I’m going to differ with you on something here; this is too simple a description.
There were two groups of people at the Capitol that participated in the insurrection: the organized, active insurrectionists and the casual moronic insurrectionist. Most of the former prolly skedaddled as soon as it was evident they weren’t going to take a congressperson hostage/prisoner. IMO it was of mostly the latter that we’ve seen photos and videos.
I mean, what really happens there?
If, even under duress, congress certifies Trump as the next president, what are our options at that point?
The constitution doesn’t say anything about it, it just says that at that time and place the next president is chosen.
If the House of Representatives had been a majority Republican, it is quite possible that they may have ended up certifying Trump. That that violates the will of the voters doesn’t matter, Trump would be our next president.
So, if they killed enough Democrats, or held them at gunpoint for their vote, and congress certified Trump as the next president, then that would be the law.
How that plays out afterwards is a giant mess, but it starts with Trump and his supporters having the advantage. I don’t know if “constitutional crisis” quite encapsulates how fucked things would be.
If that had happened, that would have been the end of the United States of America.
It would be the end of democracy in the USA. Tyrants may very well continue using the US’s mythologized democracy to lend their dictatorship legitimacy - even the Roman Emperors paid lip service to the Republic for hundreds of years.
Likely yes.
It’s hard to say what happens next. Maybe there’s some way of salvaging things, but I have no idea.
For most of us, I don’t know. I think I would still go to work every day, still pay my bills. Hard to say how much the average person’s life would change under such a governmental paradigm shift.
AKA cannon fodder.
If they rounded up Democratic senators and non-cooperative Republicans and hung them? That would mean civil war. I can’t imagine my Great State of California taking something like that sitting down, even if insurrectionists managed to take the capitol in Sacramento.
It would all come down to the army and national guard, and I doubt either organization would fall entirely on one side. You’d have entire units desert and pledge themselves to a government-in-exile, while other units stay loyal.
The best we could hope for is that the nukes don’t get brought out…
The plan was to corrupt the electors process, whilst people might well point to precedents and that certification has historically a matter of going through the motions, just a matter of ceremony. I disagree with those folk.
That is definately not what the Republicans thought, they were extremely happy to attempt a hijack, destroy precedent and test the rules through to breaking point - its pretty much what they have done all the way through, the law and history mean nothing whatsoever to them if those things get in the way of retaining power - the challenge to the electors on itself was an attempted coup, the demand by Trump for 11000 votes to be ‘found’ was just short of a coup but was an illegal attempt to retain power, the gerrymandering, the vote supression, the challenges to vote count were all attempts to retain power and those were absolutely at the borderline of legality.
Having tried and failed at the borderline of legality, and then tried to overturn centuries of history, convention and precedent they Trumpist legal teams decided that the words in the law said something different to what everyone else thinks they mean - that was the basis to try corrupt the elector system.
Reiterating the violence and the point made so eruiteoy by @senorbeef what happens in most coups os that you have a committed activist level who represent a fairly small but significant part of the population, a large middle whose committment either way is not that great - its mainly just ot keep on goinbg as they ever did and a committed activist level on the other side deicated to preventing the coup, takeover, or whatever you want to call is.
Once you have some sort of momentum, you hope to draw in more support and discourage opposition, even small groupings can gain support in this way, but here you have a batshit crazy backing for the current incumbent, and its worth remembering that Trump is the current office holder, has plenty of power and resources at his disposal that he can deploy - even if it goes badly, if Trump had decided to call out executive power because of a state of emergency, who was going to stop him? Especially when the only other part of the legislature has been wiped out? Who had the power to stop him ?
All this in the face of Trumps significant popular support, who is going to stop him and how are they to do this?
You just do not know what can happen when the dice are rolled, many a coup has come down to a razors edge balance - I think there is still a residue of American exceptionalism here, I really do, becuase it can happen in the US, we have seen it demonstrated and truly and honestly I don’t think we really know just how close it was, it does not take much to swing the balance, the trick is in knowing exactly what.
It suits the narrative to imagine this could never have succeeded, that the Trumpists were too stupid, too disorganised, that somehow something would have prevented it, that it can’t happen here.
Here is the news USA, its happened all over the world in civilised nations and less than civilised, its started off with far fewer resources and succeeded, its happened with more violence, its happend with more violence - it suits Democrats to think it could not - because it is comforting to deny how close it was, it suits Republicans because they lost and want to minimise any personal blame and sanctions upon them.
