[hnlmorg]

I’m not suggesting things are as bad as a full on insurrection. But it’s not a great leap of imagination to compare the two either.

> He declared martial law

Trump has sent federal troops into states that voted against him.

He’s also frequently talked about “the enemy from within” to describe American citizens.

And then there’s ICE…

> suspended and prevented their Congress equivalent from meeting

Trump has shut down the government twice already.

The press just like to blame Democrats despite the fact that it’s the Republicans who are refusing to negotiate.

> ordered the immediate arrest of numerous high level politicians with a goal of arresting hundreds,

To be fair, Trump hasn’t gone that far (yet). But he has fired lots of people from government roles that should have been non-partisan and filled them with his own loyal supporters. Even when those people are clearly not qualified to be doing their new found appointments.

He’s also freed lots of criminals because they either supported him, or paid him.

> issued a declaration that all media and publications had to be approved before publication

Trump has been removing press from the White House and replacing them with publications that support him.

> ordered the power+water for a news broadcaster be cut

Trump hasn’t done that either. But he has sent the FCC to shutdown shows he dislikes. And sued the others into compliance.

[ericmcer]

The overreach of executive powers is very concerning, but those are more long term attempts to influence the public and policy makers through shady tactics.

The insurrection everyone is referring to is definitely Jan 6th, which it is laughable to compare to an actual insurrection attempt. A few thousand unarmed people waving signs and wearing costumes break into government buildings and take selfies? What would the next steps be that would end in them overthrowing elected leaders?

[woodruffw]

I think the thing that puts J6 in the "definitely an insurrection attempt" category is the fact that it happened while Congress was exercising its duty to formalize the electoral college vote. We don't have to reach for statistics about how many were armed or wearing costumes (a fact that seems immaterial in any case); the question is sufficiently answered by what they were attempting to stop.

[frumplestlatz]

I’ll reiterate the earlier poster’s question:

> What would the next steps be that would end in them overthrowing elected leaders?

[cthalupa]

It was explicitly an attempt to influence Pence or congress to not certify the election results, attempting to allow Trump to use his fake electors to change the results in his favor.

It was a naked attempt to change the outcome of the election. What are you not understanding about this?

[jibal]

They tried to seize the certificates ... if some quickwitted and brave staffers hadn't quickly spirited them away, they would have.

[somenameforme]

In 2016 there was an organized, and partially successful, effort to get 37 electoral voters to change their electoral vote to somebody other than whom they were pledged to vote - Trump. It was intended to change the result of the election by forcing a "contingent election", in which the House of Representatives would determine the President, owing to the esoteric nuances of US electoral law.

Would you consider this an insurrection? In your terms it was "a naked attempt to change the outcome of the election."

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_electors_in_the_2016...

[cthalupa]

Calling it partially successful when Clinton lost more electoral votes to faithless electors than Trump did and it had zero impact on the outcome of the election is interesting.

But no, because electors deciding how they cast their votes is a matter of state legislation, not federal, and it is a wildly different thing than the candidate himself trying to install fake electors.

The faithless electors were chosen as part of the political process, and the founders expressly stated that the electors having the freedom to cast their vote was part of the safeguard against mob rule by an uninformed electorate. Hamilton, for example, wrote extensively of this in the federalist papers. This is explicitly one of the reasons why we have the electoral college at all, instead of a popular vote. If anything, I wish they had had the foresight to codify it in the Constitution or Bill of Rights so that states could not prevent it from happening. They wrote extensively of what they wanted the EC to be but did not do enough to make reality match their expectations in a durable manner.

Meanwhile Trump explicitly worked to install a group of illegally selected electors while riling up a mob to attempt to put a halt to the certification.

Trying to compare electors casting their vote based on how the founding fathers envisioned the electoral college as working to a sitting president being involved in a coordinated effort to create and install fake electors, cause the certification of the election to fail by inciting a mob to storm the capitol, and oh, telling Georgia to "find me the votes" is absurd.

[ericmcer]

So if someone emailed Pence and said they would stab him if he certified the election would that be an insurrection? They are attempting to influence him to change the result of the election.

Surely the level of organization and possibility of success need to be taken into consideration? Otherwise every moron with a social media account or a sign could be guilty of insurrection.

[Larrikin]

A single bot did not email him. They went 1000 strong in person, were armed, and people died.

[notahacker]

Congresspeople either intimidated or emboldened into rejecting some or all of the state electors to annul the actual electoral result and declare Trump the 46th president. We know this was the outcome Donald Trump's wanted because he said so several times.

I assume the individuals that brought zip ties had more specific plans for the elected officials they didn't approve of.

It wasn't a well-planned insurrection but neither was Yong Suk Yeol's

[raptor99]

Wearing costumes establishes costumes and illustrates the joviality of at least a portion of the attendees of the event. It would be odd to say that it is immaterial that you went to a concert or a restaurant or any place really, and lots of people were dressed as Vikings, or as SWAT, etc.

[woodruffw]

It's immaterial insofar as the US Capitol is not, in fact, a concert or restaurant.

(And similarly, it should be clear that an insurrection's nature doesn't depend on whether the crowd is jovial or not.)

[fireflash38]

It was a happy guillotine. The French are also off the hook because they were so damn happy to be guillotining people.

[Larrikin]

Multiple protestors had weapons and the militias had weapons parked just across the border. There also would have been no reason to pardon anyone if no crimes were being committed. But you already know this

[frumplestlatz]

Nobody said no crimes had been committed. It’s just simply laughable to call it an insurrection.

[Jordan-117]

Killing legislators or physically threatening them into overturning the results. But siccing the mob was just a last-ditch move.

The main plan was sending fake electors with fraudulent certifications and counting on Pence to derail the formal vote count and accept the false slate through a fog of procedural confusion. The fact that Pence refused to go along with the plan and Trump resorted to physically threatening him and Congress doesn't change the fact that their plan was an illegal and fraudulent interference with the verification of the election based on knowingly false claims.

[n1b0m]

According to the bipartisan House select committee that investigated the incident, the attack was the culmination of a plan by Trump to overturn the election.

Within 36 hours, five people died: including a police officer who died of a stroke a day after being assaulted by rioters and collapsing at the Capitol.

Many people were injured, including 174 police officers. Four officers who responded to the attack died by suicide within seven months. Damage caused by attackers exceeded $2.7 million. It is the only attempted coup d'état directed towards the Federal government in the history of the United States.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_6_United_States_Capito...

[jjtheblunt]

> It is the only attempted coup d'état directed towards the Federal government in the history of the United States.

The Civil War in the early 1860s doesn't count because they just wanted to secede?

[n1b0m]

The Civil War wasn't really a coup because the South wasn't trying to take over Washington D.C. or run the Federal government. A coup is usually a quick, behind the scenes power grab by a small group of people trying to unseat a leader. What happened in the 1860s was the exact opposite: it was a massive, public breakup where entire states voted to leave.

[jjtheblunt]

the post war assassination of Lincoln was, in a tiny sense, a delusion of coup, perhaps.

[n1b0m]

Yes that’s a good point