False dichotomy, those aren’t the only two options. The democrats are still more or less pretending that everything is okay, that what happened was bad but within the range of normal, and they’re basically aiding people in putting their head in the sand and believing that what’s obviously happening isn’t really happening, and that it can’t happen here.
They need to be screaming from the rooftops when the GOP captures a state legislature and sets it up to reject election results they don’t like. They need force/pressure the justice department to go after everyone involved hard, not just slaps on the wrists for the people who actually stormed the capital. Trump needs to be criminally prosecuted. The people who gave the inside info to the insurrectionists need to be prosecuted. They need to fire anyone in the justice department that won’t make this their #1 priority. They need to set the nation’s agenda to be the security/sanctity/functioning of our instutitons above all else.
The actual response that we’ve seen to the coup attempt is about 1/100th as much as is necessary to prevent the next coup. We are nowhere near on track for it. And we know that the republicans have no shred of decency in them, that they’d burn every institution in this country down to win. They’ve doubled down on this. They’ve made election denial the official party line, and anyone in touch with reality will get excommunicated. They are actively getting their people in place and changing the rules so that the next time it won’t come down to capitol police being savvy enough to fight off a coup, it will happen simply because the republicans will do exactly what they’re setting up to do right now, which is to simply refuse to recognize the results of elections and put their people in power. And what are we going to do about it then? Jack shit, because we don’t even 10% of the spirit and willingness to fight we need to keep our country. People would rather pretend this is all not happening and just assume that historical norms will keep us safe through magic.
This, here, is our window to fight. It may already be too late. What we’re doing is not even close to working. We are completely on course for the next election or two to complete the coup, which is still ongoing and actively supported by one of the major parties in the United States, which holds a significant fraction of both federal and state governments.