We’ve come a long way this year, those of us who love democracy and pray for a kinder, gentler nation.

And we have a long ways to go.

It is important to keep this in mind: Trump was defeated, he is leaving office in five days, he is as powerless and trapped as a sitting President can be. A new President and a new government are taking over. Things will change.

Today, Trump reminds me of a bird trapped in a cage. He can’t even sing out anymore. Whatever he does will be wrong.

Our government and civic structure remain strong and in control; there are already more police officers and soldiers guarding the capitol than protesters who came to storm it.

Reporters who cover disasters and catastrophes know that bureaucracies authorities always underestimate danger until it is upon them.

And they always overreact to it once it appears, in part to distract their critics.

Usually, big disasters only occur once.  Governments protect themselves. Terrorists always try to think of something new.

As 911 taught the police, it is impossible to think of everything that might happen or anticipate all of the millions of choices terrorists and criminals, and lunatics might make.

Bureaucracies always focus on what they know, not what they don’t or can’t.

This was unprecedented.

No mob of thousands of Americans had ever attacked an iconic government building in that way before, so no one really expected it to happen or was ready for it.

They were much more concerned with “optics,” how things might look, not how things really are. That is what complacency is.

We are now subject to what the authorities like to call “an abundance of caution” and a tsunami of predictable warnings about this just being the beginning and all 50 statehouses in all 50 states are in great danger. The people in charge of security are protecting themselves, and supposedly, us.

Back to Armageddon. Keep that war machine money flowing.

Those institutions responsible for our security aren’t dwelling on why they failed but keeping us terrified about what’s just around the corner.

We just want it to be taken care of.

I’m sure there will be some protests this week, some violent.

But we are not all under imminent attack as a nation, and there will not be 50 state houses under siege.

Since it was founded, the FBI has specialized in busting up groups that pushed for radical change, some good and some bad. This was J.EdgardHoover’s primary obsession.

The bureau has always been used by the government to knock down movements they considered extreme or threatening. And none of the people in those movements stormed the capitol and peed all over the floors.

The critics are right about one thing: if those were African-Americans or Communists breaking down doors, the capitol steps would have run red with blood.

The FBI knows how to do it; ask the anarchists, the KKK, civil rights protestors, labor organizers, communists, and socialists of the past.

Now it’s the white nationalist’s turn. Trust me; they will not be gloating long.

This is a good moment to slow down and take a deep breath. And step back a bit.

Our world is different from the one we lived in a week or so again and different from the one we faced before November.

We are learning that Donald Trump’s threat to overturn the November election by any means necessary was not a joke but was very real.

As close as it came to a bloodbath, it failed almost completely to carry out its real goals. Vice President Pence was not hung, the election was not overturned, the certification was not delayed,  Joe Biden will be President, and Donald Trump is not staying in the White House.

The capitol’s riot has awakened the vast national security and police apparatus installed in America the years since 911. They are extraordinarily powerful and well equipped.

And if you are the kind of insurrectionists who like to take selfies and tape videos for your hate-based website, this is not a bear you want to wake up.

They say if you go after the King, you better kill the King. The same is true of government. If you aim for insurrection, you can’t just settle for smearing shit on the walls and stealing stuff and bragging to Mom on your cell.

If you don’t kill it, it will come after you, and the history of insurrections does not favor the mobs who try it and fail.

The attack on the capital came from an unexpected place and in a shockingly brutal way – no one ever guessed that our own President would be the next Osama Bin Laden – but as we can see, the country is more than prepared to defend itself.

They’ve been militarizing the police and the National Guard for years now. Just ask the demonstrators in Portland and Layfayette Square.

The rioters claim that they support the police, but they seem to know nothing about them. Nor are they reluctant to spray them with bear spray, beat them and steal their equipment.

The capitol police couldn’t handle this mob, but that left between 4 to 6 million police and security and government and local police officers to wake up and come running and deploy.

And get even.

