Over the past 24 hours, I've seen no shortage of very dumb and short-sighted takes by various internet radicals in support of yesterday's attempted coup. The typical argument is something like "hell yeah, it's about time someone stormed the Capitol Building! I might not agree with why these particular rioters were doing it, but I'm still glad they took action against all those corrupt tyrannical scumbag politicians."
And thankfully, I've also seen plenty of counter-arguments from other anti-authoritarian and anti-establishment political activists who actually have some sense. Most of these counter-arguments correctly point out that this insurrection had the goal of ensuring that a wannabe dictator would illegitimately stay in office against the democratic wishes of the populace, which is a step even further away from freedom, not towards it.
But there's another aspect that I haven't seen touched on: specifically, the likely consequences of this coup attempt. The rioters were horribly mistaken in thinking that this would help Trump stay in office; instead, there's a good chance he'll be ousted two weeks ahead of schedule over this.
And the radicals who think this is somehow a victory for anti-government rebellion in general are similarly mistaken; there's a very good chance this incident will just give the government an excuse to implement even more authoritarian and draconian security measures, in the name of ensuring that nothing like this ever happens again.
The end result of this is going to be Surveillance State 2.0, with Joe Biden at the helm - which is far from the outcome that either the Trumpers or the anti-authoritarian radicals were hoping for, but that's what happens when you act without a plan, prioritize "symbolic victories" over practical ones, and fail to account for backlash effects.
