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> The very foundation of your democracy has been eroded. That would be a crappy democracy if it could be eroded by a bunch of idiots taking an unauthorized Whi

by smsm42 6y ago

> The very foundation of your democracy has been eroded. That would be a crappy democracy if it could be eroded by a bunch of idiots taking an unauthorized Whitehouse tour. Fortunately, absolutely nothing happened to the democracy and it proceeded on its course. What could actually erode the democracy is nation giving up on free speech. That'd be a real sign of nation in severe distress. > I don't listen to your news Maybe you should, then you'd know nothing happened to the democracy.

stolen_biscuit 6y ago
>> I don't listen to your news >Maybe you should, then you'd know nothing happened to the democracy. >>> because of TV picture and a bunch of talking heads on TV and Twitter that told them there was an "insurrection" Which is it?
slg 6y ago
I can't believe this needs to be said, but the fact it failed doesn't mean the danger wasn't real. Some members of the mob were actively looking to kill the people who were 2nd and 3rd in line for the presidency. Let's not pretend that there was zero danger to democracy.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  > I can't believe this needs to be said, but the fact it failed doesn't mean the danger wasn't real. The danger is unreal not because it failed, but because it was obviously going to fail. We're talking about a bunch of delusional LARPers. If some foreign intelligence unit tries and fails to overthrow your country's government, that's insurrection. If it's the doofus who stole the podium or the guy with face paint and a horned fur hat, not so much. Note that the factual crimes are already plenty bad--they don't need to be exaggerated. > Some members of the mob were actively looking to kill the people who were 2nd and 3rd in line for the presidency There were murderers and arsonists at BLM riots as well; that doesn't impugn the legitimate protesters. Similarly, these few actual insurrectionists don't make the MAGA trespassers, rioters, even murderers into insurrectionists. > Let's not pretend that there was zero danger to democracy. There is a danger to our democracy in that a sitting president undermining democracy by spreading lies about election fraud. More generally, the media and tech companies are deliberately cultivating division and mistrust among the American people. These are real, credible dangers to democracy. The MAGA LARPers were not a credible threat to our democracy.
  - slg 6y ago
    >The danger is unreal not because it failed, but because it was obviously going to fail. We're talking about a bunch of delusional LARPers. If some foreign intelligence unit tries and fails to overthrow your country's government, that's insurrection. If it's the doofus who stole the podium or the guy with face paint and a horned fur hat, not so much. What are you basing the obviousness of the failure on? The mob was seemingly a few dozen feet away from numerous politicians with the only thigs between them being a barricaded door and seemingly less than a half dozen security people. >There were murderers and arsonists at BLM riots as well; that doesn't impugn the legitimate protesters. Similarly, these few actual insurrectionists don't make the MAGA trespassers, rioters, even murderers into insurrectionists. How many murders were committed by the millions of BLM protester in the dozens of cities they protested in over the months they protested? Because these thousands of people in DC were able to murder one and get multiple of their own killed? The violence rate of the two isn't comparable. >There is a danger to our democracy in that a sitting president undermining democracy by spreading lies about election fraud. More generally, the media and tech companies are deliberately cultivating division and mistrust among the American people. These are real, credible dangers to democracy. The MAGA LARPers were not a credible threat to our democracy. What happened on 1/6 was a direct result of those first two. This is part of the danger to democracy manifesting itself.
  - NicoJuicy 6y ago
    > The danger is unreal not because it failed, but because it was obviously going to fail. Being 1 door away from where they were hiding seems a pretty close call imo
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > The danger is unreal not because it failed, but because it was obviously going to fail They came very close to having members in the hands of the mob; I think you very much overestimate what was required for this to succeed. Even if the mob itself was disavowed, simply getting a presiding officer more that would be more sympathetic to the President’s interests int he circumstances (which probably would have taken at least one more removal than “Hang Mike Pence”, but may not have been impractical) would potentially have provided a sufficient pretext for a process in which the Congress would have ended up declaring Trump the winner. But even if it was “obviously going to fail”, that doesn’t make it not-dangerous (even if the intended violence didn’t have the intended political effects, it still would have been horrific) or not-insurrection. > If some foreign intelligence unit tries and fails to overthrow your country’s government, that’s insurrection. No, its a (covert) invasion. > If it’s the doofus who stole the podium or the guy with face paint and a horned fur hat, not so much. How about if it is the retired Air Force Lt. Col. with zip ties who was directing action, including efforts at intelligence gathering on members, in the Senate chamber? Just because the unusual outfits get disproportionate media attention doesn’t mean they were the dominant factor in the insurrection.
- DudeInBasement 6y ago
  Do you remember the shooter who shoot congressmen at a congressal ball game? The difference, he had a gun these people didn't
