Capitol Hill: call that a coup?

Assuming that the crowd had been successful in detaining, or worse killing, the Democratic, and perhaps Republican, leadership, what then? With no army on side, would the police just stand by?

But just for a moment assume that, despite all the evidence, I'm wrong so far - that the army was prepared to back Trump, and that there was some real chance that the Pennsylvania Avenue rabble could have some how detained or destroyed every hostile member of congress - how would Trump run the country?

He couldn't get some sectors of the public service to do what he wanted when he was a duly elected President. That would have suddenly gotten a lot harder. In fact, if he were staging a coup, he'd need a substantial leadership group that was in on the conspiracy and could ensure that there were enough government employees prepared to work for the country to continue to function. There is no sign of any such group – his advisors were working in the courts, not the streets.

Then there is the Federation. Myanmar doesn't seem to be a genuine federation, but the US does. A Trump coup would have been resisted by at least half the states, many of which have refused to enforce federal laws in normal times, let alone in the chaos that would have ensued a coup.

Each state has a National Guard, which is part of a national body, but under joint state and federal command. Whose command would they follow? This is civil war.

So what was Trump doing urging his supporters to "peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard" by marching to the Capitol?

Trump was pursuing his rights in the court of public opinion. He was using legitimate democratic means to put maximum pressure on his Republican colleagues, and maybe some Democrats, to inquire into the election results and not to certify them.

This is something he'd honed to perfection during his election campaign and since. In a country where most pollsters and media organisations are venal and polls represent their preferred scenarios rather than reality, his best demonstration of support was to get people out on the streets.

While Biden "hid" in his basement, or talked to carparks full of COVID-safe voters sitting in their cars, Trump filled stadiums with risk-tolerant COVID-not-so-safe voters who boogied with him to the sounds of the Village People and called out "Make America Great Again".

Street marches and protests are tactics that anti-Trump activists had been using right from the day after he was elected, starting with the "Pussy Hat" marches and culminating in the BLM/Antifa "Summer of Love" in 2020.

The Democratic leadership must know all of this, and didn't need Myanmar to demonstrate just how coups work (as well as the sorts of countries where the conditions exist for them to work). If they really thought Trump had planned and miscued a coup, then they'd be trying him in a real court, to a standard of proof beyond reasonable doubt, in front of the judges who he's appointed, so he really would go down in the database of history as a villain.

Instead they are conducting a show trial for the propaganda purpose of revving-up their own base, and tarnishing the mainstream reputation of any Republican who doesn't vote with them.

That not even a script-writer for a B-Grade Marvel Comic movie would think the plot was in anyway plausible doesn't seem to trouble them, but it might trouble the American people. They know the US isn't Myanmar, or Venezuela, or Cuba, or anywhere else where coups are a fact of life.