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The rioters came fairly close to getting to the senators. Suppose the mob found Nancy Pelosi? I think it is probable she would have been killed. That doesn’t mean they control the us government. But it’s non trivial.
Didn't the BLM rioters also come close to Trump? Why was that different?
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Realistically what would have happened is many rioters en masse would have been killed by security forces which would have become a big political issue.
I think if rioters were killed trying to breach the senator room it would be a lot less of a political issue, with them clearly being portrayed as villains even by republicans.
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Wow... so you're saying our democracy could be overthrown if you, A) disrupt Congress and B) cause a day's worth of delays. Amazing stability of our government that.
Kind of, yes. The people voted democratically to elect Joe Biden as President in November. The Constitution and laws say that he becomes President Elect on Jan 6. That's the law. People vote -> President elect on Jan 6, President on Jan 20. What happened on Jan 6 was that the transition of power was, for a number of hours, prevented through violent means. Thank God two things happened on Jan 6: (1) Mike Pence refused…
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I didn't say that at all. However, taking control of the government is exactly how coups are executed, please look into it if you haven't.
Yes coups require explicit support of the military and/or populace. They had neither.
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Yes... some people died, but it wasn't what the media made it to be. Two protesters died of heart attacks, one died of an overdose, and one died of being shot by a cop. One died of a stroke and was widely misreported of being hit in the head with a fire extinguisher when that didn't actually happen, and four cops later committed suicide. This is all according to FactCheck.org. Was it great? Absolutely not - but it wa…
What do you think would have happened if things went a little differently and the mob got to Nancy Pelosi? They were very close to doing so.
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Funny how you think this is a political theater but you do not acknowledge the anger stroking speeches from Trump and appearances of Republican senators on Fox news claiming widespread election fraud and forcing Pence and congress in not certifying election as not a serious matter.
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The rioters came fairly close to getting to the senators. Suppose the mob found Nancy Pelosi? I think it is probable she would have been killed. That doesn’t mean they control the us government. But it’s non trivial.
If that happened, I think the most likely outcome is that there'd be more Ashli Babbits
After reddit shut down /r/TheDonald, the "pedes" migrated to thedonald dot win (which I think has since been shuttered and moved elsewhere). With all the claims being made about a stolen election, I was watching that site with morbid fascination in December and early January, including the planning for the 6th specifically (I assume it's still in the Wayback Machine). The talk ranged from vague protest, to a quasi-Occupy strategy of refusing to leave until results are overturned, to explicit calls to violence and far-right fantasies ("1776 solutions to 1984 problems", "day of the rope", etc).
And the whole time, I assumed: obviously this is on the radar of the FBI and the "IC". These idiots are out of their depth: they don't even know how to use encryption to coordinate their attempted coup, and they're gonna walk right into a regiment of Feds on the capitol steps.
Luckily Trump is fundamentally a coward, and Pence has some shred of integrity (or just sense), and the participants failed to galvanize a response from the more mainstream Trumpers. But if you want to talk about an "inadequate response": the gross incompetence of our bloated national security apparatus failing to do the only thing that justifies their existence really takes the cake; and I can't help but think all the Congressional hearings and hand-wringing and crocodile tears is a theatrical distraction from that institutional failure.
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Well, then, it would have been a massacre, but democracy still wouldn't have died. We have a chain of command that has been clearly defined - President, then Vice President, then Speaker of the House, then all of the Secretaries in a specific order, and so on. Unless they managed to get the Army, or the Nuclear Codes, or something greater than just controlling a building, they would have needed to kill the President,…
You keep framing this as either democracy dies or it’s a nonissue. Personally I think a mob massacre of political leaders is bad on its own. Ymmv.
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I didn't say that at all. However, taking control of the government is exactly how coups are executed, please look into it if you haven't.
We have a chain of command in our government for when people die. First the President, then the Vice President, then the Speaker of the House, then the Secretaries in a predefined order, and so forth. Plus, the Secret Service (which protects the president) includes considerations for, say, Nuclear Bombing of the capitol and who would take over leadership if such a disaster should happen. If the rioters had succeeded…
There is no federal procedure or "chain of command" for replacing individual Representatives and Senators -- that goes back to the states they represent, with either elections or appointments.