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Your comment here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29935989) has been killed, so I couldn't post my reply there, so I'll post it here:

> Political theater by Democrats trying to make Jan 6th "The Day That Democracy Nearly Died" or something.

I agree there's been a lot of political theater around Jan. 6th, but if democracy does in fact die in the US, those events will have been an important milestone. Basically, the point where the breakdown of the respect for the institutions of democracy became in-your-face obvious. It also set some precedents/put options in people's minds that will be hugely destabilizing.

That said, I'm really disappointed that Democrats are basically making only small tactical responses (e.g. party-line voting rights legislation, some justice dept. unit to combat "extremism") to a strategic problem, which is that a large fraction of the population is losing/has lost respect for the system. The Democrats really need to get their act together and, being the less-degraded party, do their duty and make whatever sacrifices are necessary to fix that [1].

[1] As in when some asshole trashes some common area, you have the duty to spend your time and effort clean up after them. You don't have control over their behavior, but you have control over your own, and it's wrong to leave the common area trashed even though it's not "fair" you're the one sacrificing your time to clean it up.