Carl Bernstein, the author, along with Bob Woodward, of All the President’s Men, has written an account of his earlier days as a newspaper reporter in Washington, D.C. In his recent book, Chasing History: A Kid in the Newsroom, Bernstein recounts events he covered in the Kennedy/Johnson presidencies, beginning when he was in his teens.

When reading about the scandals, tragedies, and major political events of the 1960’s, I was struck by a sense of dé·jà vu with some of today’s events

Bernstein described a campaign rally in Maryland for George Wallace, running for president in 1968: “It was the first time I’d seen a demagogue inflame the emotions of American citizens who I’d thought were familiar to me.”

His reporting on the Wallace rally included a description of a group led by someone waving a Confederate battle flag. “When the bedlam subsided, he [Wallace] repeated his boilerplate speech about federal encroachments on states’ rights and his opposition to the civil rights bill, saying it would mean death to labor unions and private property.” Later in the speech, Wallace told the crowd, “Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”

The anger that spurred rioters on January 6, 2021, to attack the capitol is related, it seems to me, to the same emotions spurring those Wallace supporters. It also was evident in the 2017 riots in Charlottesville, Virginia, resulting in the death of a protester.

Again and again, we have difficulty allowing the political process to play out when the process brings in changes we don’t like. That difficulty ignited falsehoods about stolen elections in 2020, leading finally to those January 6 riots.

The final test of democratic rule is allowing the other side to win.