Opinion

Former First Lady Melania Trump offered up a new non-fungible token (NFT) piece of artwork last week and this week she's selling the hat she wore during an official state visit to the U.S. by French President Emmanuel Macron. She has also autographed the hat for the buyer and the prices start at $250,000.

Mrs. Trump, a former model, focused a lot on her fashion while in the White House. She is the first among the first ladies to auction off her belongings, though she says that a "portion" of the funds will go to her "Be Best" campaign's foster care initiative, which aimed to fight bullying.

Most recently, 100 mph winds swept grass-fires through Colorado, leaving thousands homeless. It was 116 degrees here in Portland last summer, as wildfires and drought ravage the West. The Gulf Coast, South and Eastern Seaboard are now annually torn apart by superstorms, while the Midwest faces mile-wide tornadoes never before seen with this ferocity and frequency.

Climate change has gone from the theoretical to slapping us in the face.

Thursday is the one-year anniversary of the day seditionary forces sacked and looted the United States Capitol in an attempt to overturn a lawful democratic election and install Donald Trump as fuhrer-king.

The violence stopped long ago, but the insurrection continues in other forms. State-level Republicans have been over the last year codifying into law an array of election procedures that could, in the worst case, create conditions for the stealing of a presidential election. As I said in August, the next time the Republicans attempt a coup d'état, it won't be loud like January 6, 2021. It will be quiet. It will be nice and legal.

It's hard not to feel depressed going into 2022. Headlines are dominated by the omicron variant of COVID-19, Donald Trump continues to walk free despite his attempted coup one year ago, and Republican efforts to steal the 2024 election for him are well underway after receiving no resistance from a Senate that is being held hostage by the two worst Democrats in the nation. Democratic voters are demoralized, as evidenced by the low turnout in November's Virginia election. Republicans, meanwhile, are in a "let's go Brandon" frenzy.

And yet, there are tendrils of hope peeking out through the freeze of despair.

This week marks the one-year anniversary of the January 6th insurrection. There will be some commemorations of the day in Washington and pro-democracy groups will hold vigils for democracy while pro-Trump groups will be holding vigils to support the insurrectionists. Donald Trump plans to hold a press conference on that day where he says he will discuss in-depth the "stolen election" of 2020, citing several states where "the numbers don't work for them." Feel the magic:

"Remember, the insurrection took place on November 3rd, it was the completely unarmed protest of the rigged election that took place on January 6th."

Over the holiday break, the Department of Justice released more shocking footage of the allegedly "completely unarmed protest" which showed three hours of bloody violence raining down upon the capitol police that day. Trump's attempt to reframe January 6th as an unarmed peaceful protest may be his greatest act of chutzpah yet — and that's saying something.

An attendee at an October 2021 political rally hosted by right-wing activist Charlie Kirk asked: “How many elections are they going to steal before we kill these people?”

The attendee was referring to the baseless allegation that Joe Biden stole the 2020 U.S. presidential election and that he unfairly denied Donald Trump reelection.

Understanding why January 6 happened is not merely a question for the history books. It’s about the future. It’s about stopping Trump’s next coup — which has already begun.

To that end, there is one big reason, much overlooked, why thousands of Trump-supporting conspiracists, extremists, and white supremacists stormed the Capitol on January 6: they were supercharged by impunity.

The Trump era saw a far-right takeover of the Republican Party. But the Big Lie and the fallout from the Capitol riot last January threaten to move the party even further into the extremist fringe after the 2022 midterms.

This article first appeared In Salon.

Amid the pandemic's grim tableau of death, illness and disinformation, a moment of comic relief broke through in December. It was the darkest kind of comedy, to be sure, but we'll take whatever we can get these days. The occasion was Donald Trump's belated endorsement of the coronavirus vaccines — which almost instantly provoked an eruption of panic and fury among his cultists.

No doubt this conflict has raged within the former president's head for many months now, while he vacillated between glomming credit for the vaccines his administration supported and pandering to the ignorance and paranoia of his Republican political base. Trump needs to boast constantly about himself and his presidency, yet he also depends on the kind of conspiratorial deceptions promoted by the anti-vaccine movement. It must have been a torturous quandary for him.

As I’ve considered the real lesson of January 6, I’ve been prompted to rewatch a movie that provides a hint of an answer — Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life,” which was released 75 years ago this month.

When I first saw the movie in the late 1960s, I thought it pure hokum. America was coming apart over Vietnam and the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, and I remember thinking the movie could have been produced by some propaganda bureau of the government that had been told to create a white-washed (and white) version of the United States.

And just like that, it’s 1861.

Gov. Ron DeSantis likes to call this the “Free State of Florida.” If he hasn’t yet wrapped himself in the Tenth Amendment or threatened secession, it’s only because he’s been too busy playing soldiers, organizing his private battalion, rewriting the past, and trying to destroy democracy.

It’s not hard to find photos of each one of the three Republicans in Colorado’s congressional delegation posing with guns.

The images aren’t just out there on the internet — the members want you to see them. They released them as part of campaigns or policy statements. The discouraging implication is that they assume such posturing will resonate with a substantial portion of their base.

In America (and around the world) the year 2021 was one of great sadness and frustration. By many indications, 2022 may be even worse.

America's democracy crisis continues to escalate. The alarm is blaring but the American people, for the most part, continue to ignore it. Last Jan. 6, Donald Trump and his regime attempted a coup with the goal of nullifying the results of the 2020 presidential election and, in effect, ending American democracy. In many respects, Trump's coup attempt was atypical, if not wholly unique.