6 ms·

define coup: "a sudden, violent, and illegal seizure of power from a government" Sudden: check Violent: check Illegal: check Attempt to sieze power from a gove

define coup: "a sudden, violent, and illegal seizure of power from a government" Sudden: check Violent: check Illegal: check Attempt to sieze power from a government: check

gthtjtkt 6y ago
So you think they were about to start legislating after they walked into the Capitol? How would that work exactly?
- kadoban 6y ago
  They were there to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power of the government. They came with weapons, human restraints (flex cuffs), and were calling out politicians they disagree with and explicitly looking for them. The intention of several seems to have been to _at least_ take hostages if not worse. What would you call the threatening, kidnapping and possible murder of your political rivals for the express purpose of keeping your side in power? If that's not a coup I don't know what is. That they failed doesn't mean they didn't try.
  - wpm 6y ago
    Some people would say the coup isn’t happening while the Speaker of the House is swinging from a fucking rope. It can’t be any clearer than it is now without more bloodshed and still people don’t want to believe it.
    - kadoban 6y ago
      I think part of it isn't really in bad faith, it is just some sort of magical thinking, along the lines of: "a coup is something that happens over _there_, those places we see only on the news".
- metabagel 6y ago
  They didn’t want to seize power. They wanted to prevent the peaceful transition of power.
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    Which is effectively the same, given the circumstances of where power is and where it should be going next.
- joshuamorton 6y ago
  The point was to prevent the certificate of Biden as the president. A coup to keep trump in power, as it were. What other reason do you think they had for storming congress?
- bufferout 6y ago
  What do you think the cable ties and side arms were for exactly? https://external-preview.redd.it/F7f2NmCrRmpXaLGMcwGn7NiaQ8fvuc9G6a7A2vmP2I0.png?auto=webp&s=2a8f439c7f65e8a3e7b6505b7cdfa47adb51a509 https://external-preview.redd.it/F7f2NmCrRmpXaLGMcwGn7NiaQ8f...
  - hobofan 6y ago
    And the pipe bombs found at the RNC and DNC?
- cmurf 6y ago
  That it wasn't going to succeed, doesn't mean it's not an attempted coup. It's a self-coup because they were told to go there by Trump, after Mike Pence told Trump he couldn't do what Trump asked him to do, which was to just declare Trump the winner. i.e. ignore the state ascertained Electoral votes. This is an autocratic movement. The legislature is an impediment to that. Maybe they envision a principate to give it the veneer of authenticity that an outright autocracy would not. That worked for the Roman Empire for ~250 years, people bought that it was still a Republic when it's plain to history it was ruled by an emperor during this time. Of course had it succeeded, no matter how it had, Trump would have accepted it happily. He doesn't care about the Constitution or even the veneer of legitimacy. He just wants to win. Doesn't matter how.
vehemenz 6y ago
Yeah, “coup” is still a reach. No power was seized. Not even close. This isn’t 1973 Chile. You’re giving these unorganized white nationalist nobodies way more credit than they deserve. If it were a coordinated effort by Trump or the GOP instead of LARPers living out their conspiratorial fantasies, then sure.
- kadoban 6y ago
  That they failed doesn't mean they didn't try. You don't think this was a coordinated effort? President Trump (and several of his allies) has been stoking this flame for _weeks_ explicitly and to the day. He gave a speech the morning of the attack, explicitly pointing them to the Capitol. He seems to have also, behind the scenes, disuaded the usual defense mechanisms that would have prevented this from being even as effictive as it was. I'd expect much more information will be coming out about that as this is investigated further. I'm not seeing how you're saying this wasn't coordinated though.
  - throwaway201103 6y ago
    If Trump wanted to stay in power why didn't he order the military to sieze the Congress and declare martial law? He thought a loosely organized band of civilian protestors were going to actually keep him in office?
    - kadoban 6y ago
      Because that very likely wouldn't have worked, and it'd more obviously and quickly have consequences for him when it failed. He thought he could at least intimidate his political enemies, and convince his allies and those on the fence to _at least_ make a bigger mess of the transfer of power.
    - ashtonkem 6y ago
      Fundamentally, because he’s not very good at this. He’s lazy and impatient, if it can’t be done with a few tweets at 4AM, he can’t do it. For his entire presidency, Trump has really been good at chaos and bad at planning. He regularly failed to do things that were either within his powers or easily doable because he just didn’t follow the process right (DACA, muslim ban), or because he couldn’t work with others (wall, relief checks), or because he just didn’t have the patience to follow through (TikTok sale). When things require organization skill, he falls apart. His two biggest moves have been shit posting on twitter, and shit posting while undermining his own ongoing negotiations. He is incapable of actually doing the work, any work. Actually doing a coup via the military requires skill and planning. There are a lot of people in the chain who can say no, or drag their feet to delay illegal orders. A smarter autocrat would’ve laid the groundwork to purge the ranks of non-faithful, done his best to bribe rank and file members, or worked to create a plausible story that required military presence in the capital. Instead he vetoed their pay bill because he was angry at Twitter, after he pardoned war criminals and called them all suckers. He is simply not a strategic thinker at all. Whipping up his rabid fans so that they plan something on his behalf in whatever fetid swamps they’ve been banished to online? Now that he can do, because it only requires some tweets that he thinks of in the moment. That he was able to get so far with such amateurish work is a sign that the republic is very, very sick. Hopefully we can fix our underlying issues before a smarter autocrat has a go at it, because if that happens we’re probably doomed.
slowmotiony 6y ago
Wasn't BLM throwing molotovs and trying to overtake a federal court a few months ago, for like a week straight? I didn't see a single media outlet call that a coup. Weird.
- function_seven 6y ago
  Because that wouldn't be a coup. The word means something pretty specific. Seizing control of the government. Not a courthouse, not a police station, or any other individual agency. The entire government. In this case, that was the goal. Keep the losing presidential candidate in power.
  - slowmotiony 6y ago
    Sudden: check Violent: check Illegal: check Attempt to sieze power from a government: check
    - function_seven 6y ago
      Attempt to seize the government: No check.
      - slowmotiony 6y ago
        I see the goalpost has been moved then, only took one post. Okay.
        function_seven 6y ago
        So what may be confusing is the term. The full term is coup d'état It specifically refers to the overthrow of a government. Trashing a single courthouse comes nowhere close to that. The goal is power. Taking power from your political enemy and securing it for yourself. The word coup by itself has a broader definition, but is usually used as a compliment. Such as "Heather just closed a $30mm deal with Acme Corp. Her entire sales team scored a coup with that sales pitch" But when used in the context of gun-toting insurrectionists? "Coup" is shorthand for the full phrase. Coup d'état.

