It wasn’t a coup

[Kimstu]

@Buck_Godot

The problem is as I think someone said above (unless it was another thread) that there weren’t just one set of invaders. There certainly was a group that had specific targets in mind, planned their attack and came prepared. But there was also a larger number who were caught up in the moment saw an opportunity to make a scene and stick it to the Libs.

I just did a bit of musing in a concurrent thread about the ongoing radicalization of US conservatism, if you’ll forgive my quoting myself:

@Kimstu

In my young day, the mindset of conservatism was heavily enmeshed with what we still occasionally called “squareness”. Conservatives self-identified as supporting “family values”, religious traditionalism, quasi-authoritarian patriotism, conventional careers, etc. What conservative parents feared (at least, according to the comparatively few people with conservative family backgrounds I knew in college) was that their kids would be lured away by the appeal of the “lifestyle” of “hedonistic”, sex-having, substance-consuming, art-class-taking, swear-word-using, hair-growing liberals.

Then came Rambo, and the rise of the “antisocial conservative” hero figure in general. The conservative self-image shifted (not entirely, but substantially) toward the “badass lone wolf” model, the beleaguered and disillusioned (but extremely cool, unlike his “square” predecessor) anti-hero type, who has to fight to survive in a hostile environment. (Mad Max is another avatar of this transition.)

So we segue from Moral Majority to militias and then MAGA. A significant chunk of conservatism is radicalized and aggressive, perceiving itself now as the “outsider” rather than the dominant “establishment” (despite the fact that people who identify as conservative, especially conservative white men, still have hugely disproportionate power in our society).