Commentary: A year from the insurrection and American democracy is shaky

WASHINGTON, DC: The anniversary of the Jan 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol has come and gone, and many Americans are deeply depressed that the country’s political divide has only deepened.

Though most Republican Party leaders condemned the attack at the time, the GOP has since internalised former President Donald Trump’s web of lies and falsehoods about the 2020 election, which he lost by seven million votes.

Republicans have largely refused even to participate in the congressional investigation into the matter.

A year after a sitting president tried to overturn the results of a fair and lawful election, the effort to identify and prosecute those responsible now must compete for attention with other security crises: Russian troops massing near Ukraine; Iran nearing the threshold of nuclear breakout; and humanitarian catastrophes in Afghanistan and Yemen.

Faced with all this, American leaders will be tempted to draw a bright line between home and abroad. But doing so would be both risky and wrong.

America’s profound polarisation reflects a society whose members no longer share a core understanding of what it means to be “secure.” Americans tend to have widely divergent experiences – across racial, religious, and gender lines – with US domestic security institutions.

Trust in the US military and security forces used to be consistently high; now, it is falling, alongside trust in the rest of America’s government institutions.