  - sixothree 6y ago
    You really think these people weren't armed? edit: to be clear, there were a number of people pictured and arrested carrying firearms.
  - abakker 6y ago
    Someone brought pipe bombs that he made himself...
    - tomp 6y ago
      To the Capitol? Or are you spewing fake news?
      - abakker 6y ago
        I mean, I’m going off of this: https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/seeking-info/suspected-pipe-bombs-in-washington-dc https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/seeking-info/suspected-pipe-bombs... https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-joe-biden-inaugurations-capitol-siege-8828a6a920198d0ea1ee0c73a49d8847 https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-joe-biden-inaugurati... https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.al.com/news/birmingham/2021/01/lonnie-coffman-alabama-man-arrested-in-dc-ordered-held-without-bond.html%3foutputType=amp https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.al.com/news/birmingham/2021...
        tomp 6y ago
        Fake news, then. Pipe bombs and RNC/DNC headquarters, not the Capitol. Typical motte and bailey. “They bombed the Capitol building” except they actually didn’t.
        abakker 6y ago
- imgabe 6y ago
  > Some members of the mob were actively looking to kill the people who were 2nd and 3rd in line for the presidency. Let's not pretend that there was zero danger to democracy. Do you realize that numerous times throughout history people have successfully killed the actual president and it didn't end democracy? What these people did was a serious crime and it should absolutely be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, but no it was never going to destroy the country or end democracy. This is hyperbole people are using to grab and consolidate power. Democracy is not a single person that can be killed and taken over. It's all of us acting in concert to uphold those values. It doesn't end by this person or that person being killed, it ends by all of us collectively agreeing to give up the values that make it work. That's the real threat here.
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    Your description of democracy is on the nose, but that's exactly why I think it's reasonable to be concerned. One of the critical values that makes democracy work is the peaceful transition of power, and if there'd been just a bit more violence, it would be impossible to maintain even a polite fiction that this transition was peaceful.
    - smichel17 6y ago
      We've still survived worse. The civil war comes to mind (although in some ways, current tensions are an extension of that conflict).
      - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
        "Survived" is just a very low bar. I'm not scared of the US becoming Mad Max - I'm scared of something like the Troubles, where democratic institutions still exist but struggle to maintain the peace against large, powerful groups who don't consider them legitimate.
  - vharuck 6y ago
    >Do you realize that numerous times throughout history people have successfully killed the actual president and it didn't end democracy? I'm no historian, so was there ever a time the killing was instigated by a sitting politician who then was not punished? (Yes, the Senate has yet to decide, but chances are they won't vote for removal or banning from office). Because politicians trying to have their political opponents harmed or killed is basically all one needs to have fake democracy.
- roland35 6y ago
  I think you should read this blog (popular on HN), he explains it in a historical context better than I could. Basically this type of thing happened a lot in ancient democracies and even then it often seemed silly and harmless, until it wasn't. https://acoup.blog/2021/01/15/miscellanea-insurrections-ancient-and-modern-and-also-meet-the-academicats/ https://acoup.blog/2021/01/15/miscellanea-insurrections-anci...
- haram_masala 6y ago
  In 1983 a group of people actually did bomb the Senate, which seems much more severe than just a bunch of rednecks roaming the halls and yelling stuff. Democracy endured just fine.
newacct583 6y ago
> unauthorized Whitehouse tour. This is awful, and I can't imagine the thought process that leads to this kind of rationalization. MANY members of the crowd are known to have been armed. Five people are dead. Congress had to be evacuated. Had an escape route not existed (many nations don't have cold war fortifications in their legislative buildings!) we could very easily have been looking at a hostage situation. This is how real governments fall, in the real world. And even failed coups are often repeated successfully. The Beer Hall Putch was about the same size, equally unsuccessful, and yet...
- ganoushoreilly 6y ago
  We've have many instances of armed protestors / rioters over the past year. Many where figures of authority were targeted. Where the people burning thing in the hallway of the Portland Mayors house, just being nice or was their goal to burn it down? Were the individuals inciting riots with ACAB and other slogans, followed by aggressive assaults of police and small businesses just innocent aggrevators or was their intention to "burn it all down" as they proclaimed over and over. This issue isn't that this is a dispicable situation, it's that the media is treating it as if it's a bunch of fringe right wing people (and lumping all trump voters in the list) when the same far left extremists were and are still using teh same tactics. Lives have been threatened for the past nine months plus.. and yet that was ok because it fell in line with what one group wanted? It's all insanity on both sides and until people own up to it on the left as well, the country will keep being pushed further. The demonization of anyone not toeing the line of the extreme left these days is CREATING the thing they fear. How many lives were lost last year, innocent lives? How many injuries? All due to the same actions and tactics.
