What to Say When Someone Says the Capitol Hill Insurrection Was No Big Deal Because it Failed

The latest more or less respectable response to the Capitol Hill riot of January 6 appears to be to dismiss it as unimportant since, after all, it failed.  The most obvious, if rather flippant, response is to say, so did the Beer Hall Putsch.  The problem with such a response is that its main effect will be to enrage.  You will probably meet with the response that you are comparing Trump to Hitler.  And it is true. To compare January 6 to the Beer Hall Putsch because both were failed attempts to overthrow democracy really is to compare Trump to Hitler.

On the other hand, if someone dismisses the January 6 insurrection because it failed and you say, so did Hugo Chavez' 1992 coup attempt, most people will not know what you are talking about. Let's face facts.  When this country was founded, the archetypal example of a failure of democracy was Rome.  Today it is Germany.  One of the reasons we have so many Nazi comparisons is that many people don't really have any other point of reference.

But we do need other points of comparison. I frankly think it is to the credit of Trump's detractors that we have come up with so many insults and forms of invective against the man that don't so much as hint at Hitler.  We call him the Short Fingered Vulgarian, the Orange Demagogue, the Orange Clown, Cheeto Jesus,* Pussy Grabber, Very Stable Genius, or VSG for short,** or Individual 1 (taken from the Michael Cohen indictment).  The final choice appears to have been simply "45" while in office and The Former Guy (TFG for short) after he left. Just as FDR's detractors called him "that man in the White House," referred to Trump as 45 or The Former Guy is refusing him the legitimacy that goes with speaking his name.  Our favorite insulting imagery does not show him as a fascist, but as a spoiled baby.  (Or a baby balloon, presumably to show that he is so much hot air).

Trump Baby Balloon

So if the Beer Hall Putsch is the only example you know of a failed attempt to overthrow democracy that ended up succeeding, but you don't want to compare Trump to Hitler, what can you do instead?  My advice would be, use computer imagery instead.  Have you ever downloaded an app and had a really hard time getting it to work?  Have you ever had the first attempt or two totally fail, but after getting the bugs worked out it worked like a charm?  Well guess what?  All across the country Trump supporters are at work getting the bugs worked out so that next time the want to use the app it will be working like a charm.

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*I don't recommend using this one, by the way.  This one does not mock Trump so much as it mocks his followers' religious fervor, which is both impolitic and in bad taste.

**Spoken in sarcastic tones, of course, but taken from what TFG actually called himself.