the federal government isn’t a building or a group of congresspeople. it’s the power we collectively cast as a populace. there was no chance those few hundred people would overthrow our government that way. the real threat is the power concentrating in fewer and fewer hands. that’s how we go from democracy to oligarchy to dictatorship. that’s the threat model. stop fearing the disorderly and the disenfranchised like the powerful want you to (effectuated via the media gaze and political rhetoric), but rather focus on how to disperse power and wealth more widely (as the framers intended) to keep that primary threat at bay.
I fear the installment of an autocrat. Whether through slow corruption from the inside in politics, through concentration of wealth or something such as the event from last week. The difference, in the event of last week, was the reality of that happening could have been hastened immensely.
I don't like our current system, but the slow decay gives us the ability to work towards the aims which you have stated on more preferable terms.
no, that's exactly the misguided fear that deflects concern from where it should be placed. last week was nothing. it was a small and relatively powerless group of people lashing out at an increasingly captive system. that we can no longer mostly elect non-millionaire presidents and congresspeople is the real threat.
It was still very much a thing. A symptom of many other even more problematic things.
The sitting president directly used its office, power, platform to try to stop a democratic process, and launch/command an attack against a different branch of the government (the legislature). Even if that attack was purely symbolic. (... though calling it symbolic while people died is not entirely right.)
A radicalized subgroup of the fanaticized Trump cult used force to thwart a democratic process they deemed fake/undemocratic. And they managed to successfully pause that process for considerable amount of time.
Especially the stark contrast between the interaction of police and Trump cultists compared to police and BLM protesters points to an other serious problem.
...
That powerless group of people includes the sitting president, a bunch of senators and representatives, and they had a very very real chance of winning the election.
That same powerless group, at least a part of it that choose to do so, managed to basically stroll into the Capitol, loot it, and go away unharmed. (They got tear gassed eventually.) And this group included an elected state representative, various police officers, veterans, lawyers, and other not exactly powerless members of society.
This is about status, which is about perception. Conservative ideology is about social order, the status quo. This 'powerless group' wants to maintain their power, despite the results of the democratic process - which is designed to measure exactly that peacefully.
This is very much a thing. It's a serious ongoing thing. It has been ongoing forever though. And it's going to go on for ... well, probably forever too, but that only means other will have to expend energy to actively push that status quo toward a more fair equilibrium (or set-point).
you're confusing groups and events to lay out a conflated narrative filled with pointed, fearful language. the protesters who occupied the capitol were relatively powerless. those are the people we, as other relatively powerless people, should not fear. the politicians (and lawyers and media) whipping up fear and frenzy based on that situation should be viewed very skeptically. those protesters had no power to overthrow our government, in this or any other conceivable action (because of the foresight of our founders as enshrined and amended in our constitution).
politicians, however, are in such a position, though even that is a relatively remote possibility. luckily trump had no chance of retaining the presidency, by force or otherwise, mostly because he's too self-absorbed, and frankly stupid, to effectively consolidate power like xi jinping or putin did.
