Sociologist Kieran Healy tries to sort out how Wednesday, January 6, 2021 came to pass.

Trump loves his crowd, but he has no tolerance at all for the individuals who make it up. As soon as they got inside the building and resolved once more into identifiable individuals, Trump was reportedly and unsurprisingly grossed out by all the “low class” stuff he was seeing. What he envisioned, I think, was a mass of adoring supporters at the very gates of the Capitol, expressing their love and loyalty for him, and together, they would make Congress capitulate to their will.

On Wednesday night, I jotted down my own half-formed thoughts just to capture some of the feeling of dismay. The Trump insurrection lays bare a number of our national failures, chief among them is our inability to face up to organized right-wing, white nationalist terrorism. If there’s anything good to come out of this, maybe it’s finally seeing these goons for how dangerous they truly are.