What Wednesday Was

      This will cost me readers.  Since they'll all be people who can't face the truth, I won't miss them.

      The events of Wednesday, 6 January 2021 were an attempted coup.  It failed.  Poorly planned, poorly executed, helped along by a police force whose chief and senior officers decided to treat the counting of Electoral College votes as just another day, but a coup nevertheless.

      The insurrectionists beat one policeman to death with a fire extinguisher.  They murdered him while their fellows waved "thin blue line" and "law and order" flags.  Update: while officers were assaulted by rioters that day and one policeman later died, early reports of an officer having been beaten to death with a fire extinguisher were incorrect.  More information on the deaths and the reporting here.

      And they came directly from a rally where the President of the United States and other speakers riled them up and then pointed them at the Capital.  Oh, he never came out and said, "Storm the place!"  He started by saying, "I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard," but that lead into repeating disproven claims of election fraud and telling the crowd, "We fight like Hell and if you don’t fight like Hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore," and "So we’re going to, we’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue, [...], and we’re going to the Capitol and we’re going to try and give… The Democrats are hopeless. They’re never voting for anything, not even one vote. But we’re going to try and give our Republicans, the weak ones, because the strong ones don’t need any of our help, we’re going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country."

      Nope, he never told them to break into the Capitol and rush into the House and Senate chambers.  He didn't have to.  He aimed them at Vice-President Pence: "I hope Mike is going to do the right thing. I hope so. I hope so because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election. All he has to do. [...] All Vice-President Pence has to do is send it back to the States to recertify, and we become president, and you are the happiest people."  Of course, Mike Pence had already said he would follow the Constitution (which gives him no such power) and not kowtow to the President's whims.

      The President of the United States (and his allies) incited a coup on Wednesday.  It was inept, ham-handed, and his mob lost despite Pearl-Harboring an unprepared Capitol police force. 

      Mr. Trump should be removed -- resignation, Article 25 or impeachment.  He's a traitor hiding behind a screen of only slightly plausible denial.  The only thing that kept events from being worse was that he and his most fervent followers are incapable of effective organization.  

     Thanks to Mr. Trump's efforts to undermine faith in Georgia's elections, the GOP has lost control of the Senate and Mr. Biden's Administration is coming in with a compliant Congress, a discredited opposition and a worried Washington.  Whatever bad laws and policies result, conservatives will have helped provide renewed impetus for them.  I hope you're very happy with the damage you have done in the service of a cult of personality.