  - newacct583 6y ago
    Congress was sacked while the legislators were in session with the VP. BLM burned down a Wendy's. You really don't see why people would react differently to those events?
    - ganoushoreilly 6y ago
sdenton4 6y ago
First: Perhaps you'd be willing to agree that this was an explicit attempt at a soft coup: The explicit goal was to disrupt congressional proceedings as part of a plan to overturn election results. Second: As others have observed, we got extremely lucky that the rioters didn't actually come in contact with any congress-people or the vice president. What do you think would have happened if, say the crowd has come in contact with AOC, for example? What would have happened if enough Dems were killed or incapacitated to change the balance of votes on certifying the election? The hundred-odd house republicans certainly made a big point of not changing their certification votes after the riots. Third: When someone fires a gun at your head and the bullet misses, will you make excuses on behalf of the shooter? After all, if they were /really/ a killer, they wouldn't have missed, right? The bullet missed, you continued on your day, nothing should be done...
- DataWorker 6y ago
  It certainly looks much different from what we would historically label coup attempt. Usually a coup has to at least be theoretically possible. It also would seem to require some level coordination. I have yet to see evidence of that. I really do believe that some of the protestors might have been there to peacefully protest, not overthrow the American government. Ymmv
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    Try a few more times, you might get lucky.
- zanmat0 6y ago
  >The explicit goal was to disrupt congressional proceedings as part of a plan to overturn election results. And then what? Once the mob was cleared out, they would have resumed. There's a chasm between disrupting proceedings and actually taking over a country. The latter also almost always involved having control of the military by the way.
  - XorNot 6y ago
    If Donald Trump wasn't a pathetic coward, then the US was somewhere between 1 and 15 minutes away from a civil war on January 6. It might've been a short civil war, but if Trump had gone out and marched with the protesters like they thought he would and told them to stay in the Capitol building, you would've immediately created a situation where government business is suspended and the commander in chief is at direct odds with the military's constitutional obligations. There was, and has been, a soft coup ongoing since that day, since the president at the time refused to issue any direction to the military and situation only started to be resolved when Pence took defacto command of the executive without invoking the 25th amendment. That process has been ongoing since then.
pfdietz 6y ago
In this case, free speech was given up on with the 14th amendment, in 1868.
- h_anna_h 6y ago
  how so?
  - pfdietz 6y ago
    The 14th amendment, section 3, penalizes providing "aid or comfort" to an insurrection. This can include just supporting the insurrection by speech (which is what they executed Tokyo Rose for, for providing aid or comfort to a foreign enemy.) Most specifically, just continuing to propagate the "election was stolen" meme would qualify.
geofft 6y ago
> What could actually erode the democracy is nation giving up on free speech. Can you expand on this, concretely? Most democracies in existence - including thr US itself! - emerged from jurisdictions that did not have strong protections on free speech. I would also bet that most current democracies do not have US-strength protections on free speech, either. (Is the UK a democracy? Is Germany? Is Spain?)
CA0DA 6y ago
Thank you!
mdoms 6y ago
> That would be a crappy democracy if it could be eroded by a bunch of idiots taking an unauthorized Whitehouse tour That's not what happened at all but regardless yes, you're right. It's a very crappy democracy you have over there. Americans would do well to take a look around at better nations.
ashtonkem 6y ago
> That would be a crappy democracy if it could be eroded by a bunch of idiots taking an unauthorized Whitehouse tour. A crappy tour of Congress during a key transition of power, where they intended to kill the VP and whoever had displeased them. After action reports are indicating that they got within 60s and 90 feet of the VP, and we're not even done hearing the story of that day. Coup attempts are always humorous until they actually work. Do not mistake us getting lucky this time with the narrative that nothing could have happened.
- joering2 6y ago
  Interesting though from a friend of mine who teaches US Constitution: if number two and three (Pence and Pelosi) were killed, the full and complete power lays in number one - the President. By the time consitutional lawyers and politicans were to be done arguying it otherwise thru regular channles - we would have a full blown Monarchy installed in this country, and completely lawfully should I add. I think majority of people have absolutely no idea how close we got to overturning US political system. And I dont believe Trump or his family were not on it, but it will take years to get to the bottom of it.
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    The president cannot install a full blown monarchy under the powers vested by him in the constitution. Neither can congress. The issue though is in the case where Trump is installed in a second term after members of congress are kidnapped, extorted, or even executed, then the question of what is and is not constitutional becomes moot. The application of force in the political process has a tendency to degrade all guard rails, leaving behind nothing but “largest army diplomacy”, or mob in this case. To whit: “stop quoting laws to those of us with swords”.

