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?
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.
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.
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.)
It was a happy guillotine. The French are also off the hook because they were so damn happy to be guillotining people.
I’ll reiterate the earlier poster’s question:
> What would the next steps be that would end in them overthrowing elected leaders?
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
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?
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.
A single bot did not email him. They went 1000 strong in person, were armed, and people died.
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
Nobody said no crimes had been committed. It’s just simply laughable to call it an insurrection.
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.
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...
> 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?
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.
the post war assassination of Lincoln was, in a tiny sense, a delusion of coup, perhaps.