[This is a slightly revised version of a posting I made to Facebook on Jan 7, 2021.] Sometimes it's useful to say the obvious. The Trump backers who relented in wake of the Jan 6 insurrection at the Capitol are just rats abandoning a sinking ship, not principled people who were misguided until the incident. The incident – the breach and insurrection at the U.S. Congress – was the logical extension of an opportunistic, unscrupulous force (Trumpism) colliding with the foundation of democratic self-government. The opportunistic dishonesty of Trumpism is not an irresistible force, it is a choice, and self-governing democracy is not immovable, not inevitable – it fails without honesty. (I love this unattributed quote I found on Usenet, an early internet forum: "Affability keeps the boat from rocking, but truth keeps it from sinking.") The only thing surprising about the events is that the rats were able to sustain the absurd pretenses as long and widely as they did. They kne...