All right. Into the comments section of this oft silly Peter Van Buren attack on General Miley’s attack on Trump to find what people wish to argue the events of 1/6 compare to…

(1) Reichstag Fire. And to be sure, Van Buren does spot the difference — Hitler was already Chancellor and most of his way to total power!

(2) I’ve never seen the events of Jan6 likened to the Reichstag fire. Besides, I think they more resembled the failed 1923 Munich revolution – hastily planned, carried out by angry militia types without military support, and led by a guy who talked big and claimed to be in the midst of the fighting, but who was nowhere near the action and who got a slap on the wrist afterwards by authorities as punishment. Sounds better. The thing was a farce, but a farce that cannot be dismissed. One thing worth noting, in contemporaneous quick history accounts for 1928 when Hitler was still a footnote in German politics, the thing was called the “Ludendorff — Hitler Putsch”, the two names flipped as Hitler moved out of “footnote” stays.

Hitting somewhat closer to the bone, this one receives the most substantial give and take and sparring.

Except that, during the Beer Hall Putsch:

= Hitler had thousands of armed followers
– Government officials were detained at the beginning of the coup attempt
– Hilter acted to have the support of military officials
– Hitler sought to ally his efforts with existing authorities within the government
– Efforts were made to take control of military installations

That’s a far cry from a couple hundred people pushing their way into a building with flags and signs.

Except that, during the Jan. 6 self-coup attempt:

= Trump “had thousands of armed followers.”
-The followers attempted to detain government officials.
-Trump “acted to have the support of military officials,” perhaps.
-Trump “sought to ally his efforts with existing authorities within the government,” including inside Congress and state Secretaries of State.
-“Efforts were made to take control of” civilian installations

That’s a far cry from a couple hundred people pushing their way out of a Munich beer hall.

Fair to suggest that the road to autocratic power differs substantially — though it appears Trump had the rudiments of a plan in place — leaning heavily to the key state auditors.

(3). I wonder if Miley would apply his terminology to the pink-hat feminists who physically invaded the capitol during the Kavanaugh hearings; directly, personally intimidated US Senators trying to exercise their lawful obligations concerning the Supreme Court; and subsequently delayed Kavanaugh from taking office by forcing a postponement of the vote. I suspect not. Yet other than the ideological leanings, it’s hard to find many meaningful differences between that and 1/6.

Hm. Something there when Cindy Sheehan was barred from attending Bush State of the Union address, clearly for fear that she would act as Republican Representative Joe Wilson (in a more official capacity than Sheehan) did a few years later — and whose committed an act far more disruptive than what Republicans derided Speaker Pelosi for when she dramatically ripped up her copy of Trump’s speech after it was delivered. As it were, when I read the coverage in The Nation with an aside thrown in that they hope that woman can tie up Senator Flake in an elevator again, I really had to appreciate the partisan lenses in imagining how this would flip in approval /outrage should the parties be flipped. Boorish behavior or speaking truth to power aside, we remain far afield from seizing to retain the Executive Branch.

(4) In 1954, 1971 and 1983 when they* blew up bombs in the capital was that called a coup? No it wasn’t. * They were all leftist of one flavor or another.

The most useless and uninteresting of analogies. Individual acts of historic terrorism by lone actors. Eisenhower, Nixon, and Reagan are not in the picture.

(5) The media tried to do the same thing with “Charlottesville”, but it didn’t work cause it’s obviously a melodramatic attempt to memorialize something as “the greatest threat to democracy” that clearly was a mild protest by unarmed people.

And after all this, we just quote Trump on “good people on both sides” — the National Review defending on grounds of “he wasn’t speaking of the Nazis, it was the Confederate Monuments debate!” — though there I slide into the realm of “game set and match — there are good people with illiberal views, but they step away from this group of jackals”. But this moves to the attempt of an equivalence (or over a equivalence) on the further the antics of …

(6) Violent crime up-tiks tied in with “defending the police” calls and the heights of the blm protests, with recurrent “antifa” hit and runs, within the framework of the covid shutdowns. The intrusion into arguments on 1/6 present the own question — can you discuss two separate and fundamentally different problems without utilizing one as a rejoinder and stop cudgel against the other?

On the same website, much the same argument on much the same topic and we get this: One accuser even speculated that Trump may have been Moscow’s agent as far back as 1987 during the Soviet era—not the usual avocation of a capitalist billionaire. Do we have to dip into the move Network and the line about “what — do you think the Soviet government is studying and debating Karl Marx?”

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