If the marked difference in behaviors of cops, depending on the identity of the protestors, over the last year does not convince you, I don't know what will.
Because that would have caused a bloodpath? Even the CCP didn't do that in Hong Kong, they let the protesters invade the local legislature and that was that, what are they going to do in there, anyway?
Right. The Capitol building, while historically important isn't magical. Effective coups typically begin by taking control over TV broadcasting facilities.
Maybe the next effective version will be hacking Facebook and Twitter, simultaneously...
Good question; I just looked at OAN and there is nothing, just an earlier article about Trump's speech and one from early this morning "Citizens Gather in Washington, D.C..."
Maybe not shot...but maybe tear gased? Rubber bullets? Remember when peaceful citizens protested the unlawful killing of a black man and the police happily used all of the above?
How is this a coup attempt? A handful of random, largely unarmed citizens can't just take control of the government by storming one building. The federal government is massive, not to mention all the individual state governments. A coup would have to be led by actual politicians or military leaders in positions of power.
Even Republican representatives are calling it a coup attempt. Storming a legislative building to prevent the legitimate succession of power and threatening the physical bodies of legislators is the definition of a coup.
Everyone identified and involved in this should be arrested, tried, and if convicted executed.
Calling for the max punishment of people directly is inciting violence.
> Treason and insurrection are serious matters.
They are, but this is no different than people claiming Snowden should be “tried, convicted, and executed”. It’s just lipstick on calling for his murder because there is no actual presumption of innocence.
Declaring things "treason and insurrection" and then proceeding to summary execution sounds more like a tyrannical dictatorship than a free Republic. The protesters shouldn't be doing this, but that doesn't mean our police forces should start slaughtering our citizens.
> The parent comment literally says "and why have the attackers not been shot?"
No, it doesn't, nor does anything upthread back to the one that was originally mischaracterized as calling for murder, which says: “Everyone identified and involved in this should be arrested, tried, and if convicted executed.”
> It seems like gaslighting to say "Why haven't the protesters been shot" and then pretend like what was meant was "After they've been legally tried and convicted."
It also seems like gaslighting to invent a quote that was never posted, and then accuse someone of gaslighting based on that quote.
That’s not the parent comment of the one pointing to “the parent comment”, nor even the parent comment of the comment four steps upthread from your “the parent comment” reference accusing its parent of advocating murder, nor is it from the same poster as either of those.
I don't think we can have a productive conversation. I told you what I meant, quoted what I was responding to, and linked it. You seem to be insistent on intentionally misunderstanding or splitting hairs so you can invent some way my comment was wrong ("It wasn't a parent comment! It was a parent of a parent...").
Gaslighting and intentionally misunderstanding strike me as trolling behaviors.
> I told you what I meant, quoted what I was responding to, and linked it.
And its not a post by the person who you were accusing, but by someone else, far upthread, whose position the person you are attacking never endorsed.
If you want to criticize the person who advocated summary execution for doing so, fine.
But its ludicrous to attack someone who explicitly advocated arrest, trial and punishment based on criminal conviction for “gaslighting” for merely saying in a later comment that they were advocating exactly what they advocated earlier in the discussion, and not what someone else had advocated.
The penalty for trespassing in the Capitol is not and never has been death. Calling trespass and vandalism treason and sedition and saying that these minor crimes merit the death penalty is egregiously immoral and dishonest.
"Summary execution" refers, not only, to police shooting protesters on sight, but also to sham trials with extreme and unlawful sentences.
I am criticizing the people who called for summary execution. It's immoral and unlawful.
> "Summary execution" refers, not only, to police shooting protesters on sight, but also to sham trials with extreme and unlawful sentences.
There is an extreme version of a sham trial that could possibly qualify, but they were calling for a normal trial. They were very clearly not calling for summary execution with the phrase "arrested, tried, and if convicted"
It doesn't matter if the punishment fits the crime either. If I say convicted jaywalkers should get the death penalty, I am not calling for summary execution. It doesn't matter if I accuse them of the wrong crime either.
I’d just like to clarify something seeing as your reading comprehension is atrocious. I asked why they weren’t shot. I never advocated for it I am merely pointing out the inconsistency in response. There is no doubt in my mind that if these were BLM protestors they would have be fired on with rubber bullets and possibly even live rounds. That is all. I purposefully reserved my own opinion on whether this is desirable or not as it is irrelevant to the topic at hand.
> The penalty for trespassing in the Capitol is not and never has been death.
