On Friday, the Republican National Committee formally censured GOP Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, castigating them for participating in the House investigation of the January 6 attack on the US Capitol. The resolution described the inquiry as “the persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.” Consequently, it was widely interpreted and decried as equating the riot that led to nine deaths with reasonable debate and as showing support for Donald Trump’s brownshirts, though Republicans could claim the fuzzy wording only applied to the nonviolent protest rally that occurred prior to the assault on Congress. Most notable was that the GOP wasn’t more careful with its language regarding 1/6 and that its leaders felt no compunction to include in the resolution a denunciation of the violence committed by the mob of right-wing fanatics inspired and incited by Trump. Perhaps more stunning—though it’s hard to be stunned by Republican extremism these days—was that the GOP believed it could play politics with 1/6, as if that horrific event is just another dispute in the never-ending tussle with the libs, and get away with it.

This brazenness brought to mind a quote that had appeared in the New York Times a few days prior. Regarding the steady flow of revelations pertaining to Trump’s efforts to overthrow the election and retain power, Jeffrey Engel, the director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University, observed that voters had become desensitized, if not numb, to Trump’s attacks on democracy: “I actually think the American public is dramatically underplaying how significant and dangerous this is because we cannot process the basic truth of what we are learning about President Trump’s efforts—which is we’ve never had a president before who fundamentally placed his own personal interests above the nation’s.”

The final piece of his statement was naive. Previous presidents have placed their own political interests above the country’s. Richard Nixon, for one, conspired with a foreign power to sabotage the Vietnam War peace talks so he could prevent a breakthrough that would harm his electoral prospects in 1968. (This deed—one of the dastardliest in US presidential history—likely caused the deaths of thousands of American soldiers.) But Engel’s larger point is intriguing: Trump’s wickedness may be too immense for the nation to absorb.

Each week yields new evidence that Trump was scheming in his final days to destroy American democracy. He improperly—possibly criminally—pressured state legislators, state election officials, and Justice Department officials to help him rig or undermine the vote count. Last week, Trump issued a statement acknowledging he had leaned on Vice President Mike Pence to “overturn” the election—not just provide the states more time to review their vote tallies. (Trump’s argument that a vice president has the power to do this is both dumb and dangerous. Certainly, the authors of the US Constitution did not intend to grant the vice president—who could be a presidential candidate—the unchecked power to decide an election.) But the enormity of Trump’s turpitude has not fully registered—in part because the Republicans have stuck to a this-parrot’s-not-dead stance and refused to admit reality.

But this shameless denialism can only work if enough of the public either goes along, declines to pay attention, or doesn’t give a damn. A president attempting a coup ought to define the political moment. A party that supports such a leader and his return to power ought to be scandalized and delegitimized. Failing the basic test of responsible governance—defending the Constitution—the GOP has proved itself unworthy of national stewardship. And yet the Republicans remain standing—and drool over the prospect of regaining control of Congress later this year.

So we end up harrumphing over the RNC resolution, squabbling over a violent raid on the citadel of US democracy. Engel’s point resonates: The audacity of Trump’s crime against the republic might be too great for many to absorb. Certainly, Trump fans don’t want to concede that the man in whom they placed their faith—their cult leader—acted with such villainy. Others may find it too tough to confront and comprehend such a huge and unprecedented crime, for doing so would compel involvement and action. During the Trump-Russia scandal, I hypothesized that one reason why Trump’s aiding and abetting of the Russian attack on the 2016 election did not spur greater popular outrage was that the primary notions of that controversy—that American democracy was vulnerable, that Moscow could successfully assault the United States, and that a presidential candidate and his party would provide cover for such an attack and exploit it for their own gain—were almost too outlandish to believe. Those are discomfiting premises that undermine our collective sense of security and stability.

A few weeks after the 2016 election, I encountered then–House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi at an event and asked if the Democrats intended to press for investigations of the Russian subversion of the campaign. Her answer was, maybe. It was evident that she had not yet given much thought to this possibility. I wondered at the time if the matter was too overwhelming for our divided and tribalized government to address. Eventually, she and other Democrats did demand inquiries, which were initiated but were also highly politicized by Republicans who did not want a full exploration of what had transpired.

