Coup d’etat? Don’t Mind if I do!

Murder will out, they say. And the difference between murder one and all the other degrees of murder and manslaughter and homicide is mainly based off the question, “Was this premeditated.”

I hope we all know by now that January 6 last year was a riot and a fiasco. Emotions on both sides are volatile, and like a good friend of mine said on the phone today “people aren’t trying to discuss anything rationally. I feel upset about this or that, so I’m going to make the opposition suffer.” If that isn’t very clearly stated, it’s likely my own memory chewing up his thought. I believe he was not saying that he personally was going to make people suffer, but that people on both sides are full of hate against the other side, and neither seems to want to debate. Both sides seem eager to hurl insults, rocks, bullets, diatribes, filibusters, and the occasional bison helmet.

For good or ill, I’m going to continue (at least for now) pursuing my questions from the post: https://wordpress.com/post/tiredmidnightblogger.wordpress.com/147, titled “January 6 Riots Not Very Quiet.”

As some two or three of you may remember, I delved into the question of whether Biden stole the election in a previous post titled “How Much for Just the Republic,” posted: https://wordpress.com/post/tiredmidnightblogger.wordpress.com/161

In that post, I did some research into the claims that Biden stole the election, and while my work was far from exhaustive or definitive, I felt that for me, it warranted the belief that Biden did not, in fact, steal the election and won it relatively fair and square. For those of you who disagree, please feel free to debate. Constructive, intelligent, and respectful commentary would be greatly appreciated.

But what about the other side of the coin? Did Trump, in fact, attempt to lead a coup to overthrow the republic? Will I end up agreeing with the person who posted “Silent Running” to a bunch of pro-Trump video, or will I end up agreeing with CNN that Trump is the greatest villain of the age? Stay tuned to find out!

I have opened a real can of worms with this one. As I should have suspected.

As usual there are at least two sides of this story, if not three hundred million versions.

I’m going to cite politico for the left wing version.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/01/11/capitol-riot-self-coup-trump-fiona-hill-457549

I’m going to cite Fox News for the right wing version.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/two-questions-jan-6-capitol-riot

Full disclosure….I’m a moderately conservative Republican. Yet I find myself more drawn to the opinion piece of Politico. I has more meat to it (though I’d warn liberals that maybe ignoring Fox is not the wisest thing ever).

The Politico post is written by Fiona Hill. According to Politico: Fiona Hill served as deputy assistant to the president and senior director for European and Russian affairs on the National Security Council from 2017 to 2019. She is currently a senior fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution.

Assuming that is accurate, this would mean she has quite a bit of personal experience with the Trumpmeister. She states the reasons why some believe the January six riots don’t constitute a coup, but then she gives her own rational reasons why she believes this was in fact a true coup.

“Technically, what Trump attempted is what’s known as a “self-coup” and Trump isn’t the first leader to try it. Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte (nephew of the first Napoleon) pulled one off in France in December 1851 to stay in power beyond his term. Then he declared himself Emperor, Napoleon III. More recently, Nicolas Maduro perpetrated a self-coup in Venezuela after losing the 2017 elections.”

She goes on to state that a checklist exists to evaluate if someone is performing a coup or not, I’m guessing that she must have learned it from her experience with teh National Security Council.

“There’s a standard coup “checklist” analysts use to evaluate coups, and we can use it to assess Trump’s moves to prevent the peaceful transfer of executive power. To successfully usurp or hold power, you need to control the military and paramilitary units, communications, the judiciary, government institutions, and the legislature; and mobilize popular support.”

If you read her article, she has cogent reasons for why she feels Trump meets all of the above criteria. The reading is pretty chilling for someone who used to support Trump, as I did four years ago.

Now for the evaluation of Fox News. Tucker Carlson gives some personal testimony about what he himself experienced on January sixth, and I don’t like to discount anyone’s personal testimony until I have strong evidence of psychological problems. I haven’t listened to Fox in about four years, so Tucker Carlson is actually new to me.

He doesn’t really establish much in the way of blaming anyone, which to be fair might be the best thing a journalist can do if they simply don’t know. The crux of his analysis centers around two questions: “How did this happen today of all days?” And “Why has this gone on for so long?”

And to be fair, they are not terrible questions. The cynic in me is tempted to make fun of the first question, but throwing in the second, it does make one pause. To rephrase the thought in my own language…..if there really was an honest to God coup attempt, why is it taking a year and more to prosecute hooligans that CNN can demonstrably show us red handed on video?

Tucker Carlson proceeds to give some cryptic analysis that might have made more sense to me if I’d kept listening to the party line in the last decade, but he also says something that I think, honestly, both sides need to be putting a lot more thought into: “The Capitol Police were outmanned, out planned, and out-frenzied by the mob that day. It is hard to defend an institution as important as the United States Capitol on a day as crucial as certifying the Electoral College when you face a deficit in all three categories.” And while he is asking his own questions, mine is….why in the hell was it possible for the Capitol Police to be outmanned, out planned, and out-frenzied….by the Q Anon Shamen? I mean….really?

So, as I am a blogger and not a reporter, I’m glossing over a lot here and hoping that you read both articles and did your own thinking. I’m left with two thoughts.

Either Trump really did plan a coup, but did a terrible job of executing, or he is so grossly incompetent that he let the Q Anon Shaman shame him.

I leave you with two videos to consider along with my thoughts on these two articles. You be the judge on whether Trump was a mastermind who failed, or a failure who fell for the tricks of better masterminds…..

So you have some idea what I think about it all, but what do you think? Is Trump a hero or zero, is he a Machiavellian master mind, or has he been duped by clandestine forces we could never ken? Please comment and let’s get a dialogue going.