This Thursday at 8 p.m., Americans will be able to watch a special committee of the U.S. House of Representatives investigate the details of the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol. 

How many will actually tune in is a question of historic importance.

The “January 6 committee’’ is formally called the U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol. Its job is to investigate the Who, What, Why and How of the attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob and communicate those facts to the American people. 

For the last 11 months the committee has conducted more than 1,000 interviews, including Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner. Predictably, Trump loyalists and other Republicans have refused subpoenas to testify before the committee. This includes former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and several other advisors. But the committee has Meadows’ text messages that will lay bare his communication with Trump during the riot, where police officers were beaten and politicians lives were put at risk.

It is important that we remember the facts about this committee and their charge. At first, the panel was a bi-partisan group consisting of an equal number of Democrats and Republicans. But predictably, at the last minute the Republicans changed their mind, leaving House Speaker Nancy Pelosi with no choice but to go it alone. 

In an act of courageous patriotism, two Republicans, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, agreed to serve their country on the panel. Cheney, a staunch conservative and daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, acts as co-chair and has grown increasingly alarmed at the committee’s findings. For her service she has been ejected from the House Republican caucus and faces a primary challenge in her Wyoming re-election campaign. And chillingly, Cheney’s opponent is one of the rioters, who carried a walkie-talkie on the Capitol grounds to help coordinate the attack.

These hearings are likely to show that Jan. 6 was even worse than we thought. What looked at first like a riot by a bunch of crazies egged on by the chicken hawk Trump was really a conspiracy to overturn a legitimate presidential election. It is now clear that the committee has discovered a coup plot, organized by Trump enablers. A plot that, the committee clearly believes, came very close to succeeding. 

Cheney and the committee are holding back on their pre-hearing interviews, saving the most explosive details for the hearings. 

 “… people must pay attention,’’ Cheney said this week. “People must watch and they must understand how easily our democratic system can unravel if we don’t defend it.”

The hearings raise many important questions: can the message and the facts break through the flood of everyday news in a meaningful way? Will the hearings be drowned out by coordinated counter-programing from Fox News and other outlets? Will we forget about the coup attempt, just like the school shootings, clean water in Flint, MI, or the homeless? Failure to heed the lessons learned from the riot weaken our democracy and sap our credibility in the world. Can we pay attention long enough to do something about it?  

Over the course of American history, Congress has held many hearings like this, each one resulting in a major impact for the better. 

The Senate held hearings to investigate the Watergate scandal in 1973. The investigation uncovered what we originally thought was a botched burglary to be instead a broad conspiracy by the Nixon White House to sabotage political opponents, use the CIA and the IRS to spy on citizens and obstruct justice by covering up their crimes. The hearings led to a report of 1,250 pages detailing the Nixon team’s crimes, jail terms for several presidential aides and the resignation of the president just months before impeachment. 

In 1987, the House and Senate held special hearings to investigate the Reagan administration’s illegal sale of weapons to Iran in violation of federal law. For 41 days, TV cameras captured dramatic testimony, leading to the eventual indictments of Reagan’s defense secretary and national security advisor. (They were later pardoned.)

This week’s hearings raise the question of whether a similar impact can still be achieved. The Watergate and Iran-Contra hearings took place in a very different country. Back then there was no internet, smartphones, or email. The media consisted of three TV networks anchored by stodgy, old men who read the news in serious fashion. We trusted them. We never even considered they might be lying. There was no Tucker Carlson. No cable TV talking heads or digital-only journalism sites scrapping and clawing for every shred of information to drive traffic and ad sales. 

I remember the Senate Watergate hearings the summer of my 14th year. My mother decided to paint the kitchen while we watched the PBS broadcast. I’ll never forget Republican Senator Lowell Weicker questioning Nixon’s people and beginning many questions with - “Do you mean to tell me…” Weicker and the committee were shocked over and over by the criminal depths Nixon’s henchmen descended to destroy their opponents.  

The Nixon people planned to firebomb the Brookings Institution then pull up in a borrowed fire truck in order to break into the place and steal documents before the police arrived. They traveled around the country using disguises, delivering bags of cash. The lead conspirator even volunteered to be assassinated on a Washington, DC street corner to protect the conspiracy. 

The difference between Nixon’s misdeeds and Trump’s is that Nixon tried to cover up his criminality. Trump brags about it, urging rioters to take their false belief about a stolen election to the Capitol. Once there, they broke through police barricades, injuring many Capitol Police officers and erected a gallows for Vice President Mike Pence. We now know that Pence was the target of the attackers. For it was Pence who presided over the counting of the presidential ballots as required by the Constitution.

Trump’s goal was to intimidate Pence into declaring a delay that would allow the replacement of ballots with others from pro-Trump electors in key swing states. The effort failed. But it was a very close call, with Pence hiding on a loading dock in the back of the Capitol, a waiting Secret Service car ready to whisk him to safety. 

But, in a shocking display of character, Pence refused to go, telling his protection detail - “I am not getting in that car.’’ Pence knew if he fled to safety, the ballots might not be counted and the election would be further delayed. A delayed counting might have cemented the coup. The fabric of our democracy would have been ripped in two if not for the character of a Vice-President who to this day supports Conversion Therapy for gay people. That’s how close we came. Let that sink in. 

Will the message of this select committee get through to the public so we can act to protect our democracy? Will we come to understand the brutal truth of how close we came to a coup? Or will our free-for-all, ratings obsessed media ecosystem obscure the truth of what really happened? 

“We are at a time of testing,’’ Cheney said this week. “We are absolutely at a moment where we have to make a decision about whether we are going to put our love of this country above partisanship. And to me there is no gray area in that question.’’

This is the question being asked of the American people. A healthy democracy depends on the answer.