Repeached!
If this was not a coup, because the poor fellows were deluded when they thought they could achieve whatever, then it follows that they deserve no jail, but treatment. Literally.
Sister Ratched, would you kindly take over from here?
If I pull a gun on you and try to shoot, but it turns out someone took out the bullets without me knowing, am I guilty of attempted murder? I couldn’t possibly have succeeded, after all: the gun didn’t have bullets.
It is entirely possible to overthrow a government by seizing the seat of government. This isn’t like your voodoo doll example: it’s something that’s happened many times in history. This specific attempt could never have succeeded, because the people involved drastically overestimated how much support they actually have among the police, military, and the population at large. If that support had actually been there - if the police had stood down, and if sympathetic uprisings had started seizing state capitols - they very well could have succeeded in keeping Trump in power. It turns out, the facts on the ground meant that situation was never going to happen - their gun didn’t have any bullets in it - but that doesn’t change the nature of what they attempted.
Which is sexual assault after all.
Those of you arguing that this isn’t a coup are… just… delusional. I can’t even fucking believe this shit. We’ve seen an obvious, escalating pattern of the president of the united states - not just some random nutjob - WITH THE SUPPORT OF MOST OF HIS PARTY - continue to attack the democratic processes in order to increase their own power and stay in power against legal procedures… from vote suppression, denial of election results, attempts to blackmail and pressure government officials to change election results, to a literal charge on the fucking capitol saying basically “follow me while we go invade the capitol to show these congressman that I’m really president!”
People came prepared with tools, restraints, weapons, climbing gear, etc. They were conducting reconaissance to map out the building. Federal law enforcement agencies were kept away from the area to make it more likely that these people were able to access, kill, and hold hostage the fucking Congress of the United States. Efforts were made to keep the national guard and police forces from putting down this insurrection. The “panic buttons” in the offices of senators were pre-emptively disabled in order to make it more likely that they would fall victim to the crowd. This was deliberate, pre-planned, and the culmination of years of increasingly blatant attempts to subvert the democratic process and obtain autocratic power.
And… it wasn’t a coup… or an attempted coup… because it failed? Because they turned left (lead away by a savvy cop) instead of right (where they’d kill and take hostage of congress)? Because… you just can’t believe that a coup would happen in America so it must not be a coup? Because it was incompetently executed and only competently executed coup attempts count?
I am fucking staggered and bewildered that there are people who are seriously arguing that this is not a coup. I know the Trumpists are out of touch with reality, but… what the fuck is wrong with the rest of you? I can only guess that you’re so desperate to cling on to your denial that America is not in incredibly deep shit, that your neighbors wouldn’t gladly fucking string you up and put your head on a pike to keep God-Emporer Trump president, that you don’t live in a shithole country where there’s so much hate and insanity that qanon is a real fucking force in culture, policy, and government that you’re trying to preserve your sense of normalcy by pretending that this wasn’t what it obviously is.
^ what he said 
Bravo!
Look, I don’t see any way I can argue against logic like this.
…
(Since I’m helpless in the face of such a well-thought-out argument, I’m going to sit by the fire with a good book instead.)
I think that’s fair. I really don’t want to believe that we are in as much shit as we are.
But, in facing reality, yeah, we are, I don’t know that we are fucked, I don’t know that there is no coming back from this, but we did just have an attempted coup, and are looking at the very real possibility of another attempt within the next week.
That’s pretty fucked up, I’m used to hearing about such things in other countries, but I never thought I’d hear it about ours. And to be entirely honest, it is specifically that attitude of “it can’t happen here”, or the current one of “it didn’t happen here” that makes it all that more likely to happen here.
OP didn’t say “period”, I think we may have an angle.
Such a stupid attempt at a coup (an attempt nonetheless!) could also be distraction. The fact that tanTrump is too dim to plan anything could hint at somebody behind him in the shadows. If there is, we will soon find out. If there isn’t yet, it might take a little longer, but somebody will fill that void.
The bad thing is that by virtue of regression toward the mean tanTrump’s successor will be more apt than he ever was at everything.
I think you guys are being naive about how little chance this coup had at succeeding at some sort of goal.
Guys, Trump lost like 1% approval rating after he commanded his cultists to launch an insurrection on the capitol. 41% of the American public would be glad to install God-Emporer Trump for life. Do you not understand this? Really? It’s probably the biggest cult in history. It’s pure insanity. They are all in lockstep ready to follow the orders of their right wing echo chamber masters. If something happened that was chaotic enough to seem like it was an opportunity to install Republican dictators for life, they’d be all for it. 41% of the US population.
You guys are acting like this is was just a futile gesture, a “panty raid” as one poster above said. But they came within yards of the entire US Congress with a violent, angry crowd and only a few bodyguards to protect Congress. They very well could have made the right move, gone in, killed half of Congress and tied up the other half. “Oh, but that doesn’t give them access to the proper electoral process so there’s no way that could possibly change government!”
Do you guys not get that… while there are a few coups that followed legal processes… most of them throw away the whole legal processes? Do you think coups can’t succeed unless they fill out all the proper paperwork and follow the proper procedures? That’s absurd. Most coups are about bypassing all of that.
