Right This Second is The Beginning of the End of Trumpism

The swarming of the Capital (turn on your TV) is, in my view, a positive development.

The spittle-flecked violent nuts and hoodlums perpetrating this are utterly beyond reason. They've always been out here, and will always remain. I don't waste much time thinking about them.

I'm thinking entirely about my Republican friends and neighbors - nice, reasonable people who for various reasons (largely: tribal momentum, political underinformation - they're busy! - and misinformation via Fox News) supported Trump while disliking lots of things about him.

They are (mostly) not spittle-flecked, and have not enjoyed Trump's post-election antics. They're sensible enough to recognize a sore loser. And they're not going to be cool with armed insurrection in the US Capital. This will only help the fever to break.

This is not hoodlums and brownshirts taking over. This is edge case extremists emboldened to sufficient excess to lose their tether with the tens of millions on the center right. This is too far.

To be sure, one or two of my neighbors are likely stoked with this news. But not most of them. And foundational societal movement - especially the critical inclination of Americans to revert to the mean - is about majorities, not edge cases.

We've been hearing about the Civil War in the Republican Party this week - first among Georgia Republicans, but very quickly spreading to Washington (see Mitch McConnell's speech today and Pence's letter, both breaking free of the cult), and now it's super-rapidly consumed the country. This isn't MAGAs versus Libtards (as these crazies in DC imagine). It's center right versus radical right. This is where the center begins to unhitch from the extreme. It's by no means the death of Trumpism, but it's definitely the beginning of the end.