by smsm42 6y ago

stolen_biscuit 6y ago

>> I don't listen to your news >Maybe you should, then you'd know nothing happened to the democracy. >>> because of TV picture and a bunch of talking heads on TV and Twitter that told them there was an "insurrection" Which is it?

slg 6y ago

I can't believe this needs to be said, but the fact it failed doesn't mean the danger wasn't real. Some members of the mob were actively looking to kill the people who were 2nd and 3rd in line for the presidency. Let's not pretend that there was zero danger to democracy.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
throwaway894345 6y ago
> I can't believe this needs to be said, but the fact it failed doesn't mean the danger wasn't real. The danger is unreal not because it failed, but because it was obviously going to fail. We're talking about a bunch of delusional LARPers. If some foreign intelligence unit tries and fails to overthrow your country's government, that's insurrection. If it's the doofus who stole the podium or the guy with face paint and a horned fur hat, not so much. Note that the factual crimes are already plenty bad--they don't need to be exaggerated. > Some members of the mob were actively looking to kill the people who were 2nd and 3rd in line for the presidency There were murderers and arsonists at BLM riots as well; that doesn't impugn the legitimate protesters. Similarly, these few actual insurrectionists don't make the MAGA trespassers, rioters, even murderers into insurrectionists. > Let's not pretend that there was zero danger to democracy. There is a danger to our democracy in that a sitting president undermining democracy by spreading lies about election fraud. More generally, the media and tech companies are deliberately cultivating division and mistrust among the American people. These are real, credible dangers to democracy. The MAGA LARPers were not a credible threat to our democracy.
- slg 6y ago
  >The danger is unreal not because it failed, but because it was obviously going to fail. We're talking about a bunch of delusional LARPers. If some foreign intelligence unit tries and fails to overthrow your country's government, that's insurrection. If it's the doofus who stole the podium or the guy with face paint and a horned fur hat, not so much. What are you basing the obviousness of the failure on? The mob was seemingly a few dozen feet away from numerous politicians with the only thigs between them being a barricaded door and seemingly less than a half dozen security people. >There were murderers and arsonists at BLM riots as well; that doesn't impugn the legitimate protesters. Similarly, these few actual insurrectionists don't make the MAGA trespassers, rioters, even murderers into insurrectionists. How many murders were committed by the millions of BLM protester in the dozens of cities they protested in over the months they protested? Because these thousands of people in DC were able to murder one and get multiple of their own killed? The violence rate of the two isn't comparable. >There is a danger to our democracy in that a sitting president undermining democracy by spreading lies about election fraud. More generally, the media and tech companies are deliberately cultivating division and mistrust among the American people. These are real, credible dangers to democracy. The MAGA LARPers were not a credible threat to our democracy. What happened on 1/6 was a direct result of those first two. This is part of the danger to democracy manifesting itself.
- NicoJuicy 6y ago
  > The danger is unreal not because it failed, but because it was obviously going to fail. Being 1 door away from where they were hiding seems a pretty close call imo
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > The danger is unreal not because it failed, but because it was obviously going to fail They came very close to having members in the hands of the mob; I think you very much overestimate what was required for this to succeed. Even if the mob itself was disavowed, simply getting a presiding officer more that would be more sympathetic to the President’s interests int he circumstances (which probably would have taken at least one more removal than “Hang Mike Pence”, but may not have been impractical) would potentially have provided a sufficient pretext for a process in which the Congress would have ended up declaring Trump the winner. But even if it was “obviously going to fail”, that doesn’t make it not-dangerous (even if the intended violence didn’t have the intended political effects, it still would have been horrific) or not-insurrection. > If some foreign intelligence unit tries and fails to overthrow your country’s government, that’s insurrection. No, its a (covert) invasion. > If it’s the doofus who stole the podium or the guy with face paint and a horned fur hat, not so much. How about if it is the retired Air Force Lt. Col. with zip ties who was directing action, including efforts at intelligence gathering on members, in the Senate chamber? Just because the unusual outfits get disproportionate media attention doesn’t mean they were the dominant factor in the insurrection.
