It’s been a year since the Capitol riot, when Donald Trump supporters, whipped into a frenzy, ransacked governmental buildings, led directly to several deaths, and caused millions to worry about the future of American democracy. And in that entire year very little has been done to put American democracy on firmer footing.

As when we talk about any crime, from a neighborhood shooting to a terrorist attack, trying to understand the various, swirling factors that lead people to make bad decisions doesn’t justify their actions. But it is telling how few mainstream commentators seem interested in what drew Trump’s base toward extremism and how that trend can be undercut, as opposed to just condemned.

The Trumpers were hardly the most economically squeezed people in the country. But it’s significant, for example, as the Washington Post reported shortly after the incident, that nearly two-thirds of those arrested for taking part in the riot had histories of financial troubles, from bankruptcies and unpaid taxes to evictions and foreclosures. It’s significant that, as University of Chicago researchers found, the vast, vast majority of those arrested were unaffiliated with right-wing militias, were older, and told authorities and journalists they were simply following their president. It’s significant that, as even the liberal news outlets most bullish on the coup narrative reported, they believed in a host of unsubstantiated conspiracy theories before they got to Trump’s election fraud lie, and that they genuinely believed the nonsense spouted by their president, in whom they invested an overwhelmingly loyalty.