The Storm Is Here: An American Crucible

"On the morning of January 6th, a gallows was erected on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. A little after noon, as thousands of Trump supporters marched past the structure, some paused to climb its wooden steps and take pictures of the U.S. Capitol framed within an oval noose. Up ahead, the dull thud of stun grenades could be heard, accompanied by bright flashes. Several people carried Confederate flags. Others had Tasers, baseball bats, bear spray, and truncheons. Many were equipped with flak jackets and gas masks. 'They need help!' a man shouted. 'It's us versus the cops!' No one seemed surprised by what was taking place. There was an eerie sense of inexorability, mixed with nervous hesitation. It reminded me of combat: the slightly stunned, almost bashful moment when bravado, fantasy, and training crash against reality."

In early 2020, Luke Mogelson, who had been covering the wars in the Middle East from his base in France, wrote his New Yorker editor that from his perspective the most important story of mounting conflict he could possibly cover was back home in the USA. In short order, he found himself embedded with the throng of right-wing militia groups and other protestors at the storming of the Michigan state capitol. From there, the story swept him on to Minneapolis, then to Portland, and ultimately all the way to Washington, D.C. on January 6th. His stories for the New Yorker were hailed as essential first drafts of history. They were just the tip of the iceberg. And sadly they were far from the end of the story of America's descent into open conflict.

The Storm is Here is the definitive eyewitness account of how--over the course of a year of pandemic, economic collapse, and feral hatred-stoking and conspiracy-mongering by the President and his campaign--a large segment of Americans became convinced that they needed to rise up against dark forces on the Left that were plotting to take their country away, and then did just that. Through vivid and intimate accounts of people and events on the ground, The Storm is Here builds month by month, as the fever rises, and Trump and an unhinged media seed the ground for the claim that the election was stolen, through to the final explosive climax of January 6th at the U.S. Capitol, where Mogelson was in the chambers with the howling mob. Bravely reported and beautifully written, Mogelson's book is in the tradition of some of the essential chronicles of war and unrest of our time, from Michael Herr to Jon Lee Anderson. Only this time, there's no such thing as a comfortable distance. This time, the storm is here.