even agree on what to call what happened at the Capitol that day. Was it an insurrection? Domestic terrorism? Was it an attempted coup or simply a peaceful protest that got out of hand? Was it another day of infamy or much ado about very little?

What we call it depends a lot on whether were on the red team or the blue team, whether we watch Fox or CNN. We cant even agree on how the riot or insurrection or whatever we want to call it came about.

Lets compromise and simply call it what it was: a disgrace. And while were at it, lets be clear: The cast of characters who stormed the Capitol, irresponsible and thoughtless as they were, were merely playing bit parts in that pathetic show a show whose leading man was none other than Donald TrumpDonald TrumpPelosi on eve of Jan. 6: Capitol rioters 'lost' bid to stop peaceful transfer of power MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell sues Jan. 6 panel over subpoena for phone records Bipartisan Senate group holds call on elections amid reform chatter MORE, the man who also wrote the script.

For months before Jan. 6, 2021, Trump perpetuated the lie that the election was rigged. Then, for an hour he riled up his supporters with a fiery speech about the stolen election. The mob wouldnt have been there in the first place if Trump hadnt supplied them with dangerously false information.

Liberals know this and are all too happy to remind everybody about Trumps role in the fiasco that day. But too many Trump supporters even now pretend that what happened at the Capitol one year ago wasnt his fault, that it was some kind of leftist plot. This doesnt speak well for the red team.

Nothing you read from here going forward is intended to divert blame for what happened away from the bit players who stormed the Capitol, or from Trump himself. But nothing happens in a vacuum, especially when it comes to politics. Behavior especially when its partisan influences other behavior. One crazy theory often leads to another crazy theory, a political tit-for-tat.

So lets go back to November 2016. Just days after Trump was elected president, Gallup conducted a poll that found almost one in four Americans (23 percent) who voted for Hillary ClintonHillary Diane Rodham ClintonJan. 6 is the GOP's fault line America isn't experiencing a crime wave we're suffering a crime hoax Eleven interesting races to watch in 2022 MORE did not believe Donald Trump was legitimately elected. And one week before he was sworn in, the late Congressman John LewisJohn LewisDemocrats scramble to lock down Manchin on filibuster 60 groups urge Senate Democrats to reform filibuster for voting rights The 5 most significant hits to our legal system in 2021 MORE, the civil rights icon from Georgia whose words often conveyed moral authority, was asked if he would try to establish a relationship with the president-elect. It's going to be very difficult, he said. I don't see this president-elect as a legitimate president. In 2019, Hillary Clinton told CBS News, I believe he [Trump] knows hes an illegitimate president.

Liberals would have more credibility when they attack Trump for delegitimizing elections if they werent guilty of the same crime. Maybe if more prominent liberals had accepted the fact that Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton fair and square, thered be fewer Republicans who so easily accept Trumps phony story about how Joe BidenJoe BidenPelosi on eve of Jan. 6: Capitol rioters 'lost' bid to stop peaceful transfer of power MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell sues Jan. 6 panel over subpoena for phone records Overnight Defense & National Security Nation marks 1 year since Capitol riot MORE stole the 2020 presidential election.

And while were at it, let me remind my liberal friends that while theyre condemning Trump for concocting a story about a stolen election, theyre the same ones who champion Stacey Abrams, who, to this day, insists she would have won the Georgia governors race in 2018 except that Republicans, she claims, stole the election.

As I say, one crazy theory often leads to another crazy theory, a kind of political tit-for-tat.

And now we have a poll from CBS News that chronicles how we feel about what happened one year ago on Jan. 6.

Theres good news and bad news in the poll. The good news is that a vast majority of Americans disapprove of what happened that day 83 percent. The bad news is that 17 percent which translates to millions of Americans approve of what happened at the Capitol.

Only 3 percent of Democrats strongly approve of what happened, and only 6 percent of Republicans strongly approve. Thats more good news. But while 81 percent of Democrats strongly disapprove, only 34 percent of Republicans strongly disapprove. Thats more bad news.

So what do we have to look forward to, one year later, besides more mindless partisanship? CBS News asked, In future presidential elections, what do you expect? Thirty-eight percent of respondents said that the losing side would concede peacefully but 62 percent predicted violence.