The attempted Trump coup, similarly, may be too profound a breach to be processed by our fractured political system. This presents a challenge and an opportunity to the House committee investigating January 6. Its members had considered holding extensive hearings last month, but they postponed them until April or May, as the committee reviews the massive amount of information it has gathered and pursues recalcitrant witnesses. Up to now, the Trump coup tale has emerged in bits and pieces through multiple revelations in the media. These components do not appear in a linear fashion. There’s new information about Trump muscling the Justice Department. Something about fake electors forging documents. A phone call to Georgia state election officials. A draft order to declare martial law. And so on. The story can be confusing and murky even to those of us who cover it steadily. Imagine how it comes across to citizens who only see the headlines intermittently. For them, it’s not drip, drip, drip; it’s more like a splatter.

Here’s where the House committee comes in. When it does get around to hearings, it will need to convey a clear and comprehensive story that shows anyone paying attention how Trump vigorously endeavored to sabotage the republic. This won’t happen with a lot of speechifying. But committee members—or staffers—should guide the public through the various elements. With charts. With video. With timelines. Witnesses can be quite useful at hearings. A sharp grilling of a bad actor will go viral. But narrative storytelling can be more important. The full tale of the Trump-Russia affair was never presented publicly (though the 966-page Senate Intelligence Committee report produced four years after the fact is a somewhat full and frightening chronology of what occurred).

As we learned with the Trump-Russia scandal, criminal investigations, such as special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe, are imperfect vehicles for informing the citizenry. That’s the job of Congress or an independent commission. Remember the 9/11 Commission and its impressive final report that provided a straightforward recounting of that nightmare and the governmental failures that preceded it. The House January 6 committee ought to take its lead from the commission and embrace the effective telling of the 1/6 story as its top priority. The nation’s citizenry deserves a full account of Trump’s skullduggery, even if we can’t handle the truth.

Got anything to say about this item—or anything else? Email me at thisland@motherjones.com.

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The Watch, Read, and Listen List

Only Murders in the Building. Hepburn and Tracy. Powell and Loy. Lemmon and Matthau. There’s something especially delightful when an acting duo spices up a project with delicious repartee. Remember Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd in Moonlighting? This is what Steve Martin and Martin Short deliver in the Hulu comedy series Only Murders in the Building. That’s hardly a surprise. These two quick-thinking and quirky wits are longtime pals, and a few years ago they put on a wonderfully entertaining two-man show (Songs! Stories! Quips!) that streams on Netflix. Reunited in Only Murders, the two do not stretch far in the acting category. Martin is Charles-Haden Savage, an over-the-hill actor best known for playing a tough cop in a ’90s television show; Short is Oliver Putnam, an over-the-hill Broadway musical director. (Don’t ask what happened when he staged Splash: The Musical. But it involved mermaid-men diving into a pool of water that wasn’t there.) The two live in one of those grand Upper West Side apartment buildings in Manhattan, with a lovely courtyard and spacious dwellings. And they are both obsessed with true-crime podcasts—a genre dominating popular culture that Only Murders justifiably pokes much fun at. Of course, there’s a fatal shooting in the building, ruled a suicide, and the two men, each with too much time on his hands, are brought together by the mutually held suspicion that foul play is afoot—and by the notion they can put their podcast-listening experience to good use, solve the crime, and turn their adventure into their own podcast. It’s a silly story. But the frenemy-ship between Savage and Putnam generates sparks of rhetorical enchantment. I would pay to watch them eat sandwiches together.

Only Murders is a satisfying Woody Allen–substitute for those of us who can no longer enjoy Allen’s work. It’s affluent New Yorkers in a madcap situation and a satirical dissection of the lifestyles and manners of this narrow slice of humankind. Selena Gomez does a wonderful job keeping up with the boys, as she plays a sassy designer-wannabe from a low-income Long Island family who’s living in her wealthy aunt’s pad and falls in with their let’s-solve-the-murder-and-put-on-a-podcast scheme. Tina Fey is the grand maestro of true-crime podcasts whom they seek out for help. Nathan Lane is a rich deli owner who agrees to fund their endeavor. And Sting appears as Sting. (He lives in the building and is a suspect.) The show has predictable twists and few you won’t see coming. But it’s all about the chemistry between Martin and Short—and Gomez. A second season is in the works. But as with so many great acting couples—Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, Robert Redford and Paul Newman—it would be great so see Martin and Short escape this setup they have already conquered and banter their way through other settings and predicaments.