There are already 20,000 National Guard soldiers in Washington, and thousands of additional police forces are pouring into the city.

The doofuses and bigots who stormed the capitol are cowards and thieves and not especially bright. They will not be marching on the capitol again, certainly not this coming week.

Watching them on those videos, I was grateful they were not real terrorists, the toll would have been so much higher.

What’s different?

Donald Trump was defeated and is, at the moment, powerless.

He has lost his Twitter Feed, his umbilical core, to the Christian-White Nationalist Movement that attacked the capitol.

He has lost sponsors, friends, aides, donors.

The mobs he summoned have nothing but e-mails and encrypted messages to fuel them without him. Their general, their Uber Fuehrer, their God,  is gone.

All they can do is look for clues. and guess what he wants them to do.

The flunkies and sycophants Donald Trump placed in the national security apparatus, Homeland Security, the Justice Department, and the Pentagon have either resigned, are running for their lives, or have already been pushed out.

If Trump doesn’t shut up and keep quiet, he’ll be forced out and banned from holding federal office. About all, he can safely say is “no violence,” – too little, too late, too false – and to many of his followers, even that is a betrayal.

The lawyers for several of the rioters who were arrested are asking Trump to grant pardons for the people who answered his call to combat.

After all, said one lawyer, his client was just doing what the President of the United States asked him to do.

Without his Twitter account, which he depended on too much, he has no megaphone, no way to feed his ego or manipulate the millions of weak-minded Americans desperate for a leader to love. His followers made the wrong choice.

In media terms, he put all of his eggs in one basket. now he is at the mercy of the others.

The Republican Party, the mainstay of his political power in Washington, has already erupted into civil war over Trump’s evil deeds. Mitch McConnell, Mike Pence, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy have all split from Trump and support the idea of impeachment, while not committed to voting for it.

Trump no longer can dictate to or intimidate the leaders of Homeland Security, the FBI, or the scores of other government agencies, some secret, who are supposed to be protecting us.

Several FBI agents have told reporters they didn’t pursue the white nationalists because they knew the Justice Department under Trump would not prosecute their cases. President’s are powerful, we are just learning how powerful.

They really have nothing to fear from Donald Trump now; he is a wounded stag, bleeding all over the place, crippled and pathetic.

What, exactly, were all those billions of dollars in post 911 money good for when the very heart of our democracy can be overwhelmed by a crowd like that?

Trust what you see. It won’t happen again.

And maybe, just maybe, we got another wake-up call, just like Trump himself has turned out to be, that came just in the nick of time.

It becomes clearer by the day that these powerful agencies have been intimidated by the President and his enablers,  infected with his hack and crony political appointees, and reluctant to investigate people the President and his flunkies have been winking at for years and will not prosecute.

Imagine what he would have done to us in four more years; I always pause to be grateful he is going.

On the same day as the capitol was attacked, Trump supporters in Congress were still claiming that the rioters were really members of the dread but invisible Antifa, posing at Trump supporters. Why didn’t we think of that?

Some things really are as bad as they seem; Charlottesville was one, the Capitol Insurrection was another. Perhaps next time, we won’t ignore the first thing.

A few weeks ago, the Justice Department was run by William Barr, who sacrificed his reputation and the department he headed to make  Donald Trump happy and act as his personal attorney.

Imagine if he were still in charge?

In law enforcement terms, the brutish attack on the capitol was a grievous mistake by Trump and a fringe movement that touted itself “Blue Lives Matter” but didn’t hesitate to attack, threaten, murder, beat and maim police officers.

They will pay for that, their hypocrisy was laid bare.

Trump supporters may be tribal, but there is no tighter and more fiercely supportive tribe than police officers, whose faith is to rush to the aid of one another when there is trouble, as they did at the capitol.

They might not like liberals, but they really don’t like people who drag officers down marble steps and steal their guns.