We cant agree on much anymore in the United States. Were either on the red team or the blue team. Acknowledging that the other side may have a point is considered treason in some circles. But maybe we can leave our respective teams long enough to at least acknowledge this much: that everyone who was responsible for what happened on Jan. 6, 2021, should be held accountable and that includes the former president of the United States.

Could he be indicted by a Democratic Department of Justice for inciting a riot? If he were, might he be found guilty in a Washington courtroom? Its possible, but do we really want to throw a former American president in prison for stupid, even reckless, things he said?

I suspect thats one more thing the two sides wont agree on.

Bernard Goldberg is an Emmy and an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University award-winning writer and journalist. He was a correspondent with HBOs Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel for 22 years and previously worked as a reporter for CBS News and as an analyst for Fox News. He is the author of five books and publishes exclusive weekly columns, audio commentaries and Q&As on his Patreon page. Follow him on Twitter @BernardGoldberg.

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Without the lies there would have been no Jan. 6 fiasco | TheHill - The Hill

Punta Cana, Dominican Republic.- Former president of the United States, Bill Clinton, and his wife Hillary Clinton, are vacationing in Punta Cana, La Altagracia province.

The couple was seen dining at an exclusive restaurant in the eastern part of the country, along with their friends, husbands Frank Rainieri and Haydee Kuret de Rainieri.

The former president, on his 24th visit to the country, welcomed the Dominicans who came to greet him.

He was also seen playing golf with Juan Jos Arteaga and Rolando Gonzalez Bunster, at the Corales Golf Course in Punta Cana where the PGA tournament will be held again this year.

Other celebrities

Various celebrities from art, politics, film and commerce preferred Punta Cana to wait for the new year, including the famous television presenter and businesswoman, Martha Stewart, who visited the Punta Cana Foundation and other attractions of the tourist destination located to the east of the country.

Read more:
Bill Clinton hobnobs with friends in the East - Dominican Today

Years ago, when teaching at seminary, I used to tell the students that moral relevance in the modern world was a cruel and fickle mistress. However much Christians accommodated themselves to her demands, sooner or later she would want more. Christian morality and the morality of the world simply could not be reconciled in the long term.

Apparently, this no longer applies simply to Christians and other moral traditionalists. It also applies to the artistic class. Last week, Constance Grady at Vox noted how so much pop culture of recent vintage has dated so rapidly. Hamilton, the hit musical of 2015, now appears, in 2021, to glorify the slave-owning and genocidal Founding Fathers while erasing the lives and legacies of the people of color who were actually alive in the Revolutionary era. The TV series Parks and Recreation is now considered an overrated and tunnel-visioned portrait of the failures of Obama-era liberalism. And the Harry Potter franchise is now the neo-liberal fantasy of a transphobe.

While Grady avoids the earnestness of those who regard Its a Wonderful Life as dangerous or the clichs of those who see Dolly Parton as a tool of systemic racist evil, she misses the deeper significance of the phenomenon she describes. For her, the transformed tastes of pop culture connect to the fading fortunes of Hillary Clinton and the values she represented. That makes sense. But there is a deeper cause of the shifting morals of popular culture and that is that our society has no stable framework for moral reasoning. It is therefore doomed to constant volatility.

Of course, the moral tastes of culture have always changed somewhat over time. What is notable today is the speed at which they change and the dramatic way they repudiate the immediate past. It took forty years for John Cleeses Hitler impersonation to be deemed offensive (and then, oddly, by a generation for whom Hitler was little more than a name in a history textbook). But now, jokes that were unexceptional five or ten years ago might well cost a comedian his career today. The moral shelf life of pop cultural artifacts seems much shorter now and the criteria by which they might be judged far less predictable.

The real problem underlying the phenomenon Grady observes is that the moral tastes of popular culture are just that: tastes, and thus subject to fashion and, in our social media age, to easy manipulation. Society has no solid foundation on which to build its moral codes. Decades ago, Alasdair MacIntyre noted that the loss of any shared metanarrative rendered constructive moral discourse impossible, as all moral claims were reduced to expressions of emotional preference. Philip Rieff made a similar point when he argued that the loss of any transcendent order upon which to build society meant that the moral framework of any given culture had to justify itself on the basis of itself. And that is an inherently unstable task.

