Nauvoo and the Near Failure of American Democracy

After detailing how he was called a racial expletive and physically assaulted while defending the U.S. Capitol on January 6, police officer Harry Dunn asked a poignant question: "Is this America?" The congressional committee that heard his remarks in person, and the general public who listened to them at home, likely wished they could answer the question in the negative. But the grisly details of how Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the nation’s governing halls and threatened elected officials demonstrated that they could no longer merely dismiss the notion that violence was rooted inside their democratic culture