Midnight Pub

Attempted Coup

~zampano

The U.S. has an attempted coup in process. That is something I never thought I'd see.

I hope the Midnight (and everyone in it) is safely distant from the U.S. Capitol.


contrarian

Coming back over a year later and can't say things have gotten better.

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shufei

Hold loved ones close. Make friends of neighbours. No matter how distant from DC, and in the USA or not, we are all going to be affected by this, whatever comes.

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zampano
Hold loved ones close. Make friends of neighbours.

This is good advice for all times.

we are all going to be affected by this

I'm not sure I agree. I think we over-emphasize anything we perceive as a watershed, but there's nothing to suggest that this will be one of those times. There will be some hand-wringing from pundits and politicians, Biden will be sworn in as president, and then everyone will go back to their daily lives.

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oracle

I've been watching the news coverage tonight as they try and get Biden formally over the last hurdle despite the five hour delay brought on by the coup attempt.

On the one hand, I suppose it's for the best that they not let the violence we saw earlier disrupt the proceedings. There's something to that. A show of strength, of refusal to be cowed.

It is also incredibly disorienting to see them go about business as usual with no nod at all to the fact that our sitting president is very much still trying to unmoor our democracy.

There's no telling what the next few days will bring, but I fear if we don't address this head on we'll have hell to pay sooner rather than later.

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zampano

I think that's still the best response to terrorism: deny the attention that the terrorist crave as much as possible.

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oracle

I'm not sure I agree when the terrorists are your neighbors and simply walked away from their crimes with trophies in tow.

We've been watching these same people get away with brutal assaults at protests all year. The same people. We know some of their names.

Ignoring them got us to where we are today. From here they will only escalate.

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zampano

Oh right, I meant from the media's standpoint. That's not to say that nothing should happen; they committed honest-to-God treason, which isn't something a nation-state can allow without even further undermining its legitimacy than the US already has.

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oracle

Yeah we have done a really bad job of addressing the clear attempts at fascism the last 4 years and now the piper has come.

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zampano

Precisely. Causation doesn't care about what people want.

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oracle

I suspect I will be raising many, many glasses to that sentiment in the days and weeks to come.

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zampano

Right there with ya.

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starbreaker

If the aftermath of Charlottesville was any indication, many of those responsible for the 1/6 insurrection are going to find themselves wishing they hadn't bothered. They're gonna get doxxed, arrested, sued, fired, and ostracized—and they'll have nobody to blame but themselves.

https://web.archive.org/web/20210113173842/https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/12/us/elle-reeve-charlottesville-white-supremacy-capitol-qanon/index.html

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zampano

That much is probably true, and it is starting to happen already. Ironically, that they did this so close to the Inauguration means Trump can't pardon them, since he'll be out of office (one way or another) before any conviction happens.

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starbreaker

I find the irony rather delicious, to be honest, but I've been paying attention to these scumbags since the early 1990s and come from a large family of loyal Republicans who still think theirs is the party of Lincoln, (Theodore) Roosevelt, and Eisenhower. Whereas I see it as the party of Hoover, Nixon, Reagan, and Jefferson Davis.

TBH, I'd like to see the entire conservative "movement" investigated as if it were an organized crime syndicate, because they did all the nefarious shit they accused their opponents of doing and have done their damnedest to overthrow the US government. Fuck them all, from richest to poorest.

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ns

I'm located in DC, a healthy 3 miles away thankfully. If it wasn't for the news and curfew notification on my phone I'd have thought it any other normal day.

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inquiry

I'm one of the lucky ones safe and delightfully giddy in a chair at this

fantastic table.
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starbreaker

I'm well away, but this is fucking insane. Trump and the GOP need to be made to pay dearly for this, because they made this idiocy possible.

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zampano

"Accountability" isn't really en vogue in the U.S. right now.

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starbreaker

I've never been fond of it myself, but that's because it comes too often from my equals mistaking themselves for my superiors for comfort. But if I can bring myself to eat crow, so can they.

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