There are perhaps as many ways to look at the rampage at the Capitol as there were participants, but one thing is indisputable: It was a planned attempt for one branch of federal government to take over another.

By persisting in the stolen-election lie, Lee Zeldin took the side of the pro-Trump armed attackers and betrayed United States democracy.

Like many Americans, I have struggled to come to any kind of understanding of the violence and destruction taken to Washington just over a week ago. But one thing is clear to me as a late-coming student of slavery in the Colonial and early Republic North: Mob violence is no aberration in our history.