The U.S. may indeed be falling apart. This has been said before, with good reason. But as the Jan. 6 committee was scheduled to hold another hearing Wednesday — and the seditious conspiracy trial of the Oath Keepers, who attacked the Capitol that day begins — the American world seems particularly shaky. The economist Paul Krugman recently described the U.S. federal government as “basically an insurance company with an army.” It’s not a bad summary of what government does. But Trump’s ragged army of violent, conspiracy-minded, undereducated and “freedom-obsessed” white men hates that government. It claims to want nothing to...