DudeInBasement 6y ago
Do you remember the shooter who shoot congressmen at a congressal ball game? The difference, he had a gun these people didn't
- sixothree 6y ago
  You really think these people weren't armed? edit: to be clear, there were a number of people pictured and arrested carrying firearms.
- abakker 6y ago
  Someone brought pipe bombs that he made himself...
  - tomp 6y ago
    To the Capitol? Or are you spewing fake news?
    - abakker 6y ago
      I mean, I’m going off of this: https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/seeking-info/suspected-pipe-bombs-in-washington-dc https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/seeking-info/suspected-pipe-bombs... https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-joe-biden-inaugurations-capitol-siege-8828a6a920198d0ea1ee0c73a49d8847 https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-joe-biden-inaugurati... https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.al.com/news/birmingham/2021/01/lonnie-coffman-alabama-man-arrested-in-dc-ordered-held-without-bond.html%3foutputType=amp https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.al.com/news/birmingham/2021...
      - tomp 6y ago
        Fake news, then. Pipe bombs and RNC/DNC headquarters, not the Capitol. Typical motte and bailey. “They bombed the Capitol building” except they actually didn’t.
        abakker 6y ago
imgabe 6y ago
> Some members of the mob were actively looking to kill the people who were 2nd and 3rd in line for the presidency. Let's not pretend that there was zero danger to democracy. Do you realize that numerous times throughout history people have successfully killed the actual president and it didn't end democracy? What these people did was a serious crime and it should absolutely be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, but no it was never going to destroy the country or end democracy. This is hyperbole people are using to grab and consolidate power. Democracy is not a single person that can be killed and taken over. It's all of us acting in concert to uphold those values. It doesn't end by this person or that person being killed, it ends by all of us collectively agreeing to give up the values that make it work. That's the real threat here.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  Your description of democracy is on the nose, but that's exactly why I think it's reasonable to be concerned. One of the critical values that makes democracy work is the peaceful transition of power, and if there'd been just a bit more violence, it would be impossible to maintain even a polite fiction that this transition was peaceful.
  - smichel17 6y ago
    We've still survived worse. The civil war comes to mind (although in some ways, current tensions are an extension of that conflict).
    - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
      "Survived" is just a very low bar. I'm not scared of the US becoming Mad Max - I'm scared of something like the Troubles, where democratic institutions still exist but struggle to maintain the peace against large, powerful groups who don't consider them legitimate.
- vharuck 6y ago
  >Do you realize that numerous times throughout history people have successfully killed the actual president and it didn't end democracy? I'm no historian, so was there ever a time the killing was instigated by a sitting politician who then was not punished? (Yes, the Senate has yet to decide, but chances are they won't vote for removal or banning from office). Because politicians trying to have their political opponents harmed or killed is basically all one needs to have fake democracy.
roland35 6y ago
I think you should read this blog (popular on HN), he explains it in a historical context better than I could. Basically this type of thing happened a lot in ancient democracies and even then it often seemed silly and harmless, until it wasn't. https://acoup.blog/2021/01/15/miscellanea-insurrections-ancient-and-modern-and-also-meet-the-academicats/ https://acoup.blog/2021/01/15/miscellanea-insurrections-anci...
haram_masala 6y ago
In 1983 a group of people actually did bomb the Senate, which seems much more severe than just a bunch of rednecks roaming the halls and yelling stuff. Democracy endured just fine.