define coup: "a sudden, violent, and illegal seizure of power from a government" Sudden: check Violent: check Illegal: check Attempt to sieze power from a government: check

gthtjtkt 6y ago

So you think they were about to start legislating after they walked into the Capitol? How would that work exactly?

kadoban 6y ago
They were there to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power of the government. They came with weapons, human restraints (flex cuffs), and were calling out politicians they disagree with and explicitly looking for them. The intention of several seems to have been to _at least_ take hostages if not worse. What would you call the threatening, kidnapping and possible murder of your political rivals for the express purpose of keeping your side in power? If that's not a coup I don't know what is. That they failed doesn't mean they didn't try.
- wpm 6y ago
  Some people would say the coup isn’t happening while the Speaker of the House is swinging from a fucking rope. It can’t be any clearer than it is now without more bloodshed and still people don’t want to believe it.
  - kadoban 6y ago
    I think part of it isn't really in bad faith, it is just some sort of magical thinking, along the lines of: "a coup is something that happens over _there_, those places we see only on the news".
metabagel 6y ago
They didn’t want to seize power. They wanted to prevent the peaceful transition of power.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  Which is effectively the same, given the circumstances of where power is and where it should be going next.
joshuamorton 6y ago
The point was to prevent the certificate of Biden as the president. A coup to keep trump in power, as it were. What other reason do you think they had for storming congress?
bufferout 6y ago
What do you think the cable ties and side arms were for exactly? https://external-preview.redd.it/F7f2NmCrRmpXaLGMcwGn7NiaQ8fvuc9G6a7A2vmP2I0.png?auto=webp&s=2a8f439c7f65e8a3e7b6505b7cdfa47adb51a509 https://external-preview.redd.it/F7f2NmCrRmpXaLGMcwGn7NiaQ8f...
- hobofan 6y ago
  And the pipe bombs found at the RNC and DNC?
cmurf 6y ago
That it wasn't going to succeed, doesn't mean it's not an attempted coup. It's a self-coup because they were told to go there by Trump, after Mike Pence told Trump he couldn't do what Trump asked him to do, which was to just declare Trump the winner. i.e. ignore the state ascertained Electoral votes. This is an autocratic movement. The legislature is an impediment to that. Maybe they envision a principate to give it the veneer of authenticity that an outright autocracy would not. That worked for the Roman Empire for ~250 years, people bought that it was still a Republic when it's plain to history it was ruled by an emperor during this time. Of course had it succeeded, no matter how it had, Trump would have accepted it happily. He doesn't care about the Constitution or even the veneer of legitimacy. He just wants to win. Doesn't matter how.

