President Donald Trump waits to enter the East Room of the White House for an event on Oct. 6, 2017.

It was about 1 in the morning when my wife, more of a night owl than I am, came to bed on Jan. 21.

“Are you awake?” she asked.

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“I am now,” I grunted.

“He pardoned all of them.”

I was still in that halfway state where there’s hope of falling back asleep if you just close your eyes and don’t think.

“Okay,” I said, and sank back into the pillow.

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As I write this, it’s an hour and a half later. I just bolted out of bed a few minutes ago after realizing that blissful slumber wasn’t in store for me any more tonight. I’d been in and out of sleep, trying to grapple with all that the pardons and commutations of some 1,600 rioters, many of them violent insurrectionists who beat police in their attempt to overturn a free and fair election, means for this country.

I made some coffee, sat at the computer and considered starting this column with, “Where do you begin writing an obituary for a nation?”

One month ago, I wrote a column justifying why, as a member of the Times Union’s editorial board, I agreed that it would be wrong for us to call on the Electoral College to reject Donald Trump, something we did do in 2016.

Yes, we know now he’s even more of an abhorrent character than he appeared then, with a conviction on 34 felonies, a civil court finding that he defamed a woman he’d sexually assaulted — raped,

© Times Union