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Failed coup? A mob is not a coup
by sawjet 6y ago
Failed coup? A mob is not a coup
- bufferout 6y agodefine coup: "a sudden, violent, and illegal seizure of power from a government" Sudden: check Violent: check Illegal: check Attempt to sieze power from a government: check
- gthtjtkt 6y agoSo you think they were about to start legislating after they walked into the Capitol? How would that work exactly?
- kadoban 6y agoThey were there to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power of the government. They came with weapons, human restraints (flex cuffs), and were calling out politicians they disagree with and explicitly looking for them. The intention of several seems to have been to _at least_ take hostages if not worse. What would you call the threatening, kidnapping and possible murder of your political rivals for the express purpose of keeping your side in power? If that's not a coup I don't know what is. That they failed doesn't mean they didn't try.
- wpm 6y agoSome people would say the coup isn’t happening while the Speaker of the House is swinging from a fucking rope. It can’t be any clearer than it is now without more bloodshed and still people don’t want to believe it.
- kadoban 6y agoI think part of it isn't really in bad faith, it is just some sort of magical thinking, along the lines of: "a coup is something that happens over _there_, those places we see only on the news".
- metabagel 6y agoThey didn’t want to seize power. They wanted to prevent the peaceful transition of power.
- ashtonkem 6y agoWhich is effectively the same, given the circumstances of where power is and where it should be going next.
- joshuamorton 6y agoThe point was to prevent the certificate of Biden as the president. A coup to keep trump in power, as it were. What other reason do you think they had for storming congress?
- bufferout 6y agoWhat do you think the cable ties and side arms were for exactly? https://external-preview.redd.it/F7f2NmCrRmpXaLGMcwGn7NiaQ8fvuc9G6a7A2vmP2I0.png?auto=webp&s=2a8f439c7f65e8a3e7b6505b7cdfa47adb51a509 https://external-preview.redd.it/F7f2NmCrRmpXaLGMcwGn7NiaQ8f...
- hobofan 6y agoAnd the pipe bombs found at the RNC and DNC?
- cmurf 6y agoThat it wasn't going to succeed, doesn't mean it's not an attempted coup. It's a self-coup because they were told to go there by Trump, after Mike Pence told Trump he couldn't do what Trump asked him to do, which was to just declare Trump the winner. i.e. ignore the state ascertained Electoral votes. This is an autocratic movement. The legislature is an impediment to that. Maybe they envision a principate to give it the veneer of authenticity that an outright autocracy would not. That worked for the Roman Empire for ~250 years, people bought that it was still a Republic when it's plain to history it was ruled by an emperor during this time. Of course had it succeeded, no matter how it had, Trump would have accepted it happily. He doesn't care about the Constitution or even the veneer of legitimacy. He just wants to win. Doesn't matter how.
- vehemenz 6y agoYeah, “coup” is still a reach. No power was seized. Not even close. This isn’t 1973 Chile. You’re giving these unorganized white nationalist nobodies way more credit than they deserve. If it were a coordinated effort by Trump or the GOP instead of LARPers living out their conspiratorial fantasies, then sure.
- kadoban 6y agoThat they failed doesn't mean they didn't try. You don't think this was a coordinated effort? President Trump (and several of his allies) has been stoking this flame for _weeks_ explicitly and to the day. He gave a speech the morning of the attack, explicitly pointing them to the Capitol. He seems to have also, behind the scenes, disuaded the usual defense mechanisms that would have prevented this from being even as effictive as it was. I'd expect much more information will be coming out about that as this is investigated further. I'm not seeing how you're saying this wasn't coordinated though.
- throwaway201103 6y agoIf Trump wanted to stay in power why didn't he order the military to sieze the Congress and declare martial law? He thought a loosely organized band of civilian protestors were going to actually keep him in office?
- kadoban 6y agoBecause that very likely wouldn't have worked, and it'd more obviously and quickly have consequences for him when it failed. He thought he could at least intimidate his political enemies, and convince his allies and those on the fence to _at least_ make a bigger mess of the transfer of power.