vehemenz 6y ago

Yeah, “coup” is still a reach. No power was seized. Not even close. This isn’t 1973 Chile. You’re giving these unorganized white nationalist nobodies way more credit than they deserve. If it were a coordinated effort by Trump or the GOP instead of LARPers living out their conspiratorial fantasies, then sure.

kadoban 6y ago
That they failed doesn't mean they didn't try. You don't think this was a coordinated effort? President Trump (and several of his allies) has been stoking this flame for _weeks_ explicitly and to the day. He gave a speech the morning of the attack, explicitly pointing them to the Capitol. He seems to have also, behind the scenes, disuaded the usual defense mechanisms that would have prevented this from being even as effictive as it was. I'd expect much more information will be coming out about that as this is investigated further. I'm not seeing how you're saying this wasn't coordinated though.
- throwaway201103 6y ago
  If Trump wanted to stay in power why didn't he order the military to sieze the Congress and declare martial law? He thought a loosely organized band of civilian protestors were going to actually keep him in office?
  - kadoban 6y ago
    Because that very likely wouldn't have worked, and it'd more obviously and quickly have consequences for him when it failed. He thought he could at least intimidate his political enemies, and convince his allies and those on the fence to _at least_ make a bigger mess of the transfer of power.
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    Fundamentally, because he’s not very good at this. He’s lazy and impatient, if it can’t be done with a few tweets at 4AM, he can’t do it. For his entire presidency, Trump has really been good at chaos and bad at planning. He regularly failed to do things that were either within his powers or easily doable because he just didn’t follow the process right (DACA, muslim ban), or because he couldn’t work with others (wall, relief checks), or because he just didn’t have the patience to follow through (TikTok sale). When things require organization skill, he falls apart. His two biggest moves have been shit posting on twitter, and shit posting while undermining his own ongoing negotiations. He is incapable of actually doing the work, any work. Actually doing a coup via the military requires skill and planning. There are a lot of people in the chain who can say no, or drag their feet to delay illegal orders. A smarter autocrat would’ve laid the groundwork to purge the ranks of non-faithful, done his best to bribe rank and file members, or worked to create a plausible story that required military presence in the capital. Instead he vetoed their pay bill because he was angry at Twitter, after he pardoned war criminals and called them all suckers. He is simply not a strategic thinker at all. Whipping up his rabid fans so that they plan something on his behalf in whatever fetid swamps they’ve been banished to online? Now that he can do, because it only requires some tweets that he thinks of in the moment. That he was able to get so far with such amateurish work is a sign that the republic is very, very sick. Hopefully we can fix our underlying issues before a smarter autocrat has a go at it, because if that happens we’re probably doomed.

slowmotiony 6y ago

Wasn't BLM throwing molotovs and trying to overtake a federal court a few months ago, for like a week straight? I didn't see a single media outlet call that a coup. Weird.

function_seven 6y ago
Because that wouldn't be a coup. The word means something pretty specific. Seizing control of the government. Not a courthouse, not a police station, or any other individual agency. The entire government. In this case, that was the goal. Keep the losing presidential candidate in power.
- slowmotiony 6y ago
  Sudden: check Violent: check Illegal: check Attempt to sieze power from a government: check
  - function_seven 6y ago
    Attempt to seize the government: No check.
    - slowmotiony 6y ago
      I see the goalpost has been moved then, only took one post. Okay.
      - function_seven 6y ago
        So what may be confusing is the term. The full term is coup d'état It specifically refers to the overthrow of a government. Trashing a single courthouse comes nowhere close to that. The goal is power. Taking power from your political enemy and securing it for yourself. The word coup by itself has a broader definition, but is usually used as a compliment. Such as "Heather just closed a $30mm deal with Acme Corp. Her entire sales team scored a coup with that sales pitch" But when used in the context of gun-toting insurrectionists? "Coup" is shorthand for the full phrase. Coup d'état.