But it was not. There were people there with intent to go after specific people and probably kill them. There might have been high levels of coordination with the administration and their representatives. They were expecting backing from LEOs and the military. The WH made sure that no help from HLS and the DoD was there on the ground.
This was a failed coup, pure and simple. They are going to try again in the coming weeks.
No.
I have no doubt that some of the people came there to do that, but from Trump / Pence / Rudy perspective the goal is to incite and cause as much of a spectacle as possible. Just a reminder that Trump has a WWE page so he knows a whole lot about 'rasslin and kayfabe. And 'rasslin is very very popular in this country… still.
I wonder how commonly known that connection is among the middle of the bell curve out there.
I really don’t think so. I think they had every intention of having these guys stopping the count and taking out their “enemies” but with just enough plausible deniability. He has been, after all, calling election officials in “contested” states and putting pressure on them to change the votes.
We dismiss this at our peril. Once again, I’ll say that a coup does not need high level strategic planning. It needs brute force, luck, and a society that is will to accept it.
They were chanting STOP THE STEAL
and they delayed the count for several hours
This “they had no clear goal” business is transparently false, but an important part of their legal defense
‘… no real PLAN’ would seem to be fairly accurate though.
Yeah, there was no real plan. Just rile people up, incite them to do… something… and revel in the resulting chaos. It’s still bad regardless of the etymology of the source.
Telling on herself…
Frankly, that’s BS.
Some of the mob may have been aimless jokers, but surely not ALL of them were.
The guys with flex-cuffs had very specific plans in mind, never doubt it.
Or maybe more accurate to say “no SINGLE plan.” There were clearly a number of individuals and groups with specific plans and many acted on them accordingly.
Deliberately taking down and clearing a building is a very complex, time consuming, and resource intensive activity, that takes a long time working together to develop trust, teamwork, and practical SOPs. Once you have the basic mechanics of taking down A building, you then need to work out how you’re going to take down a PARTICULAR building and - crucially - why. Also, getting everyone together and conducting rehearsals is a good idea.
See this for an example involving a very small building, which while mostly successful still took the best part of a week to prepare for when executed by a highly trained, competent, and coherent team.
On the other hand, getting a flashmob together and getting them to surge in a particular direction is relatively straightforward, but it’s pretty much a one-shot deal against any kind of coherent resistance. You can point them in a general direction, and press the ‘go’ button, but any further command and control is basically impossible. The mob will almost immediately start breaking up into self interested blobs - some will go looting, some will wander off to break shiny shit, and some will head on over to Starbucks for an Iced Mocha Latte with extra cream and sprinkles. If the mob stays coherent enough for long enough, and if the opposition folds up completely quickly enough, and if you pointed them in the right direction accurately enough, then you might achieve the goals you intended for the mob. But it’s far more likely they’ll break in to a space they aren’t supposed to be, then just kind of mill around wondering WTF to do next as the mob gradually dissipates due to centripetal distractions. They will, though, cause an awful lot of destruction and distress while they’re doing it.
There was. There is plenty of evidence to suggest this was coordinated to some degree.
Please. Take this seriously. Lives are on the line here. our country is on the line.
Oh, to have the privilege to not have to take such alarming incidents seriously, because one is NOT one of the people most immediately at risk.
People respond to events in different ways, and there is a world of difference between taking something seriously and panicking. Telling folks they aren’t taking something seriously because they aren’t showing sufficient levels of panic isn’t an especially inclusive approach.
& @codinghorror Wut? More like:
Without even going into the weeks of preparation involving manipulation of 45’s base into seeing Dems and RINOs as subhuman, you have:
It’s not just the few Capitol Police who stood up to them that caused the narrow failure of the coup attempt; it is also that part of the plan, using the chaos of the mob as cover, was also a point of failure in achieving their main operational objectives. It caused just enough delay to keep the operatives from reaching their targets before they could barricade or be evacuated. By ONE MINUTE.
You are talking about firing up a mob and forming them into a one-shot weapon.
Which is, you know, exactly what I talked about.
Zizek once talked about how we are so into apocalyptic pop culture (like Zombies and the like) in part because we can’t imagine peaceful transformative change happening. I suspect that some are also seeing this in a similar way, that the downfall of our society would be “exciting” to some degree, no matter what side of the political spectrum they are on? But living through the reality of a failed state is a whole different matter, for almost anyone (the most elite excluded to some degree).
It’s really frustrating for almost everything Trump has done to just be shrugged off as just more politics, when it’s really not. While this dismantling that has happened did not begin with him, he has come in and set a bomb off to destroy as much as he could. There is still a strong possibility of something happening before Biden takes office, and even after. We’ll be dealing with these groups for years to come, in part because law enforcement at the Federal and state levels as well as many average Americans who are not direct victims of these groups have not taken this threat seriously at all for years and years now. If we continue to shrug this off, we will not have a country anymore. It will be a fascist state with the largest nuclear arsenal in the world.
I see no one calling for panic. There is a world of difference between panicking and recognizing an attempted coup, as armed individuals operating in an organized manner (go back and review the images of the group of guys in tactical gear making their way in formation up the steps of the capital. And the military guys carrying zip ties. This was planned, just unlucky. It could have been much much worse.
Also, “one shot weapon?” They are prepping for many more, across the country. There were occurrences the same day at multiple state capitals. This was not a one shot weapon.
