The Capitol Attack Relitigated

[Madner Kami]

It was a coup. An attempted, but failed coup. Badly organized, semi-ad hoc and improvised, but it was a coup. If some politician who actually was capable of organizing things was at the helm, instead of the half-assing, going-with-the-flow moron that is Trump, this being a coup wouldn't be something we argue about, but a fait acompli.
The inaction of police, the collusion of certain political figures and the unwillingness to legally prosecute is something that can very much come back and bite the US-society in the arse in a decade. The Beer-Hall-Putsch and Hitler and his cohorts getting barely more than a slap on the wrists is a very accurate comparison. You're dancing on a razor's edge over there and denying it, isn't going to help you, but lay the foundations of your doom. The next contender might actually be seriously pursuing his goals.

Principiis obsta. Sero medicina parata, cum mala per longas convaluere moras. - Ovid

Mind the beginnings. It is too late for medicine, if you let the evils fester for long. - Ovid

[Frustration]

What I learned from those four years is that the bulk of our democracy's safety measures and checks and balances were nothing more than gentleman's agreements that could be ignored if you didn't care about the consequences.

Did you miss the bits where Congress pretty much refused to do anything Trump wanted? Or where the Supreme Court didn't judge things in his favor?

The only real problem was that "Executive Orders" have been vastly expanded in recent years when all the branches of government have been dominated by people with the same ideological biases and see nothing wrong with giving themselves the power to do as they pleased.

Even then, the system forced some rudiments of restraint on them; the problem is the erosion of the restraints, not their simple abolishment.

[Frustration]

If the Supreme Court sides with Trump and hands him the election, the military is at a crossroads, they can either stand down and let the country be stolen or uphold the election at the cost of making it very clear that when push comes to shove the military gets to decide who is and isn't president.

That has always been the case, except that the military have been indoctrinated that they're not supposed to use their power to decide that - I've been told that, to a degree, rivalry between the branches of the military has been encouraged to increase the likelihood that they can serve on a check on each other, it making it psychologically a little bit easier to fire upon one's own countrymen.

The police and the military could seize power, and the people without advanced weapons could do nothing about it. But you'd have to have a certain fraction of the people with guns deciding to seize power, or they'd be shut down by the remainder of people with guns.

[Draco Dracul]

If the Supreme Court sides with Trump and hands him the election, the military is at a crossroads, they can either stand down and let the country be stolen or uphold the election at the cost of making it very clear that when push comes to shove the military gets to decide who is and isn't president.

That has always been the case, except that the military have been indoctrinated that they're not supposed to use their power to decide that - I've been told that, to a degree, rivalry between the branches of the military has been encouraged to increase the likelihood that they can serve on a check on each other, it making it psychologically a little bit easier to fire upon one's own countrymen.

And there's a huge difference in the country before and after a military coup/counter coup because it makes that power clearer.

The police and the military could seize power, and the people without advanced weapons could do nothing about it. But you'd have to have a certain fraction of the people with guns deciding to seize power, or they'd be shut down by the remainder of people with guns.

That's not strictly true, wide scale unrest could defeat the US military by wreaking the power to bring advanced weapons to bare. The military's own estimates is that they could only occupy 3-5 major American cities.

What I learned from those four years is that the bulk of our democracy's safety measures and checks and balances were nothing more than gentleman's agreements that could be ignored if you didn't care about the consequences.

Did you miss the bits where Congress pretty much refused to do anything Trump wanted?

I mean that's why his supporters were carrying out a coup by trying to murder most of Congress.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Wait, was murder really on the menu?

[Draco Dracul]

Wait, was murder really on the menu?

At bare minimum there were people planning to create a hostage situation as they brought flex cuffs. At least one of those individuals made it to one of the congressional chamber, albeit after it had already been evacuated.

Additionally there were people explicitly calling for the death of Mike Pence.

[clearspira]

Wait, was murder really on the menu?

At bare minimum there were people planning to create a hostage situation as they brought flex cuffs. At least one of those individuals made it to one of the congressional chamber, albeit after it had already been evacuated.

Additionally there were people explicitly calling for the death of Mike Pence.

Calling for it and doing it are two very different things.

[Draco Dracul]

Wait, was murder really on the menu?

At bare minimum there were people planning to create a hostage situation as they brought flex cuffs. At least one of those individuals made it to one of the congressional chamber, albeit after it had already been evacuated.

Additionally there were people explicitly calling for the death of Mike Pence.

Calling for it and doing it are two very different things.

Right, but they were calling for it while storming the Capitol and beating security.

[Frustration]

That's a riot, not a coup. Even if they had succeeded in killing members of Congress, they were in absolutely no position to influence who replaced their victims.

[Draco Dracul]

That's a riot, not a coup. Even if they had succeeded in killing members of Congress, they were in absolutely no position to influence who replaced their victims.

And that doesn't really matter because they were doing it on behalf of sitting president and defacto leader of the Republican party Donald Trump.