Five years ago, this was expected to be a day that would live in infamy. On January 7, 2021, I called it an insurrection. Since then, Trump has called it a “day of love.” Certain of the Senators and Representatives who condemned the insurrection at the time have since pretended it never happened to appease Trump. Trump has pardoned those charged and convicted for their actions that day.

Trump has fired the federal agents and prosecutors who did their jobs by investigating and prosecuting those involved. The special counsel, Jack Smith, dismissed the indictment against Trump and has himself become the target of a House investigation. The law requiring a plaque to honor the police involved to be permanently installed on the western front of the Capitol has been ignored and no one knows what became of the plaque.

Unbeknownst to most sane people, there is a fulsome conspiracy ecosystem built around the January 6th insurrection.

But nearly a year after Mr. Trump’s sweeping proclamation asserted that he had cleared the way for “a process of national reconciliation,” many recipients of his clemency remain consumed by conspiracy theories, angry at the Trump administration for not validating their insistence that the Capitol attack was a deep-state setup and haunted by problems from both before and after the riot.

Many of those pardoned have gone on to commit a variety of heinous new crimes, and many suffer from mental illness, which explains much about their decision to go to the Capital to “save democracy” by “fighting like hell” in the belief that the election was “rigged” and stolen from Trump.

In the five years since the Capitol was stormed, no new facts have emerged to undermine the basic findings of congressional and Justice Department investigators that many of the rioters acted in the misguided belief, pushed relentlessly by Mr. Trump, that he had been robbed of victory in 2020 — and that in attacking the Capitol they not only injured about 140 police officers but also struck at a cornerstone of American democracy: the peaceful transfer of presidential power.

Even so, Mr. Trump has long maintained that the rioters endured horrible, even illegal, mistreatment during their prosecutions.

While the J6 defendants persist in demands for reparations for their “horrible, even illegal, mistreatment” that was, at worst, no different than the treatment afforded any criminal defendant, they have yet to get a plaque of their own extolling their virtue in trying to save the nation from the deep state and serving the will of the manliest of presidents, Donald Trump.

While this disillusionment is not universal, some so-called J6ers have even begun to ask why, after nearly a year in power, Mr. Trump’s law enforcement agencies have yet to provide any proof of the conspiracy theory they promoted to help him reclaim the presidency: that deep-state agents lured Trump supporters into storming the Capitol to derail the MAGA movement and justify political reprisals.

What J6ers rarely seem to acknowledge is the possibility that Mr. Trump’s government has failed to reveal the hidden truth about Jan. 6 because there is no hidden truth, no deep-state conspiracy, and therefore no legal reason to bring further charges related to the riot.

Fives years after, has the day that shall live in infamy morphed into the day patriots sought to save the nation from whatever demons roamed around their fertile imaginations? Have the J6 defendants been absolved of responsibility because they believed what their president told them, that it was their duty to fight against their imaginary deep state and prevent the theft of a presidency because the loser was too humiliated to accept that he was a failure? Will the plaque honoring the police remain in a warehouse collecting dust as the law, along with others, is ignored and forgotten?

And then there were the bombs, the last piece of the conspiracy puzzle for the delusionally challenged.

Who planted pipe bombs outside the Republican and Democratic Party headquarters on the night before Jan. 6?

The first answer was put forward in early November, when Steve Baker, one of the rioters, published an article in the right-wing news outlet The Blaze, saying he had found a “forensic match” between the hooded suspect caught on video prowling Capitol Hill that night and a former Capitol Police officer who had fought the mob on Jan. 6 and then went to work for the C.I.A.

A couple of weeks later, Mr. Bongino, Mr. Patel and Ms. Bondi stood side by side at the Justice Department to announce their own break in the case — one that contradicted Mr. Baker’s. Federal agents, they said, had just arrested Brian Cole Jr., a Virginia man who would later tell the F.B.I. he had planted the bombs because he wanted to “speak up” for those who believed the 2020 election had been stolen.

Did this magically not happen? To the J6 truthers, this was just another cog in the conspiracy gear, now having taken in their promoters, Bongino, Patel and Bondi. Did January 6th, 2021, not happen? Was it a federal conspiracy to induce patriots to engage in insurrection against their will to taint Trump with their actions? Will history remember this as patriots trying to save their nation or demented fools who tried to prevent the peaceful transfer of power at the behest of a liar who was too weak to admit he lost?

*Tuesday Talk rules apply.