“Trespassing in the Capitol” is hardly the only offense committed here, and while it may be the fact that none of them are capital offenses (I don’t actually think they are), its not unreasonable for someone who has a layman's familiarity with the general principles of criminal law in the US but not the specific mess that is the federal criminal code to that felony murder rule along with participation as a principal in an inherently violent group felony which did, in fact, result in deaths would make the principals guilty of first-degree murder.
> Calling trespass and vandalism treason and sedition and saying that these minor crimes merit the death penalty is egregiously immoral and dishonest.
The acts clearly aren’t treason, but they equally clearly are seditious conspiracy (18 USC Sec. 2384; in relevant part: “If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire […] by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.”)
So, no, its neither “egregiously immoral” nor “dishonest” to call them sedition.
Even if one ignores that they are a seditious conspiracy (which one should not), the federal crimes are not minor, and include, among others:
Assaulting or impeding federal officers (18 USC Sec. 111)
Conspiracy to impede or injure an officer of the United States (18 USC Sec. 372: “If two or more persons in any State, Territory, Possession, or District conspire to prevent, by force, intimidation, or threat, any person from accepting or holding any office, trust, or place of confidence under the United States, or from discharging any duties thereof, or to induce by like means any officer of the United States to leave the place, where his duties as an officer are required to be performed, or to injure him in his person or property on account of his lawful discharge of the duties of his office, or while engaged in the lawful discharge thereof, or to injure his property so as to molest, interrupt, hinder, or impede him in the discharge of his official duties, each of such persons shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six years, or both.”)
Theft of federal property (18 USC Sec. 641)
Interstate travel for purposes of riot (18 USC Sec. 2101)
Intrusion on buildings or grounds restricted because of the presence of Secret Service protected persons (18 USC 1752, in relevant part: “(a)Whoever—
(1) knowingly enters or remains in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority to do so; [or] (2) knowingly, and with intent to impede or disrupt the orderly conduct of Government business or official functions, engages in disorderly or disruptive conduct in, or within such proximity to, any restricted building or grounds when, or so that, such conduct, in fact, impedes or disrupts the orderly conduct of Government business or official functions; […] or attempts or conspires to do so, shall be punished as provided in subsection (b). […] (c) In this section—
(1)the term “restricted buildings or grounds” means any posted, cordoned off, or otherwise restricted area—
[…]
(B)of a building or grounds where the President or other person protected by the Secret Service is or will be temporarily visiting”)
It's clearly illegal and immoral for the police to shoot political protesters for trespassing. It's equally immoral to try, convict, and execute political protesters who are trespassing for sedition or treason. Killing people because you don't like their politics, or because you're upset at their political protest is wrong and immoral.
Could you elaborate on what, specifically, POTUS asked the protestors to do that qualifies this as a coup? Protesting alone isn't enough to qualify as a coup in my book, even if some protestors disrupted congress. Every large protest these days has bad actors that break stuff and loot and disrupt (recent BLM ones come to mind).
At the end, he literally calls for an unruly mob of armed insurrectionists to march down Penn Ave to the Capitol. Sure, he never used the words "break down the doors" or anything like that but what did he think was going to happen? He's been using dog whistles that hint at this for a month and here we are. Particularly given the armed stand-off at the Michigan statehouse earlier this year.
> So we’re going to, we’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue, I love Pennsylvania Avenue, and we’re going to the Capitol ... But we’re going to try and give our Republicans ... the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.
That's it? No calls to illegally seize power, nothing. Just to march down a road and show support to a subset of politicians in the hope that they do technically legal things that are helpful to his cause.
and on Twitter:
> I am asking for everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful. No violence! Remember, WE are the Party of Law & Order – respect the Law and our great men and women in Blue. Thank you!
If this really constitutes a "coup", it's the worst, weakest coup I've ever seen.
A poorly organized coup attempt is still a coup attempt. You don't get much sympathy from the judge and jury if your attempted murder is poorly thought out and executed.
> How is a mob storming the legislature at the direction of a politician not a coup attempt?
Especially when the specific goal is to use threats of violence to induce officials to overturn the election in which the inciting politician was defeated.
This is an act of terrorism meant to effect an auto-coup.
You mean like the outgoing president, who tacitly encouraged this, or the congresspeople who support the "stop the steal" movement? There absolutely are politicians and people in positions of power supporting this. A failed coup it may be, but it need to be successful to have been an attempt.
The event taking place in Congress, which the protesters have successfully stopped, was the formal declaration of a new President. Preventing the peaceful transfer of power is a coup, even if we expect it won't last long.