America’s police took an awful beating in 2020, tarred by one dubious police shooting after another and protests all over the country. This is their moment to shine.h

The capitol attacks and the aftermath offer a powerful opportunity for them to be heroes again, and the people who stole their guns and dragged them down marble steps will regret it.

The la-la-land rioters were angered and surprised to learn that the police were not ready to drop their guns and help them take Nancy Pelosi hostage.

They really thought it was Lexington and Concord 2.0. I thought patriots were supposed to love their country.

They may be dangerous, but they are not going to be successful. Like Trump himself, they are miserable strategists.

They are getting a reality lesson, as the FBI fans out all over the country to arrest them and bust up their insurrectionist covens.

Some of them claim a victory, but that is reassuring: they are just as dumb as they appeared to be.

At long last, Trump is trapped in a deep hole of his making. He has no good options; since the Capitol Attack, Trump’s Approval Rating Has Plummeted At A Record Rate.

Not only do a growing majority of Americans blame him for the riot at the Capitol and favor removing him from office, but his job approval rating has fallen faster in recent days than at any point in his presidency.

In front of Trump, there looms no peaceful retirement.

He faces a second impeachment trial, maybe some criminal investigations.

If he tries to halt or slow investigations into the white nationalist groups who almost universally support him or provoke more violence, he risks an impeachment conviction or investigations by an unleased U.S. Justice Department and FBI.

It would be in Trump’s personal self-interest to take responsibility for the assault on the Capitol and condemn the violence in much more sincere and persuasive terms than he has done.

That would give his supporters something to offer in his defense. He just can’t. There is no defense apart from the mythical Antifa. The world is laughing over the stated desire of the Republican Party to unify the country. Remarkable gall.

For the past year, and especially the past few months, Trump’s illness has taken him over and destroyed his judgment. The shrinks say that happens to sociopaths with too much power.

It drives them mad.

Finally, it overtook him. He seems spent and flailing.

Aides to Trump say one of the reasons he fought so hard to overturn the November election – at this point, they say, he actually believes he won – is that he is worried about the many lawsuits, investigations, and loan payments he faces when he leaves office.

If he stayed in the White House, he could have fended off many of them.

He’s raised nearly $300 million in his war against our democracy, and he will need every penny of it.

It’s too much to say this is all good news, the best news would have been for June 6 never to have happened, and the free and fair election never to have been called into question.

But there is no question that America’s compelling and entrenched civic architecture and structure has held up and held together. Our government may be divided, but it is also big, fat, and very well-armed.

The situation is under control.

The government is under control.

Joe Biden is now moving to take the spotlight away from Donald Trump and focus it on the coronavirus and the economy.

Last night, he laid out a $1.9 trillion emergency relief plan to finally assault the coronavirus and also prop up a rapidly deteriorating economy.

Ultimately, these two steps will do more to change the political divisions that have paralyzed the country than any harm Trump can promote from his castle in Florida.

The President is just beginning to realize that he will be spending a lot of money on lawyers and a lot of time in court. I hate what he has done to our country, but I am grateful not to live in his tortured head.

It feels like we are still grappling with a nightmare – and we are – but the light always follows the darkness, and there is much to cheer and be hopeful about.

We haven’t gotten the break we hoped for and richly deserve.

So peace and hope will need to come from inside of us. I’m game.  It will take a good while for things to settle down.

That’s where we stand.

Our government is strong and healthy and in firm control of the country. The demons are on the run.

According to a recently resigned aide, the worst news of all for the President is that his hair growth medication, the prostate-related drug Finasteride is no longer working to stem his hair loss.

This aide reports that Trump recently fired his personal hair and head dresser in Washington and is seeking another one, perhaps in Florida, where there are many older people with lots of hair big and colorful beyond their age.

I’m sure in the midst of all these troubles, he will be hiring another hair expert soon to build up that nest on his head or maybe even consider a wig.

Trump is a man who always looks in the mirror but can never find the man he wants to be.