Several rallies were announced for the following weekend to test this policy. Law enforcement (and local militias) responded by issuing riot gear (with shields), tear gas canisters, and rubber bullets. Joseph Heller would have loved the administration’s logic: In an effort to prevent people from being hurt, the police were going to have to hurt people.

Rather than trying to calm the situation, the broadcast media was promoting it. Instead of urging people to let the legal process proceed, they treated it like Wrestlemania, promising complete coverage of the confrontation: (Theme music up, then) “Watch what happens when determined protesters go head-to-head with America’s fiercest defenders!”

The whole thing was mind-bogglingly insane, and there was absolutely nothing that would stop it. As I look back, this was the first time I seriously began to wonder if American democracy could survive. Even during the Trump riots I was comforted by my belief that Trump simply was reacting to events, that his response was not part of a plan. He didn’t use that uprising as part of a long-term strategy to fundamentally change the country. I had real faith that he wasn’t smart enough to pull that off.

But Wrightman? It was sort of like looking at a bruise on the skin of an apple and wondering how deep it went. How far was Wrightman willing to go to “restore order”? I had been brought up to believe this type of government takeover happened in the old eastern bloc or in banana republics. Not here. Not in America.

One thing I do know, I wanted to get out and cover the Washington rally myself. Howie refused, insisting I work the desk. He wanted me to write the national story. I never found out for certain, but I was pretty confident Jenny had talked him into it.

Instead of riots, Wrightman got incredibly lucky. Several years ago I’d done a story with a Boulder, Colorado, district attorney who’d had to prosecute a highly incendiary race case. A group of white kids had chased two Black kids onto a highway, where one of them had been hit by a car and killed. Whichever side won, the other side was threatening to riot. He prevented that from happening by scheduling the case for the following February. “Nobody riots in February,” he told me. “It’s much too cold.”

Instead of frigid temperatures, just about the entire country was blanketed by an oppressive heat wave. In many cities, temperatures soared above 100 degrees, which combined with an inversion that resulted in unusually poor air quality created unsafe conditions that forced people to stay safely inside. Rather than tempers boiling over, they were air-conditioned. The rallies fizzled out, forcing the organizers to reschedule the demonstrations for September.

The administration was also fortunate that millions of Americans were distracted by the historic three-day The Voice vs. American Idol: Battle of the Champions competition. The newly legalized betting on reality TV outcomes, which had just been approved by several states, turned this into a huge attraction—further dissipating a lot of the anger. The “final showdown” pitted a nine-year-old suffering from a collapsed immune system that forced her to compete from inside a sealed-plastic bubble against an eighty-seven-year-old man with Alzheimer’s who could remember only the words to love songs he’d crooned to his recently deceased wife. Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating. (The man was lying about his age.) But the combination of climate change and wagering on entertainment greatly reduced the level of anger.