Adam Kinzinger as he walks the streets of Washington.

Lincoln walked these streets as the country was literally tearing itself apart. He could see the unfinished Capitol dome from the White House — they kept building it throughout the Civil War, as a statement of faith that there would still be something to finish it for. Vietnam protesters flooded the Mall convinced, with real justification, that the government had rotted from the inside. Watergate. The Red Scare. The centuries of injustices that forced every civil rights march that ever moved through these avenues.

And before all of that — Teddy Roosevelt was president here. And before that, men were enslaved here, in the shadow of the same monuments we photograph and put on postcards.

Every single one of those eras had people in it who were certain — certain — that this was the end. That the republic had finally hit the wall it couldn’t climb. That the damage was too deep.

They were wrong. Not because history is inevitably kind, but because people kept showing up anyway.

This one is a bit more personal. I’m letting you into an internal battle, understanding Jan 6 and the delay of justice. It’s just a delay…

open.substack.com/pub/adamkinz...

— Adam Kinzinger (@adamkinzinger.substack.com) 2026-06-03T15:08:08.351Z