newacct583 6y ago

> unauthorized Whitehouse tour. This is awful, and I can't imagine the thought process that leads to this kind of rationalization. MANY members of the crowd are known to have been armed. Five people are dead. Congress had to be evacuated. Had an escape route not existed (many nations don't have cold war fortifications in their legislative buildings!) we could very easily have been looking at a hostage situation. This is how real governments fall, in the real world. And even failed coups are often repeated successfully. The Beer Hall Putch was about the same size, equally unsuccessful, and yet...

ganoushoreilly 6y ago
We've have many instances of armed protestors / rioters over the past year. Many where figures of authority were targeted. Where the people burning thing in the hallway of the Portland Mayors house, just being nice or was their goal to burn it down? Were the individuals inciting riots with ACAB and other slogans, followed by aggressive assaults of police and small businesses just innocent aggrevators or was their intention to "burn it all down" as they proclaimed over and over. This issue isn't that this is a dispicable situation, it's that the media is treating it as if it's a bunch of fringe right wing people (and lumping all trump voters in the list) when the same far left extremists were and are still using teh same tactics. Lives have been threatened for the past nine months plus.. and yet that was ok because it fell in line with what one group wanted? It's all insanity on both sides and until people own up to it on the left as well, the country will keep being pushed further. The demonization of anyone not toeing the line of the extreme left these days is CREATING the thing they fear. How many lives were lost last year, innocent lives? How many injuries? All due to the same actions and tactics.
- newacct583 6y ago
  Congress was sacked while the legislators were in session with the VP. BLM burned down a Wendy's. You really don't see why people would react differently to those events?
  - ganoushoreilly 6y ago

sdenton4 6y ago

First: Perhaps you'd be willing to agree that this was an explicit attempt at a soft coup: The explicit goal was to disrupt congressional proceedings as part of a plan to overturn election results. Second: As others have observed, we got extremely lucky that the rioters didn't actually come in contact with any congress-people or the vice president. What do you think would have happened if, say the crowd has come in contact with AOC, for example? What would have happened if enough Dems were killed or incapacitated to change the balance of votes on certifying the election? The hundred-odd house republicans certainly made a big point of not changing their certification votes after the riots. Third: When someone fires a gun at your head and the bullet misses, will you make excuses on behalf of the shooter? After all, if they were /really/ a killer, they wouldn't have missed, right? The bullet missed, you continued on your day, nothing should be done...

