How Close?

Trump allies pushed memo arguing the NSA should be used to find evidence of election fraud. “Amateur hour,” one person called it. “I was not impressed with these people,” said another. https://t.co/nKOJxALnl3

— Devlin Barrett (@DevlinBarrett) February 3, 2022

I keep reading about how close Trump came to affecting his “coup.” Yet his every move was stymied: by the courts, by the law, the bureaucracy, the government itself.

Some stories say the invaders in the Capitol were going to steal the EC certificates and replace them with the fakes.  Somebody in that mob maybe had that plan; if they did, they were as much mooks as the idiots in the White House (including the Idiot-in-Chief).  The documents in the fancy boxes carried in by the young ladies (hey, I'm old!) were not the only copies in existence.  The National Archives had a copy, too. And contrary to the la-la land magical thinking of whoever cooked up this "fake electors" scheme, the documents in the House on January 6, 2021, did not have magical powers.  It's rather like imagining if someone destroyed the "original" Constitution in the National Archives, our government would fall.  The text of the Constitution is preserved whether the original is lost or not.  The text of the ballots was preserved, and frankly neither copy (the one in Congress that day, the one still at the National Archives) is irreplaceable.

Especially in this information age, it's all data.  Yes, documents are needed for some purposes.  Presumably some of the documents Trump tore into quarters had to be taped together to preserve the documentation of their content, and the idea that the POTUS had seen them.  But the texts were undoubtedly available on digital files somewhere.  That Trump still thinks tearing documents into four pieces somehow destroys a paper trail connecting to him betrays how little he's had to do with government investigations in decades.  I'm old enough to remember being ushered into a room full of paper relating to a construction project our client (an engineering firm) was being sued over.  Blueprints, memos, correspondence; you name it.  This was in the 80's.  My brother is a retired architect; he was one of the last in the firm (he was a partner, he could do as he wished) to still draw on paper.  My daughter trained, and now works, as what we used to call a "draftsman."  She learned to do it all on computer.  She doesn't own a T-square, or a drawing board, or drafting pencils.  Today that room full of documents I saw would be available on a small USB connectable device. Nobody would fill a room with paper; the drive could simply be delivered to me.*  Nobody uses paper anymore.  Paper is residual.  It's a by-product.  The "real" product is what you are reading right now:  information entered into a program and displayable on demand in any number of locations.  I mean, if I had to print this out and distribute it by mail, why would I bother?

The fake electors were idiots led to believe they were doing the work of God or democracy (the secular religion of America is that God is America).  It didn't take much to lead some of them over that cliff; they're adults, they went willingly enough.  If they find themselves falling into the hands of prosecutors, I cannot but support that.  Criminal punishment doesn't always blunt criminal activity (but then we tend to criminalize too much activity in America), but it certainly deters middle-class people from giving themselves powers they don't have.  I would be happy to see these dopes who tried to overturn the will of the people punished for their hubris and ignorance, as a lesson that we the people don't tolerate that shit.  It won't end with people hanging from lampposts, but it will be as startling and decisive a statement as that old cliche is supposed to be.

I sometimes think the worst part of the discussions of the Trump Administration and January 6 is that the people talking are as ignorant as Trump.  It does go a long way towards explaining why he still has a grip on our public consciousness, though.

*What I got then were copies, made from the documents I marked and labeled.  Those copies were made into copies for exhibits in the depositions we conducted, and would have been proved up as if originals in trial.  The process would be no different for digital copies, and would save a lot of trees.