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Comment by gthtjtkt | Hacker News Reader

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

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.

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.

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".

What do you think the cable ties and side arms were for exactly? https://external-preview.redd.it/F7f2NmCrRmpXaLGMcwGn7NiaQ8f...

And the pipe bombs found at the RNC and DNC?

They didn’t want to seize power. They wanted to prevent the peaceful transition of power.

Which is effectively the same, given the circumstances of where power is and where it should be going next.

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.

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?

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