Critical theory in its various forms represents the intellectualized form of this chaos. It is predicated on negationi.e., the dismantling of whatever structures happen to provide the status quo at any given momentand its advocates are committed to a constant dialectical destabilization of morality. After all, moral codes are instruments for oppressing the weak and the marginal. Yet this negation comes with a price tag for the very people committed to it. That is why so many of its major figures end up falling foul of their own philosophical tradition. Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno may have been the founding fathers of critical theory, but their views on the intimate connection between homosexuality and fascism would make them unlikely candidates for guest lectures on todays Ivy League campuses, let alone for tenure track appointments. And all of Adrienne Rich's brilliant contributions to feminist thought and even to intersectionality have not prevented her reputation from being posthumously buried outside the camp in the plot reserved for transphobes and other assorted bigots. Today race theory, not feminism, might be the critical theorists' soup du jour, but this will prove no more lasting than previous iterations of the voice of the oppressed. Intersectionality witnesses to that fact; and those who live by the sword of critical theory can expect at some point to die by the same.

The obvious riposte to this is that most people do not give critical theory a second thought. That is true, but my claim is that the world of which the critical theorist gives a sophisticated account is the world as many of us imagine it to be: one with no agreed upon moral compass and marked by a deep suspicion of any attempt by any one group to make its truth normative, out of fear that the result will be oppressive and unjust. The consequence is constant flux of the kind Grady observes in pop culture, where todays virtuous icons are tomorrows vile scoundrels.

In the years since my warning to my seminary students, the term mistress has become too flattering a metaphor for moral relevance, implying as it does a degree of longevity in the relationship. Today, moral tastes have too short a shelf life for that. Indeed, embracing the moral spirit of the age is now more akin to having a one-night standand that with somebody who kicks you out of bed in the morning and calls the police.

Carl Trueman is a professor of biblical and religious studies at Grove City College and a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

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The Strange Fate of Hamilton and Harry Potter | Carl R. Trueman - First Things

The 2020 election was in the words of former President Trump's own department of homeland security "the most secure in American history."

But ahead of that vote, nearly 60% of all Americans said they lacked confidence in the honesty of U.S. elections, according to a Gallup poll from earlier that year.

One year later, two-thirds of all Americans believe U.S. democracy is threatened, according to a CBS News poll. That crisis of trust is bigger than just one party both Republican and Democratic voters have expressed doubt in the system.

As people stormed the Capitol last year, Sharon Story and her husband Victor didn't follow the crowd inside.

The grandmother of 10, who had driven all the way from Gaffney, South Carolina, to be there, firmly believes that the American democracy she used to teach about in her sixth grade classroom is on the edge of collapse.

"I think if they push people too far against the wall, especially the Southerners, they're not gonna take it," Story said when asked if she thought a civil war was possible in her lifetime.

And it's not just Story who worries that. University of California at San Diego political science professor Barbara F. Walter says in her book "How Civil Wars Start," when it comes to actual fighting, "we are closer to civil war than any of us would like to believe."

Story is also "not at all" confident that the 2020 election was the most secure in American history.

That feeling of fraud if only a feeling is what led so many to Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021, to, in their minds, defend democracy.

The atmosphere at the Capitol riot was "patriotic, unity, hope," Story said.

"I feel upset," Story said, when asked how she reacts to others describing January 6 as a riot or an insurrection.

Her belief that the election was stolen is shared by millions, and it doesn't seem like anything or anybody can restore their faith.

"Not even Republicans," Story said of who she trusts. "Even Fox News, who we used to have respect for, you know, seems to let us down and called the election early."

What's particularly dangerous about this moment, though, according to Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt in their book "How Democracies Die" is that these feelings of mistrust exist across party lines, albeit for very different reasons.

Alesha Sedasey, recalling how she felt watching Bernie Sanders lose to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 primary, said, "That was when I lost a good amount of my faith in the system.

