The disturbing thought is "would they be in jail had they succeeded in dragging Pence bodily out and hanging him?"
They came very close to a successful coup. The protections in place got razor-thin on margin. As an engineer, that makes me question the robustness of the protections.
The Secret Service's ultimate loyalty is to the President.
And military loyalty is hierarchical. It doesn't take more than a handful of individuals to execute a takeover. Consider how Germany's military submitted to Nazi control. Consider the percentage of the US military that fought on the side of the Confederacy in 1861.
The disturbing thought is "would they be in jail had they succeeded in dragging
Pence bodily out and hanging him?"
We're fully into the realm of hypotheticals now, but I suspect not,
and we would be in a new history written by the victors - terrifying
as that would be.
As an engineer, that makes me question the robustness of the
protections.
Rightly so. And maybe we would be in another rotten phase of bloodshed
and chaos. But as a fellow engineer, maybe with a little more
scepticism, I question whether an engineering approach to human destiny
is such a great stance. Without asking "Protection of what, for whom,
from who, and to what end?" we're trying to engineer against change in
the abstract, without a full understanding of what that might be.
After all that's happened, all those people who supported Trump are
still around, and still harbouring their disaffected ideas. We must
deal with them as we find them, as fellow humans.
Silencing any group, no matter how much we disagree with them is only
a road to more trouble.
Anyway, I'll probably miss further in this thread, so an interesting
and thoughtful exchange, Thankyou.
Comments
For me the "proof" of the pudding is that the Jan 6 mob are all in jail. Actions were met with actions when the line was croseed.
The disturbing thought is "would they be in jail had they succeeded in dragging Pence bodily out and hanging him?"
They came very close to a successful coup. The protections in place got razor-thin on margin. As an engineer, that makes me question the robustness of the protections.
I can't imagine the Secret Service or the military would have been sympathetic beyond more than a handful of individuals.
The Secret Service's ultimate loyalty is to the President.
And military loyalty is hierarchical. It doesn't take more than a handful of individuals to execute a takeover. Consider how Germany's military submitted to Nazi control. Consider the percentage of the US military that fought on the side of the Confederacy in 1861.
We're fully into the realm of hypotheticals now, but I suspect not, and we would be in a new history written by the victors - terrifying as that would be.
Rightly so. And maybe we would be in another rotten phase of bloodshed and chaos. But as a fellow engineer, maybe with a little more scepticism, I question whether an engineering approach to human destiny is such a great stance. Without asking "Protection of what, for whom, from who, and to what end?" we're trying to engineer against change in the abstract, without a full understanding of what that might be.
After all that's happened, all those people who supported Trump are still around, and still harbouring their disaffected ideas. We must deal with them as we find them, as fellow humans.
Silencing any group, no matter how much we disagree with them is only a road to more trouble.
Anyway, I'll probably miss further in this thread, so an interesting and thoughtful exchange, Thankyou.