Top 5: Reflections on Wednesday's insurrection

This week’s Top 5 articles focuses where it should: what happened on Wednesday at the Capitol and the writers and analysts who have some interesting ideas, history, and trajectories to propose after such a tumultuous day.

Also, ICYMI, this past Tuesday Michael wrote a subscribers-only post on the Georgia runoff, as well as a post last night reflecting on the events of January 6. He’ll be writing more this week. Join the community as a subscriber to read.

The Top 5 articles of the week:

1. “Politics and Political Service” (Breaking Ground)

   Because while this essay was most likely written and edited before Wednesday’s events, it provides an excellent overview of the meaning of politics and what happens when that falls apart. “The fabric of common speech that binds us together is vulnerable.”

2. “The United States Needs a Democracy Summit at Home” (Foreign Affairs)

   Because this is an interesting proposal: “The Biden team should hold not an international summit for democracy but a domestic one that recommits the nation’s political leadership to the system’s institutions and to the effort to overcome injustice and inequality.”

3. “The American Abyss” (New York Times)

   Because “It takes a tremendous amount of work to educate citizens to resist the powerful pull of believing what they already believe, or what others around them believe, or what would make sense of their own previous choices. Plato noted a particular risk for tyrants: that they would be surrounded in the end by yes-men and enablers. Aristotle worried that, in a democracy, a wealthy and talented demagogue could all too easily master the minds of the populace. Aware of these risks and others, the framers of the Constitution instituted a system of checks and balances. The point was not simply to ensure that no one branch of government dominated the others but also to anchor in institutions different points of view.”

4. “This Is What Regime Change Feels Like” (Politico Magazine)

   Because this essay uses a historical event (the ratifying of the Constitution in Pennsylvania in 1787) to show why, even history does repeat itself and nothing should surprise us, that doesn’t mean it’s not alarming. “In other words, the 1787 story doesn’t show that such antics are normal. If anything, it shows that they’re something to worry about. The parties to that conflict were right to think that their system was breaking down. That was the whole goal. We don’t worry about that breakdown in hindsight, because we celebrate the system that replaced it: the U.S. Constitution. But from the perspective of 1787, getting to the Constitution wasn’t everything is fine business as usual. It was regime change.”

5. “Republicans Confront the Consequences of Their Doomsday Rhetoric” (The Atlantic)

   Because this essay touts a very simple idea: Wednesday may not have been an anomaly.