Sedasey is a bartender in Brooklyn, New York, who believes the will of the voters was thwarted in 2016 by superdelegates in the primary and again by the Electoral College in the general election.

"I don't think that any part of the election had democracy fulfilled," Sedasey said. "I mean, Trump didn't get the majority of votes, so how is that democracy, right?"

While Sedasey's doubts in the system are different from those expressed at the Capitol last year, the effect is very much the same.

"It's hard to trust Congress," Sedasey said.

Despite their differences, both Sedasey and Story see themselves as defenders of the same underlying principles they both see themselves as patriots.

"I think that I am a patriot because I'm fighting for what our constitutional rights are supposed to be and what this country says it is," Sedasey said.

And both say they'll continue to vote and even organize for their side.

"I still participate in it because I have faith that there is the possibility for change," Sedasey said.

"I vote, because I always vote, but I don't know that I'll trust 'em," Story said.

So, regardless of who wins in 2024, many voters maybe even most could once again doubt the results, raising the question of how our republic can withstand such a crisis.

"I'm very concerned," Story said. "I think we're at a pivotal point. I think that good people can't stand by and do nothing anymore."

When asked if the U.S. would be able to keep its record as the longest continuously operating democracy, Sedasey replied, "All empires fall."

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Democratic and Republican voters share a mistrust in the electoral process - CBS News

Scott Jennings| Opinion Contributor

Poll: 4 in 10 in GOP say Jan 6 was very violent

Nearly a year after the Jan. 6 siege, only about 4 in 10 Republicans describe it as very or extremely violent, according to a new poll from The AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. (Jan. 4)

AP

History comes down to individual moments where leadership matters. Think of Lincoln forging ahead with the Emancipation Proclamation despite near-universal opposition from his political allies. Churchill rallied his people to fight for Western civilization, when the politically powerful pursued appeasement. Reagan demanded that Gorbachev tear down this wall. Kennedy forcing Wallace to step aside so that Vivian Malone and James Hood could attend school in Alabama.

When it counts, historys best leaders recognize the moments that matter and rise to the occasion, summoning the courage and vision to make the right call. And in those moments, there are no mulligans.

Donald Trump faced one of those critical leadership moments on Jan.6, 2021. His supporters, a mob he had whipped into a frenzy just hours before, rushed the U.S. Capitol and put human lives and our Constitutional order at risk. His voice alone could have called them off, a fact recognized in the moment by everyone from his own children to major opinion leaders in the conservative movement.

Trump shrunk from his responsibility. He betrayed his oath of office, which called on him, to the best of his ability, to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

The ugly visuals of a Capitol in chaos redefined Trumps legacy. His many accomplishments were pushed several paragraphs down historys pages when rioters used his flag to assault Capitol Police, when Q Shaman invaded the Senate Chamber, and when the soon-to-be-former President published a video telling the insurrectionists we love you.

More: Ex-UK student who bragged about entering Capitol on Jan. 6 sentenced to jail

The first anniversary of Jan.6 has triggered a national reflection on what happened that day, and on whether there is more political violence in our future. Mostly, weve gone to our corners. Other problems such as Covid, the immigration crisis, inflationand the draining of American prestige following the collapse of Afghanistan occupy our thoughts. The new president, elected to do one thing and one thing only, has failed spectacularly at everything other than replacing the last one. It appears the country is ready to move on from both men, even as Trump and Biden threaten us with a re-run of 2020.

But we shouldnt miss this chance to reflect on the 20-year march to Jan.6, a long, slow escalator filled with misguided, lying partisans who refused to accept electoral and institutional legitimacy following fair-and-square outcomes.

Democrats said George W. Bush was selected, not elected. Republicans clung to the erroneous, racist birther claims about Barack Obama for years. Democrats, including losing candidate Hillary Clinton, believe to this day that Russia delivered Trump the presidency in 2016. And Republicans now believe Bidens win to be illegitimate, the battle cry for Trumps probable 2024 campaign.

Along the way, other lesser election deniers like Stacey Abrams have flourished into celebrities, as contesting election outcomes aresometimes celebrated by the media even as they assail Trumps contesting of his.

