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PaperclipPerfector  12d ago (text post)   28344 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 6, 2025

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I really, genuinely, sincerely, in my heart of hearts, don't think 1/6 was that big of a deal. The demand for a Threat to Democracy outstripped supply, so the media spent 4 years trying desperately to turn a molehill into a mountain. The fact that it apparently didn't move the needle at all during the 2024 elections just goes to show that most Americans also don't think that 1/6 was that big of a deal.

The key fact about the 1/6 riot is that there was never any path by which they could have actually usurped the government. The US Government does not operate on Capture the Flag rules. It doesn't matter how many people trespass in which government buildings. Taking over a government usually requires cooperation from an armed force like the military, police, a paramilitary militia, an intelligence agency, or something along those lines. 1/6 had some unarmed old people milling about in the capital. An actual Threat to Democracy must have the ability to actually Threaten the Democracy, as in there must be some chance of damaging it in some way. 1/6 was just one of a series of riots in that time period, and not a particularly damaging or violent one at that. The fact that it was targeted at elected officials instead of random innocent civilians makes it, if anything, less morally fraught than many of the other riots that took place in the preceding months.

Surely though this argument essentially boils down to 'we have very strong norms and institutional safeguards against threats to democracy, so it doesn't matter when people try to undermine or destroy them', which is obviously absurd - the norms are strong because they have been beyond reproach for so long! Every 1/6-like event undermines that which prevents them from succeeding.

No, what this argument actually boils down to is 'if you're concerned about tyranny then you should not trust the government when they say that extreme measures must be taken because of the ongoing Threat to Democracy posed by the opposition leader.'

I am not afraid of the government being too weak, I am afraid of it being too strong. True Threats to Democracy almost always come from inside the house.

The big issue is the co-occurence of the 1/6 riot and the fake electors thing and the attempt to get Mike Pence to not certify the election. I agree it wasn't a real risk to democracy, but if you believe the continuation of democracy is desirable, that should be concerning, when it looks like the leadership of a major party isn't invested in following election results (yes, this depends on a judgement that election fraud allegations are false, imo they are, and we've discussed that to death and they're just not very smart), and is willing to play along with admittedly feeble attempts at violence. (And if you believe democracy isn't desirable, the childishness of the half-assed attempt to overturn it shouldn't be exciting either)

Why should I care more about the fake electors thing than about the practice of rule-by-executive-order, or the fact that the military keeps killing people even though the US hasn't formally declared war since 1942, or gerrymandering, or any of the other sketchy government power shenanigans that have actually succeeded over the past few decades?

It seems to me that there are a lot of actual threats to democracy, and this does not even come close to topping the list.

rule-by-executive-order

Because EOs are just not that powerful of a tool. They don't override laws, and there are a lot of laws constraining agencies.

The other stuff doesn't have much to do with democracy? It's bad policy.

It seems to me that there are a lot of actual threats to democracy, and this does not even come close to topping the list.

If we assume the election fraud claims are false, Trump attempting to invalidate an election against him is worse than that other stuff? Democracy is a tradition, of peaceful transfer of power every so many years, and Trump tried to break it!

(It is reasonable to not like democracy. It did, after all, give us Trump twice, punctuated by someone too old.)

I definitely agree with this. I think that calling the Jan 6 riot a "coup" or similar terms is pure sensationalism. It is even worse when you have the direct contrast of other, similar riots all throughout 2020. The very same people condemning Jan 6 condoned those riots, if not outright approved of them. I try to be charitable, but I genuinely can find no charitable explanation of this double standard which seems plausibly true to me.

It's so weird to me, because it's like a minimum coup. Not even a minimum viable coup, because it clearly isn't. It's not doing your enemy a small injury, it's like slapping your enemy in the face with the broad of your sword, then running away. Are you trying to start shit or not? It's like they themselves didn't know if they wanted to start shit or not. Like a child's drawing of a coup: all the parts are there, the march, the violence, the fraudulent scheme, but they're just executed with zero skill or coherence, basically at random. I think that's why it causes so much division. It's like your neighboring country rolls a tank over the border, but it's made of cardboard, plops out one sad shell and falls apart. Now you don't even know if you're supposed to be at war.

It's a coup done by a person who just doesn't know how to do one. So do you let it count?

There's also just kinda a mess when the question of what extent Trump was actually involved.

Contemporaneously in 2021, there were quite a lot of allegations that Trump and close associates were deeply integrated into the planning and execution phases of the riot itself, to the point where the Trump campaign was supposedly giving out pdfs with specific movements to specific individuals. Into the next couple years, we had people testify that he got into John Wick-esque battles with the Secret Service, that he'd called off military assistance to capitol officers. It's still possible that's the case!

But what's actually been proven is that he gave a pretty dumb speech, and his campaign authorized the 'alternative' 'fake' elector slates, and he called the governor of Georgia. I'd argue that this is an impeachable offense, and that in a sane impeachment hearing we could start pulling at the threads of those more serious allegations to see if any justify a conviction. They didn't -- the impeachment hearings were a political joke even by the low standards set by recent competition -- and as a result we never even got to the question of whether such a conviction would be justified or whether such a conviction should include future prohibition from office.

I don't know whether his involvement genuinely ended with the speech, but if some there's a lot of underpants gnomes involved between that speech and the riot itself.

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