Subject: Re: Jan 6 picnicker gets 5 years
"Even with all that, these murderous nutjobs would still not be an actual threat to our democracy. Jeez, do these guys have superpowers or something? Without a carefully curated and sizeable band of co-conspirators and allies coordinated throughout the military and DOJ, this effort was guaranteed to fail. What is so hard to understand about that?"

It is hard to understand because it isn't a realistic view of what your opponents are saying. The point of the people 'peacefully having a picnic' at the Capital wasn't to directly overthrow the government themselves. It was to cause confusion and chaos and delay the certification of the election so democracy could be overcome by other means. The 'peaceful people having a picnic' who were beating up police officers and yelling for the hanging of Mike Pence were just useful idiots used by people in power who were more than willing to use their positions to overthrow a lawful and fair election. The useful idiots in themselves were not a real threat to democracy.

That still doesn't mean that since they were not DIRECTLY a threat to democracy, that democracy itself wasn't threatened by other actors.