Nobody serious is under any illusion that Biden will not assume the Presidency. In a way, I think this kind of rhetoric empowers these kinds of protests and inspires people into thinking these actions might actually work.
In reality, the long term impact of these actions is only going to hurt Republicans. As per The Economist [1], in 2000 the election was decided by only ~600 votes in Florida but still only 36% of Gore supporters felt the election was fraudulent. Only 23% of Clinton voters felt the same in 2016. Yet now, with an election decided by margins an order of magnitude larger than in 2016 and three orders of magnitude larger than in 2000 a staggering 88% of Trump supporters surveyed said they believed the election was fraudulent. This kind of brazen hypocrisy, and now coupled by the actions today, are going to stick with the Republican party for a long time. Most of the Republicans I know are aghast. I'm sure the set of Republicans I talk to are not representative (mostly college educated professionals), and that they'll alter how they communicate with an outwardly liberal person like me (deliberately or instinctively). But I think the Republican party is going to recognize Trump as a catastrophe that is leaving a deep scar in the party.
Speaking as a relatively conservative person, I would love "The Party" to tell Trump to stuff it, as I would have for the past 4 years. The reality is, if you allow me to make a comparison, in the UK they had a similar situation in the Labor party with a leader chosen by the membership that was hated by "The Party". "The Party" went and told the leader to stuff it and eventually got rid of him. In the meantime they're on year 10 or 11 of continuous Tory rule, with at least another 3 ahead.
It's really nice for left wing types to talk about Republicans doing the right thing and going to all out war with Trump for the health of the democracy, I want him gone too. But the Realpolitik for Republicans on that one is a bunch of self sacrifice while the Democrats enjoy their endless summer. I don't really blame them for taking the path they did, even though I abjectly hate it.
Support for Trump was understandable in 2016 when it was unclear how he would actually behave in the Presidency. Most Republicans I know saw it as a faustian bargian: have a Republican wacko in the White House or a Democrat. But I really don't see this persisting in 2020. I would not be surprised if Republicans employ ranked choice voting for their primary, or increase the number of superdelegates or otherwise take steps to avoid one primary candidate succeeding through appealing to a minority of Republican primary voters. We're already seeing Republicans like Romney distinguishing himself through opposition to Trump.
Ultimately who knows - Trump might actually live up to his promise to run in 2024. But I am dubious that Trumpism will be anything but an aberration in the party. He managed to lose as an incumbent. That's a substantial failure, and one I think Republicans will remember.
I agree, unless the GOP leadership already has been filled with his true believers (I don't know, I don't pay good enough attention), they're going to go the Democrat route with a lot more institutional control to prevent a Trump type from winning again. At the end of the day, the last thing any party machine wants is to be marginalized by a single member, especially an entryist like Trump.
I agree we should take them seriously for what they are: a group of agitators that aren't going to actually effect any change. No amount of protest or agitation among these groups is going to alter the outcome of the 2020 election. The main harm they're doing is to the reputation of the Republican party itself. The notion that there is any possibility of overturning the election is counterfactual. Legitimate avenues of disputing the election have been explored and exhausted. Biden is already working with a transition team. All important institutions like the military, judiciary, and others recognize Biden as the 46th President.
I agree, we need to take these events seriously. And the ones talking about a coup aren't taking them seriously. The staggeringly high rate of belief in a fraudulent election, and agitators like the ones we're seeing today are very serious indicators in their own right. Resorting to embellishment and hyperbole ultimately diminishes is not being serious.
Are they now controlling the military? Have they taken control of the media and silenced their critics? Have they rounded up in a sudden sweep all those in government who might oppose them? Are they pushing out prepared messages about how this is being done for the benefit of the people? Have they actually done anything involving taking control and establishing themselves as the legitimate authority, deposing the existing government?
If this is a coup, it's the shittest coup ever, being done by the least competent coup conspirators I've ever seen.
One does wonder if there is any kind of endgame strategy here. Are they going to occupy the Capitol building until Jan 20 so they can claim that Biden isn't president because the vote didn't happen?
This seems a bit spur of the moment. Also, didn't President Trump say he was going to lead them to the Capitol building in his speech? Where is he?
But is it? It's a bunch of people with little idea how their own government works walking around and holding up flags. They're not actually deposing anyone, they're not taking control of anything. You don't suddenly start running the country by just walking into the big government meeting room and disrupting things. That's not a coup; I see no seizing of the reins of power here.
well i mean it's pretty common knowledge backed by many videos of cop vehicles being used in prodboys marches rallies ect, cops using unreasonable force against BLM, and almost none when its right wing protests, unlike the election where there is zero evidence.
