Comment by cogman10 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cogman10 | Hacker News Reader

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The mob was literally minutes away from congressional people. They further kept those same congresspeople surrounded and locked up for hours until Trump called them off.

Ashley Babbitt died because she broken through the last barrier between the mob and congress. Had this mob been armed (and there were plans of being armed that were ultimately scuttled), it could have been a blood bath. There was only a handful of LEO between the mob and congress.

This wasn't a "mosquito bite".

Now, what would have changed if the mob had their way with congress or the supreme court? Who knows. For the SC, it'd have given trump the ability to put in more yes men to rubber stamp his election loss narrative.

For congress, the plan was literally to have congressional collaborators challenge the validity of the election (which still happened) to take power. If many democrat reps lost their life, then yes, congress could have rubberstamped a trump victory. Very few republicans stood up to trump or his plans.

"What could they have done", the answer is kill a bunch of congress people in the opposing party to empower their party.

This was a big deal.

I don't think the point was to kill a bunch of Democrats. I think the point was to either kill or pressure Vice President Pence, so that he (or his successor) would accept the "alternate" (false) electors as legitimate. I think the shouts of "hang Mike Pence" were aimed that direction.

I very much doubt even had they managed to kill some congressman that it would have helped them in any way. In fact im more likely to believe that had they actually gotten to a congressman we would have seen far more meaningful response and push back against them, Republicans, and Trump.

You're exaggerating to try to make a point, but I'm not convinced.

You're saying that it could have been much worse if the mob had gotten into Congress, followed by if the mob had offed Democrats, followed by if the Republicans then rubber stamped it and didn't have their own objections, followed by if the Supreme Court was also killed or if the Supreme Court chose to take no action and if the states involved like California also decided to go along with everything and if the military leadership also had no objections assuming of course that no republicans or Trump himself died at any point through the process.

That's so implausible to chain it all together, I might as well make a similar case for a group of guys with bombs in their cars.

> You're exaggerating to try to make a point

What am I exaggerating?

> if the mob had gotten into Congress,

Correct, which we have documents, conversations and even zipties which show that was the plan.

> if the mob had offed Democrats

Again, multiple conversations and recordings of mob members specifically saying this was the plan.

> if the Republicans then rubber stamped it and didn't have their own objections

There are literally court documents which ended up getting Eastman disbarred because, you guessed it, this was literally the plan. We even know who the collaborators were because we have recordings between them and Trump/Rudy about executing the plan.

> if the Supreme Court was also killed or if the Supreme Court chose to take no action

The supreme court is literally right around the corner from congress. But I admit, they weren't a part of any documented plan that I'm aware of. However, as we are seeing with the current Trump term that doesn't really matter now does it. If the executive and congress doesn't care about the SC then they are toothless.

> if the states involved like California also decided to go along with everything

It was an attempted coup. Who knows what Cali would do, they'd certainly object. But now you have a crisis where congress has declared trump the winner and the military has to choose whether or not they follow Cali or the Executive which they are bound to. How that would have played out is anyone's guess.

> That's so implausible to chain it all together, I might as well make a similar case for a group of guys with bombs in their cars.

You are now extrapolating past what I did. What would have happened in the aftermath of the coup isn't something that anyone could know. There's no way to know if it'd be successful. But that's entirely not the point. The point is the coup was attempted and it was damn near the point of having multiple congress people killed.

My point, which you are trying to get away from, is that this was more than a mosquito bite. This very well could have caused a huge amount of turmoil and that turmoil was planned and documented. And, of course, those that planned this turmoil were all pardoned by Trump.

What you are doing is downplaying how serious J6 was. You want to act like just because it wasn't successful, it wasn't serious. Or that just because it might never have been completely successful, it wasn't serious. That is ridiculous.

No, you’re stuck with trying to overplay how significant J6 was. Even if it was considered by the participants to be a coup, it’s irrelevant because it simply did not have the manpower, or any chance at taking out all of the branches of government to a significant degree. Even if all of Congress and SCOTUS was killed, there is a line of succession (created in case of nuclear war) which states would then follow.

The claim that J6 was a serious threat, by stringing one improbable event into what could have happened if a dozen additional improbable events also occurred, is the Democratic Party’s favorite conspiracy theory. Both sides have them.

Since you're convinced it couldn't be a coup, would you mind helping see your point of view? How many people would be needed and/or what outcomes would we observe for you to believe it was a coup?

Killing multiple members of Congress wasn't improbable outcome of J6. Do you agree or disagree.

Let's set aside everything else. Do you at least conceed that politicians lives were on the line.

No, the evidence does not support that concession.

I don't think anyone would deny that. But the question is really, would it have mattered even if some got killed? Congress sure as fuck isn't standing in the way of executive overreach right now. I don't see why we should be so overly worried about politicians getting killed, most of them are less than useless, especially considering how many citizens are killed per day already thanks to garbage political legislation that makes it legal.

I really do think that was an improbable outcome.

Are you familiar with Bush v. Gore?

Killing people wasn't necessary.

One nit: The military is not bound to follow the executive. They are bound to follow the Constitution.

I still retain enough naive optimism to hope that, had it come to that, that distinction would have mattered.

J6 made me wonder how many Michael Flynns would it take to get some part of the military to take part in a coup.

Some part? One.

Enough parts? A lot more than that.

All the mob had to do was steal the ballots, and we would have had a constitutional crisis.

And during a constitutional crisis, the people with their hands already on the levers of power have a huge advantage,

I will say this, because I worry that some may have missed the memo. If you keep repeating constitutional crisis like it is some sort of magic word, each time you say it without some level of substantiation, it will continue to lose its power. It is mildly annoying to me that, some, democrat party adherents do not seem to understand this. I can give few more examples if necessary, but my subtle point is:

If everything is a constitutional crisis, nothing is.

Something to think about.

Well, you're an adult, and you can tell that different democrats are different people, so engage with what the person you're talking to is saying and not going "everything's a crisis with you people!"

They killed people while storming the capitol. If hundreds of protesters getting their hands on all of our ballots, physically threatening our congressmen, is not a constitutional crisis, I don't know what the hell is. Perhaps you should take your own advice. You can only say "you're overreacting" so much before people realize we can't rely on you to evaluate risk.

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