DataWorker 6y ago
It certainly looks much different from what we would historically label coup attempt. Usually a coup has to at least be theoretically possible. It also would seem to require some level coordination. I have yet to see evidence of that. I really do believe that some of the protestors might have been there to peacefully protest, not overthrow the American government. Ymmv
- jacquesm 6y ago
  Try a few more times, you might get lucky.
zanmat0 6y ago
>The explicit goal was to disrupt congressional proceedings as part of a plan to overturn election results. And then what? Once the mob was cleared out, they would have resumed. There's a chasm between disrupting proceedings and actually taking over a country. The latter also almost always involved having control of the military by the way.
- XorNot 6y ago
  If Donald Trump wasn't a pathetic coward, then the US was somewhere between 1 and 15 minutes away from a civil war on January 6. It might've been a short civil war, but if Trump had gone out and marched with the protesters like they thought he would and told them to stay in the Capitol building, you would've immediately created a situation where government business is suspended and the commander in chief is at direct odds with the military's constitutional obligations. There was, and has been, a soft coup ongoing since that day, since the president at the time refused to issue any direction to the military and situation only started to be resolved when Pence took defacto command of the executive without invoking the 25th amendment. That process has been ongoing since then.

pfdietz 6y ago

In this case, free speech was given up on with the 14th amendment, in 1868.

h_anna_h 6y ago
how so?
- pfdietz 6y ago
  The 14th amendment, section 3, penalizes providing "aid or comfort" to an insurrection. This can include just supporting the insurrection by speech (which is what they executed Tokyo Rose for, for providing aid or comfort to a foreign enemy.) Most specifically, just continuing to propagate the "election was stolen" meme would qualify.

geofft 6y ago

> What could actually erode the democracy is nation giving up on free speech. Can you expand on this, concretely? Most democracies in existence - including thr US itself! - emerged from jurisdictions that did not have strong protections on free speech. I would also bet that most current democracies do not have US-strength protections on free speech, either. (Is the UK a democracy? Is Germany? Is Spain?)

CA0DA 6y ago

Thank you!

mdoms 6y ago

> That would be a crappy democracy if it could be eroded by a bunch of idiots taking an unauthorized Whitehouse tour That's not what happened at all but regardless yes, you're right. It's a very crappy democracy you have over there. Americans would do well to take a look around at better nations.

ashtonkem 6y ago

> That would be a crappy democracy if it could be eroded by a bunch of idiots taking an unauthorized Whitehouse tour. A crappy tour of Congress during a key transition of power, where they intended to kill the VP and whoever had displeased them. After action reports are indicating that they got within 60s and 90 feet of the VP, and we're not even done hearing the story of that day. Coup attempts are always humorous until they actually work. Do not mistake us getting lucky this time with the narrative that nothing could have happened.

joering2 6y ago
Interesting though from a friend of mine who teaches US Constitution: if number two and three (Pence and Pelosi) were killed, the full and complete power lays in number one - the President. By the time consitutional lawyers and politicans were to be done arguying it otherwise thru regular channles - we would have a full blown Monarchy installed in this country, and completely lawfully should I add. I think majority of people have absolutely no idea how close we got to overturning US political system. And I dont believe Trump or his family were not on it, but it will take years to get to the bottom of it.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  The president cannot install a full blown monarchy under the powers vested by him in the constitution. Neither can congress. The issue though is in the case where Trump is installed in a second term after members of congress are kidnapped, extorted, or even executed, then the question of what is and is not constitutional becomes moot. The application of force in the political process has a tendency to degrade all guard rails, leaving behind nothing but “largest army diplomacy”, or mob in this case. To whit: “stop quoting laws to those of us with swords”.