- ashtonkem 6y agoFundamentally, because he’s not very good at this. He’s lazy and impatient, if it can’t be done with a few tweets at 4AM, he can’t do it. For his entire presidency, Trump has really been good at chaos and bad at planning. He regularly failed to do things that were either within his powers or easily doable because he just didn’t follow the process right (DACA, muslim ban), or because he couldn’t work with others (wall, relief checks), or because he just didn’t have the patience to follow through (TikTok sale). When things require organization skill, he falls apart. His two biggest moves have been shit posting on twitter, and shit posting while undermining his own ongoing negotiations. He is incapable of actually doing the work, any work. Actually doing a coup via the military requires skill and planning. There are a lot of people in the chain who can say no, or drag their feet to delay illegal orders. A smarter autocrat would’ve laid the groundwork to purge the ranks of non-faithful, done his best to bribe rank and file members, or worked to create a plausible story that required military presence in the capital. Instead he vetoed their pay bill because he was angry at Twitter, after he pardoned war criminals and called them all suckers. He is simply not a strategic thinker at all. Whipping up his rabid fans so that they plan something on his behalf in whatever fetid swamps they’ve been banished to online? Now that he can do, because it only requires some tweets that he thinks of in the moment. That he was able to get so far with such amateurish work is a sign that the republic is very, very sick. Hopefully we can fix our underlying issues before a smarter autocrat has a go at it, because if that happens we’re probably doomed.
- slowmotiony 6y agoWasn't BLM throwing molotovs and trying to overtake a federal court a few months ago, for like a week straight? I didn't see a single media outlet call that a coup. Weird.
- function_seven 6y agoBecause that wouldn't be a coup. The word means something pretty specific. Seizing control of the government. Not a courthouse, not a police station, or any other individual agency. The entire government. In this case, that was the goal. Keep the losing presidential candidate in power.
- slowmotiony 6y agoSudden: check Violent: check Illegal: check Attempt to sieze power from a government: check
- function_seven 6y agoAttempt to seize the government: No check.
- slowmotiony 6y agoI see the goalpost has been moved then, only took one post. Okay.
- function_seven 6y agoSo what may be confusing is the term. The full term is coup d'état It specifically refers to the overthrow of a government. Trashing a single courthouse comes nowhere close to that. The goal is power. Taking power from your political enemy and securing it for yourself. The word coup by itself has a broader definition, but is usually used as a compliment. Such as "Heather just closed a $30mm deal with Acme Corp. Her entire sales team scored a coup with that sales pitch" But when used in the context of gun-toting insurrectionists? "Coup" is shorthand for the full phrase. Coup d'état.
- metabagel 6y agoThey brought zip ties with them, presumably to hold lawmakers hostage. Their stated purpose was to keep Donald Trump in office. That would be a coup. It may not have been the brightest plan though, I’ll grant you that.
- ashtonkem 6y agoOnly because it’s a failed coup. Don’t take their failure as a lack of their seriousness, we might not be so lucky next time.
- convery 6y agoJust like this comment is a failed attempt at writing a novel. Ascribing intent to the actions of a third-party is silly, especially when it comes to controversial topics or when referring to the actions of a small fraction (it's estimated that 500K people were there to peacefully hold up signs).
- ashtonkem 6y agoThere is no real need to ascribe intent to that group, because they are very excited to tell you what they intende (much to the glee of prosecutors I’m sure). Half the time getting them to shut up about it is the real challenge. If you’re not aware that they were there to intimidate and/or force congress to reinstall trump for another (illegal) term, that’s on you. Yes, a lot of them wanted to go protest. But it’s a clear straw man to say “not everyone there was in on the coup attempt”. Sure, a bunch of idiots wanted to stand around and hold up dumb signs because they got conned into the Q nonsense, but a lot of them also wanted to push their way in and lynch Mike Pence in order to get what they wanted. They even built gallows, which is not something you do if you’re just there to protest. Again, this was all planned out in the open. The told each other to bring zip ties and maps of the capital building. They talked about blowing the building up with a Ryder van like the Turner Diaries (someone did plant pipe bombs), and discussed how they were going to kill congress members to get their way. They even printed “MAGA Civil War” shirts. And even though they behaved like an unruly mob, they did manage to overrun the capital and came within feet of grabbing members of congress; the lady who was shot had breached the final barrier to where members of congress were holed up. What was clearly missing here was not intent or will, but coordination. And that sure is scary. (As an aside, plenty of historical coups have been accomplished by coordinating a mob just enough to take over the legislature by force. Ask the French). And that’s before we get into the really awkward questions, like “why did the pentagon repeatedly deny Larry Hogan authorization to send in the guard after the building had been overrun?” Why was the initial protest organized by republican AGs? Why wasn’t the capital police prepared for a protest that had been announced by the president himself? Perhaps some of that was more opportunistic, trump doesn’t really seem like the planning type to me, but it sure is awkward if your basic premise is that this was just a protest gone awry.
- mlazos 6y agoA mob storming the seat of government power is. I’m actually not sure how this could be presented more clearly. Should politicians have been killed for you to consider it a coup?