{"id":3645,"date":"2021-01-12T01:46:16","date_gmt":"2021-01-12T08:46:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/?p=3645"},"modified":"2021-01-12T16:09:51","modified_gmt":"2021-01-12T23:09:51","slug":"storming-the-capitol","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/2021\/01\/12\/storming-the-capitol\/","title":{"rendered":"Storming the Capitol"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Habib Fanny’s answer to What do you think about the fact that 45% of Republicans said they strongly or somewhat support the storming of the Capitol? <\/a><\/em>correctly points out that the reported figure is nonsense. But the somewhat smaller numbers that may not support the storming but fail to consider it an attempted coup do not really disturb me.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t actually think it was an attempted coup myself, in any but a few<\/i> of the perpetrators\u2019 and instigators\u2019 minds. What I think most of them thought<\/i> they were doing is attempting to shame, rather than coerce, the Republican senators into acknowledging the rampant fraud that they were convinced those senators really believed had happened.<\/p>\n

And I actually feel some sympathy for the sense of profound disrespect and contempt that people like that correctly sense as coming from people like me.<\/p>\n

Also (drifting even a bit more off-topic from the question here) I don\u2019t really mind the doomed-to-fail legislators\u2019 challenges and protests. Whichever way a US election goes there is often an objection<\/a> at that stage from part of the losing side, and these do need to be heard and voted down.<\/p>\n

In fact some of the objecting legislators\u2019 speeches were not so much making claims of fraud as claims of non-transparency, and while I do favour mail-in or internet ballots, both in the current special circumstances and going forward, I think that it is not unreasonable for some to feel that the verification process needs to be reviewed and perhaps modified for future elections – both in the US and here in Canada. For example, when I submitted my mail-in ballot in our recent BC election, I was both annoyed by the silly extra \u201csecrecy\u201d envelope and troubled by the fact that with our current mail-in voting procedures we make a mockery of the idea of a secret ballot as there was nothing to prevent my wife from demanding to see my ballot and offering punishment or reward in order to control how I filled it in. (And I could well imagine churchfulls of fundamentalist bigots getting together for a communal voting event in which there would be a lot of social pressure to conform to the community leaders\u2019 preferences.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Habib Fanny’s answer to What do you think about the fact that 45% of Republicans said they strongly or somewhat support the storming of the Capitol? correctly points out that the reported figure is nonsense. But the somewhat smaller numbers … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3645"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3647,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3645\/revisions\/3647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}