Invasion. This sci-fi/alien invasion series on Apple TV+ is both odd and conventional. It follows the usual pattern. There are glitches with satellites. Something crashes in a remote area of Afghanistan. Fiery meteorlike projectiles rain down. But no one knows what’s happening. Meanwhile, we’re introduced to characters around the world—a sheriff in rural America, a G.I. in Afghanistan, a stay-at-home mom in Long Island, a schoolboy in London, and a telecommunications engineer who works for Japan’s space agency. We know we will be watching how they cope with the coming apocalypse. But it takes several episodes of Invasion before it’s clear to them (not us) that some bad hombres have arrived and are bent on wiping out humankind. Though whole cities are devastated by the invaders, we barely see the enemy—who are like robotic spiders—and when they do show up on our screen, there are only a few of them here and there. It’s unclear how they have managed to terrorize and destroy whole population centers. Plus, the cliches we see coming with trepidation indeed arrive. The English schoolboy and his class who are on a field trip to the distant countryside do end up stranded without adult supervision and descend into a mini Lord of the Flies situation, and, yes, the boy’s epilepsy does afford him a mental bond with the aliens. And the American G.I. is a backslapping good ol’ Joe who just wants to find his missing comrades and patch things up with the missus back home.

Yet two other plotlines are more imaginative and utterly engaging. Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani plays Aneesha Malik, a onetime medical student who left school when she became a mom. She discovers, just as the invasion is beginning, that her husband has been cheating on her. Bad timing. At her insistence, the family flees their suburban home and heads toward upstate New York, which ends up being not much safer than the New York metropolitan area. Malik, who up to now has repressed her ambitions and skills, becomes the driving force of the family, as she takes desperate measures to protect her children. (Her husband, she doesn’t care much about.) Farahani is mesmerizing to watch in this role. Forced into service as a doctor (which she is not), Malik discovers a vulnerability in the aliens, and now she’s not only obsessed with saving her family, but she also could help prevent total annihilation. Farahani oozes charisma in the role of a woman who finally breaks free of restraints and surprises herself; this is the storyline we want to stay with. The other one that stands out follows Mitsuki Yamato (Shioli Kutsuna), the JASA engineer. She is the lover of a Japanese astronaut who may have been captured (or killed) by the aliens, and against the orders of her bullheaded and bureaucratic male superiors, she figures out a way to communicate with the aliens. Like Malik, she learns how fierce one can become in a crisis—especially when the men around you are annoying screwups. These two women provide Invasion the force it needs to escape the gravitational pull of its tropes. Thanks to one of them, the humans seem to defeat the aliens, but—hold on—is there another giant spaceship out there? We will have to wait until Season 2 to find out.

Read Recent Issues of This Land

February 5, 2022: Can we call Trump’s race war a “race war”?; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Michele Bachmann and Rick Scott); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

February 1, 2022: Please tell me: Why is Michael Flynn crazy?; an impressive film about Nicolas Cage and his pig; Wajahat Ali’s impressive memoir about growing up Muslim and nonwhite in America; and more.

January 29, 2022: The inside story of the banning of Maus—it’s dumber than you think; Dumbass Comment of the Week; the Mailbag; and MoxieCam™; and more.

January 25, 2022: The snowflake-ization of the right; would you buy cryptocurrency from this man (Steve Bannon)?; Belfast, a feel-good movie about a civil war; Elvis Costello’s delightful and cynical new album; and more.

January 22, 2022: Readers speak out: How to save the republic from Republicans; Dumbass Comment of the Week; the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

January 19, 2022: Why the Democrats must yield to Manchin to keep the Trump cult from gaining power; gushing about The French Dispatch; a true-crime podcast with political and international significance; and more.

January 15, 2022: We’re all tired of Trump’s crazy, but it’s dangerous to ignore; Dumbass Comment of the Week (US Senate edition); the Mailbag; (a harrowing) MoxieCam™; and more.

January 11, 2022: My interview with Jamie Raskin about his son’s suicide, January 6, and the second Trump impeachment; Aaron Sorkin’s one big mistake in Being the Ricardos; Slow Burn’s look back at the LA riots; and more.

January 8, 2022: It’s time for Merrick Garland to reveal if the Justice Department is investigating Donald Trump; Dumbass Comment of the Week; the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.