Trump’s insurrection was this close to killing and/or taking Congress hostage. And if that happened, who the fuck knows what would’ve went down. We would’ve been in completely uncharted territory. AND 41% OF THE FUCKING COUNTRY WOULD HAVE BEEN ROOTING THIS ON. 41% OF THE FUCKING COUNTRY ARE IN A REPUBLICAN CULT WHERE NOTHING COULD EVER CHANGE THEIR FUCKING MINDS.
This was not a fucking high school prank. This was not some lone “citizen of the land” nutjob trying to upend the legal system. This a president and a party supported by tens of millions of Americans who’d be thrilled to have a fucking dictatorship if “their team” won it. You guys are being dangerously naive in thinking this coup attempt was feeble and helpless and could have never succeeded… all because you’re saying, basically, it can’t succeed because it’s outside the norms. You know what else is outside the norm? Every fucking thing Donald Trump, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED FUCKING STATES, and his cult of tens of millions have done in the last 4 years.
You certainly have enough information to understand what’s going on here. I think you’re just being naive and are in denial.
Indeed. For the prior few weeks Trump and his fanatics’ preference, what they’d rather have had, was that – to execute a bloodless palace autogolpe whereby they’d invoke some procedural arcana that could be gamed to enable the takeback or invalidation of swing state EVs to the point it changed the result or forced the election to the House – if only the proper officials played ball if they knew what was good for them.
As the alternative avenues kept closing, and officials refused to go along quietly, it came down to seeking to directly intimidate by threat of harm, or to physically disrupt the process to such a degree that as mentioned earlier, it could not possibly be completed and then kick it to the House.
To add to my previous post: what do you think happens if the kill half of Congress and take the other half hostage? A lot of Republicans are going to come out in support of it, join in on the coup. A lot of those guys just want to see the way the wind blows. They want to be authoritarians, but they’re not quite sure how much they can get away with, so they let Trump lead the way, and whatever seems like it works, they do too. Do you honestly believe in the decency of Republicans enough to think that they wouldn’t all join in with the cause if it appeared the coup was going to be a success?
You think that because it failed, it was always going to fail, but that is not the case. If it appeared to be an early success, a lot more people would’ve hopped on that bandwagon. They would’ve had support from the legislature, from party leaders. They would’ve had republican cultists join to reinforce them.
A lot of their fantasy is based on The Big Day where everything happens. So much qanon bullshit is based on it. The day the Trump reveals that he’s been playing 34 dimensional chess all along. The day Hillary and her Satanic Pedo Cult Democrats are all going to be brought to justice. The day we all rise up and take back our country from the communists that hate America. You see this simmering wave of hatred and delusion in your every day lives, and there are tens of millions of them. You don’t think that if the opening stages of this coup have success that it could become bigger and bolder?
We were very close to having a massive turning point where anything could happen. You guys who are downplaying this as feeble and something that could never have succeeded are ignoring history, where a little bit of chaos was a catalyst for massive, unexpected changes. If their raid had reached Congress, we might be looking at a different ball game. Republicans by and large have no moral or no sense of duty or loyalty to the rule of law in the US. You know that. You’ve seen it for 4+ years now. They’re only interested in their own power and what they can get away with. And if the coup looked like it was going to succeed, I think it’s probable that a lot of them would’ve hitched their wagon to it, and it would’ve became a much bigger movement.
Even now, after the attempted coup, all but 10 house republicans STILL VOTED AGAINST IMPEACHMENT. You don’t think these people would be happy to jump on the revolution bandwagon if it seemed like they might be able to pull it off?
Where have you been the last 4 years when Republicans have been playing at “we can’t just break all rules and laws… unless…?”
The very fucking thing they were doing in Congress that day was trying to organize a movement to reject an election to the United States that they knew was legitimate and had no basis for being rejected.
This was not futile or feeble. This was a few small changes away from creating something chaotic that none of us could predict the results of. You have seen the complete breakdown of rule of law and established norms in the last 4 years, and yet you still desperately cling to the idea that norms and the decency of your fellow conservative Americans will save us.
Yes, this exactly. If the election were held again tomorrow, I think Trump would still get just about 50% of the votes, same as the last two times.
Trump tried to overturn a election by fraud, creating fake votes for himself through threats of imprisonment in the phone call he made to the GA Sec of State, then incited to insurrection to disrupt the governmental process of certification of the vote for Biden. The result of the insurrection would have been dead congressmen on the ‘anti-trump’ side, thus emergency appointments by red states to get Trump a second term. That is pretty much a coop attempt. A failed coop.
If we don’t bar him from holding office via impeachment, we invite more abuse, send a terrible message that a president can do this, and biblically the second beast of the sea arises, still embodied in Trump.
Until the chickens come home to roost, it’s not a coop.
The chickens are coming too 
Exactly, we made it though this attempt by the skin of our teeth and due to the bravery of a small number of individuals.
It could have gone very differently.
And they are not done. They are planning more insurrections within the next week. Will we be as lucky this time?
If we don’t take what happened on the 6th seriously, then we probably won’t manage to survive the next attempts.
BTW, I’m pretty sure the panty raid comment was made sarcastically.
On this, it’s worth reposting Scalzi’s article:
And note how apt it is that he has McConnell’s photo at the head of that essay, not Trump’s.