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Comment by fennecfoxen | Hacker News Reader

Your critique highlights how the US had a President lose an election, and how he tried to undo it.

However close he came to success (which we might dispute), he lost it in the first place, then be failed to hold on, and then he was removed. This leaves the US easily 1000x more free and more democratic than the USSR, which never ran an election without tampering with the vote in the first place, and which never saw its leaders democratically deposed. They succeeded in suppressing democracy much earlier in the process.

The rest of your comments suffer a parallel problem.

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But the coup was unsuccessful solely by dumb luck!

Is not the ringing endorsement of American stability and greatness you think it is. Especially when none of the coup planners have been charged, let alone imprisoned.

Dumb luck. And the fact it was led by a mentally ill guy in a buffalo costume and no one thought to bring weapons or make a plan to take over the government.

It wasn't a coup. Nor a coup attempt. It was a protest against an election that many people considered fraudulent that got out of hand.

Exactly why it got out of hand and who encouraged that is another topic.

It became a coup attempt the moment someone shouted "Hang Mike Pence." But yes, fortunately, it was precisely the sort of laughably-botched coup attempt you'd expect from Trump and his supporters. We won't be so lucky next time.

History suggests we have about ten years until the consequences of leaving the plotters unpunished come back to us. The people in charge now will mostly be retired or dead of old age.

The bar has to be a little higher than that. I can go to any protest and shout, "Kill the President." At a minimum, I have to have the intent of following through, otherwise I'm just some loud nutjob at somebody else's protest. Even then, I'm attempting a coup. Everyone else is still just protesting. The nature of their actions is not changed by my presence there.

Maybe Jan. 6 still clears that bar. I don't know enough of the details to say that it doesn't.

The bar has to be a little higher than that.

OK, it became a coup attempt the moment someone shouted "Hang Mike Pence!" at a riot where some people built a gallows, some people roved around inside the building carrying Tasers and handcuffs, and some other people brought firearms, ammunition, and IEDs.

But I imagine you'll just move the bar^H^H^Hgoalposts again, because that's what Trump apologists are good at.

Meanwhile, holy shit, imagine if those people really had been the BLM and Antifa agitators that the Republicans tried so desperately to tell us they were.

Maybe Jan. 6 still clears that bar. I don't know enough of the details to say that it doesn't

On the off chance that's true, I would say that this is an excellent time to start paying attention to what's going on. Again, we have about 10 years, give or take, going by the example of the Beer Hall Putsch.

If you don't want people "moving the goalposts", don't set them up at the 40-yard line, where they very apparently do not go.

You are bringing a lot of vitriol to the table, unprompted. A personal failing is that I can't help but respond, but I am able to leave it at that.

There's no room left in the middle, sorry. You can't stay there.

What does this mean? It's catchy, but what mechanism exists where a political position can run out of room? The space is defined by the number of inhabitants.

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