We might ask – Is this America's greatest generation of moral cowards? We have the contrast between what needs to be done and the failure of our public officials to act. Our public officials are an embarrassment – in Congress and in the Administration failing to hold the principal actors responsible for the incitement to riot and to overthrow our government.

On July 20, the House Select Committee on Insurrection convened a hearing with four law enforcement officers who told the Congress and the nation how they suffered to defend our government from violent overthrow on January 6, 2021. They also told us that we need an accounting for those rioters but also for those who incited the insurrection.

We arrived at this historic intersection long before a tv reality star and failed casino operator ran for President.

For years, Republican leaders have been suppressing votes and drawing favorable electoral district lines because they couldn't otherwise win those districts in an election. Hateful rhetoric also helped to move the political dial when broadcast on Fox. Large segments of our population were summoned from the shadows.

Russia's Vladimir Putin saw the weakness in our body politic, and exploited it, most critically, by interfering in our nation's presidential election in 2016. Putin helped re-fashion the Grand Old Party into a personality cult for the boorish, bigoted and angry rhetoric of gilt edged Donald Trump. Our Republic's frailty, as an open political system, was at risk.

Nicholas Kristof, writing in the New York Times about terrorism, said the lesson of the Trojan War was "[to avoid] the intoxicating pride and overweening ignorance that sometimes clouds the mind of the strong … [and] the paramount need to listen to skeptical views." Skeptics have rightly thought from Trump's garish golden escalator ride at Trump Towers, when he announced his presidential ambitions, we were going to pay a price should he succeed.

Leaders and commentators acted as if his candidacy was "a joke," gave him hours of free air time, until no one laughed any more. Hubris is the word for these troubled times. It is that excessive pride or self-confidence that clouds judgement and invites peril.

We acted with such certainty that our government runs like a swiss clock, that it will keep on ticking like a Timex watch, no matter what challenges it faces. We thought we didn't have to concern ourselves about this threat from the extreme right, from native white extremists, terrorists, autocrats, who rightly believe they can only win an election – if they can press their thumb on the scale of fair and equal to give less weight to those voters who recoil from the Republican brand.

Hobbes warned of the perceived "natural right" of man to take what he wants and feels he needs. Hobbes described exactly our present day challenge - "[A]s long as this natural right of every man to every thing endureth, there can be no security to any man, how strong or wise soever he be, of living out the time which nature ordinarily alloweth men to live."

We have waited too long "to defend ourselves." The threat before us is now fully known, though some exist as if in a trance cast by Mandrake the magician, believing chaos and rebellion and the installation of a fraudulent president are what the people really want.

Four men helped set the record straight at the only hearing held so far by the Select Committee on the Insurrection. On January 6, 2021, amoral and lawless citizens gathered from diverse points on the compass, to convene in Washington, DC, answering the summons by Trump himself to take over our government by force and riot, and install Trump as the winner of an election he sorely lost.

Benjamin Franklin feared the destiny of any democracy when he said "You have a Republic – if you can keep it." Our Republic is under siege by a foreign enemy, a former KGB officer, and, worse than that, by the enemy within.

Before January 6, 2021, then President Trump called VP Pence, who was slated to oversee congressional certification of President Biden's election win, and reportedly Trump told Pence, "You don't have the courage to make a hard decision." On January 6, Rep. Louie Gohmert told a crowd massing near the Capitol, you're going to have to go to the streets and be violent.

Rep. Mo Brooks decried those members of congress who would support Biden – "Today is the Day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass. Are you willing to do what it takes to fight for America? Louder! Will you fight for America?"

Trump's rogue counselor, Rudy Giuliani, said, "Let's have trial by combat," Trump himself said, "We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore."

Originally, there were reportedly 12 Republican senators, along with more than 100 GOP House members, who planned to object to the electoral votes cast in key states, charging their elections were rife with fraud despite the absence of any evidence that this was even remotely true.

When the insurrectionists were finally repelled and the House and Senate re-convened, there were senators who stood steadfast and sought to bar Biden from the pro forma counting that would confirm he was elected President. They objected to the certification of the election based on bogus charges of election fraud. In the House, 121 members supported this groundless objection.

Thus, I say we suffered the enemy within, traitors to democracy, friends of monarchy and autocracy. On July 20, the four men, both Capitol and District Police, came to the Hill to discuss that fateful day, January 6, 2021. They fought not only to protect the persons on the hill but the transfer of power to the man actually elected by the citizens.

Republican Rep Cheney praised these men for "holding the line" and "defending all of us." She warned, however, if those who did this are not held accountable, "this will be a cancer on our Republic." Cheney said this Selection Committee will have to require subpoenas and she was talking about persons above and beyond the rioters to those who drove the insurrection. She said the question is will we adhere to the law or will we throw away the miracle that is our democracy, while our children are watching.

In the end, they will know who stood for them. This begs the question, isn't it high time we have a grand jury investigation and accounting by and reckoning of those responsible who thought to overthrow our democracy. If our AG Garland won't do his job, won't convene a grand jury to investigate those in the West Wing, in Congress, in our Intelligence Community, and all the other cronies in and out of government who made the insurrection possible, then we need an AG who will do the job that Garland hates to do – that he won't do – namely – to prosecute the lawless who thought to destroy our Republic.

As President Biden has said in another context, if you're not going to do the job, get out of the way.