There are a lot of dirty hands here. I heard a political commentator, when asked about polling in which an increasing number of Americans said political violence could sometimes be justified, say she couldnt fathom that Democrats and liberals would ever commit violent political acts. Somehow, in her view, this was a phenomenon restricted only to Trump supporters.

She mustve missed the nationwide riots that destroyed large swaths of several American cities over the last couple of years, completely fueled by left-wing agitators and egged on by Democratic politicians. Heck, Vice President Kamala Harris raised money to bail violent protestors out of jail in Minnesota.

She must have missed California Democrat Maxine Waters calling on protestors to get confrontational and to literally mob Trump administration officials. Or when Republicans from Sarah Huckabee Sanders to Ted Cruz were chased from restaurants. Or when Mitch McConnell was threatened with we know where you live as he was chased from a restaurant in Louisville, and months later found his home vandalized.

She mustve missed the Bernie Sanders supporter who so hated Donald Trump that they shot up the Republican congressmen practicing for the congressional baseball game, nearly killing Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana.

The issue is the same: people dissatisfied with institutional outcomes decided that intimidation, riotingand violence were justifiable responses.

Sure, there were some peaceful BLM protestors out there just like there were peaceful Trump supporters in Washington on Jan.6. But there were more than a handful of violent offenders in both groups, raging against a machine that they believed had betrayed them.

In the case of the Jan.6 rioters, they believed Trump, who fed them falsehoods, had their backs. The racial protest rioters were egged on for years by falsehood spewing leaders, too. Remember hands up, dont shoot? That never happened, according to President Obama's own Department of Justice.

Your politics will dictate your reaction to this paragraph. Liberals will recoil at the idea of comparing leftist rioters to the Jan.6 insurrectionists. Conservatives will howl at being lumped in with people looting Targetsand burning buildings.

But these rioters arent all that different. Theyve lost faith in our government and have come to believe that violence will produce better outcomes. Theyve been misled by selfish, failed leaders who found momentary advantage in arousing the passions of their supporters, but at extreme cost to the country's future.

This escalator will continue to go up until we choose to stop it.

US Capitol riot arrests:What we know about the Kentucky people charged

Most Republicans voted for Trump twice and were quite pleased with the results three conservatives on the Supreme Court and scores of lower court judges confirmed, too; tax cuts and regulatory reforms that produced the best economy in recent memory; trade policies that were fair to working-class Americans; finally standing up to China when it seemed no other politician would; a sane border policy. They have few qualms with his policy direction, even as he broke party orthodoxy on matters. And thats not to mention his deliverance of a long-desired pugilism in dealing with the media and leftist Democratic culture warriors.

US Capitol riot: Police officer dragged down steps and beaten

Video from the U.S. Capitol riot shows a police officer being dragged down the steps of the building and beaten.

USA TODAY, Storyful

But it is quite possible for a Republican, in their heart of hearts, to have voted for Trump twice, approved of the results, and be completely horrified at his post-election and Jan.6 dereliction of duty. If you believe that violence on Jan.6 was justified, you aren't a constitutional or law-and-order conservative. You are an anarchist, plain and simple.

The reckoning will come in 2024. Trump is likely to run again, a clear favorite for the GOP nomination. But the vulnerabilities he drags into his next race for the White House makes him the least likely Republican to recapture 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for the GOP.

Republican Rep.Peter Meijer of Michigan, who voted to impeach Trump after Jan.6, now says his party has no choice but to rally around the former president. But the GOP bench is deep, full of potential presidents who could deliver the same results and fighting spirit, but who aren't carrying the baggage of having failed so spectacularly in a key, career-defining moment (or who carry the stain of having lost the national popular vote in two straight elections).

Liberals fail to see the failings of those in their ranks who encourage falsehoods and riots about elections and social problems. Conservatives seem resigned to another Trump nomination, and to relitigating the 2020 election four years hence.

And this lack of imagination and vision among our leaders despite a public desperately hungry for something better is why the escalator of political violence may well have many more floors to climb.

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Jan. 6, one year later. Why partisan violence isn't reserved for insurrectionists | Opinion - Courier Journal