A putsch is a violent attempt to overthrow a government and what happened on the 6th of January 2021 was a putsch and I think it will turn out to be a more organized one that many currently believe. It was also not the first in this election cycle the disrupted plot my militia members to kidnap the governor of Michigan was also a putsch.

I believe that the seditionists on January 6 can be divided up into three elements, Useful Idiots, Trump Zealots, and Dedicated Insurrections.

The Useful Idiots are people of the rank-and-file GOP base that arrived at Washington D.C. that day to bleat and cry about stolen elections, make a lot of noise, but without any plans to actually do anything of substance. They are the ones most likely to believe that the vice-president actually had the power to throw out the election and most likely comprised the majority of the mob. Every army needs cannon-fodder and that are usually unaware that has been their designation. These would have been the cosplayers to the revolution.

Trump Zealots are the hard core and willing to be violent supports of Trump as strong man. I think that the ‘Proud Boys’ most likely fall into the element. These people are not particularly political but motivated more by hate, fear, and a deep desire for a social order that places them on top. It’s my opinion that these are the people who would have taken member of congress and the senate hostage and perhaps worse in their hatred of the world and would have fixed the eye of the media on themselves during the crisis. These are the people bearing flex cuffs and shouting for vice President Pence.

The third and by far most dangerous to our system of government were the Dedicated Insurrectionists. These men came armed, armored, and with a serious plan. They understood that the Pence couldn’t give the election to Trump and that the counting of the electoral ballots was the pivot joint to the transferer of power. These are the people who came with maps of the capitol’s underground tunnels and that ransacked not Nancy Pelosi’s office but rather the Senate Parliamentarian’s.

The Senate Parliamentarian is hardly a public figure of renown. I certainly could tell you their name with researching it and according to people who have worked in the capitol for years that office is obscure and not easily found. The insurrectionists that went there did so with a purpose and I think it was to find and destroy the paper ballots of the Electoral College.

If those ballots had been destroyed before they were counted congress could not have completed the presidential election of 2020. The Constitution makes no provisions for a ‘do over’ and all of the hard legislative deadlines were well past. The Constitution does clearly map out what happens if the Electoral College cannot select a president, Congress, voting by state delegation not individual members, elects the president and that would have given the office to Trump.

I have no faith, absolutely none at all, that the Republicans of this congress would have abandoned Trump for something so quaint as democracy and would have voted him in as president, some by cowardice, some by party loyalty over the nation, and some for sheer toadiness, but I have a certainty that would have been the outcome.

Perhaps as more come to light and the investigation progresses, we will discover things that makes these conclusions unsupported, if so, I will happily change my tune, but I think the opposite is more likely. As we uncover the facts of the failed plot, we will learn that more people were involved, perhaps people of high office, and that the putsch came dangerously close to succeeding.