(08-12-2021, 01:53 AM)hazard Wrote: ... They attempted to overrule the election by force of arms.
How is that not an insurrection?
That the plan to do so was idiotic is irrelevant. It'd be like someone claiming not to have attempted murder by throwing somebody off a building because there happened to be something soft and yielding to catch the victim at the bottom.
Maybe I should make it a bit more clear. It seems a bit more to me like an angry mob who attempted to throw a grand mal tantrum with a pipe dream of trying to overturn election results via wishful thinking than a purposely planned attempt at insurrection done with foresight and conspiracy.
The American Civil War can be argued to be a planned insurrection with malice aforethought with the express purpose of defying the lawful government. This comes off more to me as the Whiskey Rebellion, which was more a bunch of angry people lashing out in anger than anything done as an organized plan.
Both organized conspiracy and unlawful riot are wrong, not disputing either, but aside from a bunch of fools forming an angry mob and making asses of themselves in an unlawful manner, I see no actual planned and calculated attempt to achieve an overthrow of the US government.
Their plan boiled down to if you can call it a plan:
1. Get riled up on social media.
2. Head down to Washington D.C. and make fools of themselves.
3. ????
4. Profit?
None of their actions would have resulted in any meaningful change, legally or otherwise. Putting them down would have been largely effortless and nothing they tried would have changed the lawful government of the United States in any manner recognized either domestically or foreign. It was a mob running high off stupid emotion from where I'm sitting, not a criminal conspiracy. It was still an unlawful excess that violated civil order and did pose a menace and deserved to be put down, but legally, aside from a loosely agreed plan to show up in the nation's capital largely based on knee jerk emotion, I've yet to set evidence of a coordinated attempt at unseating the U.S. government by force circa Jan 6, 2021 that would have made any coherent sense.
Besides, Trump was still legally president at the time, anything they did would have (and did) hurt him further, so it makes little sense this was a planned event that would constitute organized treason. All this did was further immolate Trump politically speaking, which was partially a result of him not knowing when to shut up on social media. In short, this was not so much planned malice as emotion-fueled stupidity. In the criminal field, this would be more, in a legal sense, a crime of passion, not carefully planned and executed malice.
Back in the context of the OP, this still would have the people trying to injure the government regardless, not the reverse.