Coup/protest in the US

Trumps army of stormtroopers are mostly those that call the fringe of society home...basement dwellers, conspiracy theorists and those sorts...mostly harmless...they are indeed truly special, as in SASSA special... - no wonder they get pulled in by the most special of them all...Trump...DC was effectively protected by those security types that we see in our local shops...- still does not excuse the shitfest of yesterday... but kinda get why they were not on anyone's radar...and were not taken seriously...what no one could anticipate how many of them specials there are in the US... calling it an insurrection ... nah, just a whole lot of crazy with not enough adults to keep them at bay.
 
BBC Live:
21:51
Sergeant-at-arms Paul Irving, who was responsible for maintaining law and order in the US House of Representatives, has resigned.

His resignation was announced by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi at her press conference moments ago.

The top Democrat also said that she is calling for the resignation of Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund, who she says has not spoken to her on the phone once since violence was unleashed on the Capitol yesterday.

Earlier today, her counterpart in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, said he would fire the Senate's sergeant-at-arms once Democrats become the majority in the chamber.
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20:49
Transport Secretary Elaine Chao has resigned over the events at the Capitol.

"Yesterday, our country experienced a traumatic and entirely avoidable event as supporters of the president stormed the Capitol building following a rally he addressed.

"As I'm sure is the case with many of you, it has deeply troubled me in a way that I simply cannot set aside," she said.

Her resignation takes effect from Monday, nine days before President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration.
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20:41
Boris Johnson -- until now -- has been consistently reticent to wade into direct personal criticisms of President Trump.

But, after the riots in Washington last night, and with only a fortnight until the President leaves the White House, the Prime Minister has just been much more direct.

In answer to a question from my colleague Alex Forsyth -- “was Donald Trump responsible for inciting the crowds that stormed the Capitol?" -- Mr Johnson said it had been "completely wrong" of the President to "consistently cast doubt" on the election result.

In saying he would "unreservedly condemn encouraging people to behave in the disgraceful way they did" his criticism was forthright and direct.

Not just a condemnation of what happened, but a condemnation of the President's behaviour.

Politically, this is easier to do when you know the man in question is on his way out in a couple of weeks, but it is nonetheless significant.
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19:13
Former Attorney General Bill Barr says his former boss' actions yesterday, as a mob stormed the Capitol, were a “betrayal of his office and supporters”.

Barr resigned last month after publicly disputing President Trump's claims of widespread fraud in the presidential election.

“Orchestrating a mob to pressure Congress is inexcusable,” he said in a statement to AP News.
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Thoughtful analysis, and warnings for SA:
www.dailymaverick.co.za

Heed the DC insurrection, for South Africa is a first-class candidate for widespread constitutional delinquency

The rise of fascist politics into the mainstream in many countries has much to do with increasing levels of inequality and governmental disregard for the citizenry, save for the short period leading u…
www.dailymaverick.co.za www.dailymaverick.co.za
US exceptionalism may be a nonsense to most of the world, but at times in its history America has comported itself as a constitutional democracy. After the violence in its capital, Washington, DC, on Wednesday, it is clear that a significant segment of the US population prefers fascism to democracy.

Remember, more than 74 million Americans voted for an incompetent narcissist. As the Yale University philosopher Jason Stanley has written in a recent book How Fascism Works (a compulsory read for anyone concerned about the future of democracy), the US has seen a dramatic movement toward unifying all key public institutions around loyalty to a single leader and where the Republican Party has increasingly been defined by way of fealty to Donald Trump.
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Nemoneiros said:
Someone watched their old awb vhs tapes?

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Snap! Interesting analysis with a local angle:
www.dailymaverick.co.za

Trump will be gone: Now begins the struggle to rebuild US democracy

As the aftermath of the shocking events of 6 January sink in, the reality is that the institutions of government have survived the earthquake intact. Donald Trump, having overreached and bungled his l…
www.dailymaverick.co.za www.dailymaverick.co.za
The motley army of conspiracy nuts, cranks, braggarts, dead-enders and outright lunatics who stormed the Capitol on Wednesday was reminiscent of the AWB troopers who smashed their way into Kempton Park’s World Trade Centre in June 1993 with an armoured vehicle while the Codesa negotiators, including Cyril Ramaphosa, took cover under desks.

Both groups were deluded into believing that a storming of the Bastille moment of theatre could stop history in its tracks, but they were ridden over instead.
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Unlike the AWB, the MAGA crowd were incited to launch their violent coup by a man who for the next few days remains President of the United States and still speaks for tens of millions of Americans who believe the lie that he was cheated out of the election.

The seriousness of the moment drove people to seek comfort in the words, of all people, of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who found Trump’s loyalty test to declare him the winner of the election a bridge too far.
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The Republican Party is now split between Trumpist fascists and run-of-the-mill conservatives. A vicious civil war in the party appears inevitable as Trump is not the kind of man to forgive or forget those, including his own Vice-President Mike Pence, who stabbed him in the back. The “revolution” is about to eat its children.
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The Republican Party is not a normal party that represents a specific ideology or even a set of values. The glue that holds it together is something deeper and more tribal in nature. Richard Nixon’s Southern strategy in the 1960s laid the basis for the Republican Party to become the movement of white identity politics.

The party has varied constituencies such as evangelical Christians, rich people who dislike taxes, corporations opposed to environmental regulation, militarists wrapping themselves in the flag and a range of special interest groups such as gun nuts. But its fundamental purpose is the pursuit of power which, as the country changes demographically and becomes more diverse, increasingly means minority rule. The rejection of democracy did not start with Trump.
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In order to win elections, the party depends on the base — largely white working-class and rural people, many resentful of big cities, liberal politics, immigrants and black people — which has now been hijacked by Trump. It is this cohort that lost its mind when a black president, Barack Obama, was elected in 2008 and, spurred on by opportunists in the Republican Party, became a populist horde identifying as the “Tea Party”.

They and others have morphed into the Trump cult, attracted by the Dear Leader’s pungent racism, authoritarian charisma and incessant lies.
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The dramatic events of the day overshadowed a more significant development for the future of the country. The outcome of the special elections in Georgia on Tuesday gave Democrats unified control of the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives for the first time since 2011, albeit with thin margins.
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