It suits the general population to claim it could not happen, in the name of national unity and also for personal comfort, thinking that it was close is just too horrific to contemplate.
It was close, it was that horrific, Republican enablers have still not taken responsbility, Democrats dare not even imagine the full extent, they need to they need to think about extremely long prison terms, they do need to think about how to destroy those who sympathised, supported, enabled, planned, funded - they need to do this because for sure if it had gone the other way, you can bet that the Trumpist supporters would certainly do that to those who oppose them.
I cannot believe there’s even an argument here. Yes, it was coup. It failed. The idiots staging the coup–allergic as they are to logic, evidence, and facts–actually thought that what they would do would work. The rational among the rest of us Americans, of course, were fully aware that their plan, such as it was, would not work. The key point, though, is the idiots thought it would.
God, just fuck them!
Democrat members of congress, such as “The Squad”, have been living with that same fear – and probably a more credible fear – for at least the last few years.
THEY ARE THE FUCKERS WHO KNOWINGLY CREATED THIS ENVIRONMENT!!!
They send America’s sons and daughters into foreign wars and have the goddamn nerve to say “Support the troops” while not having the bravery to stand up to thugs that they personally emboldened, and probably accepted money from for all we know.
The Republican party needs to go to fucking hell. Just drive that goddamn party into extinction. It cannot be saved.
This is exactly the very thing that a coup is intended to do: disregard, disrupt, and ultimately destroy the usual procedures involved in the legal and constitutional transfer of power between regimes.
By that very example, this was absolutely 100% a coup attempt. I can certainly accept the argument that it was a moron’s coup attempt, and one that was, fortunately for us, almost destined to fail from the start, but it was absolutely an attempt to alter the democratic norms that have functioned in this country since its founding.
This also points out that this is an ongoing coup attempt.
If there are lawmakers who are being extorted for their vote, and they are voting under duress, then that pretty much fits the definition of a coup as well.
I could and did, but no longer. On the 6th, it just looked like an out of control riot.
But as more information has come in, it is revealed that this was more planned and organized. There were goals, there were objectives. If those had been met, then we would be dealing with a completely different situation here.
We came closer than we thought, and much closer than we’d like to think, of this coup succeeding. We got lucky, and we have a few brave people to thank for their actions, but we were very close to watching a broadcast of tied up congress people. How it played out from there, I don’t know, but it would not have been good.
In choppers?
"He mooed we must fight, escape or we’ll die
Cows gathered around, cause the steaks were so high…
Bad cow pun"
I could be wrong, but I tend to believe that even had they ‘succeeded’, they would have eventually been overtaken. I think that the outrage would have compelled someone in the White House to act, and I think that some of the leaders in the military and law enforcement would have felt compelled to speak up. But there’s no question that they came very close to creating a disastrous spectacle on a scale many times worse than what resulted.
I agree with you that this is not over. Not by a long shot. You don’t just undo years of damage in a week or two, even with a transition of power and post-presidency impeachment conviction. Biden’s DOJ will be extremely busy, at a time when the economy is getting really bad and the pandemic’s worst effects are about to be felt.
And what do you want to bet, these GOP cowards probably blame Democrats and Silicon Valley for stirring up the divisiveness that now has them so terrified?
This is EXACTLY what I am reading from some Trumpers in my orbit. “Oh, you people are so divisive! You need to stop this right now! You are harming the country!”
Assholes.
I have no doubt that they’ve received death threats from right wing nut jobs; they’ve probably received death threats from left wing nut jobs, and nut jobs all up and down the political spectrum, too. Unfortunately, it’s part of their job to deal with loonies.
I don’t buy that this is why they’re afraid to vote against Trump, though; they’re afraid of political death and social death more than they are death itself. They’re afraid of getting shunned from their Republican societies back home. It’s like couples who live in gated communities: the greatest fear they have is the fear of somehow losing their wealth and becoming - gasp - regular people. They are nothing without their entitlement, and they know it.
Here’s some evidence:
They’re afraid of getting shunned, kicked out of their political ‘gated community’ and being forced to live among Democrats and working class independents. That is what they really mean when they say they’re getting “death threats,” with the understanding that they probably are getting real death threats - but that’s not what they’re afraid of.
These fragile white assholes are nothing without their victim complex.
God almighty!
It completely fits the psychological abuse paradigm @Ann_Hedonia is so aptly describing in the 7 Jan 2021 thread.