Ah, yes, I heard variations on this song, "Don't blame the Republican voters, they're all just dupes" for thirty years in America, while the country ran to the right as fast as it could.

This is a cousin of the slogan, "We are against the war but support the troops", which took the US anti-war movement from being able to shake the country to a powerless token opposition. (Comparing the huge crowds demonstrating against Bush's Iraq War to the handful of principled individuals demonstrating against Obama's Libya war was eye-opening to me.)

And what's your reasoning? "The Democrats might have done the same thing in 2016, but didn't?" Why should that convince anyone?

Ever talked to any of these delusional Republicans? I have - an awful lot of them. I hate to break it to you, but they want to believe these terrible lies. They deliberately choose to believe them, and often, to pretend to believe them!

If you politely ask a lot of questions, eventually almost everyone will let it slip. I remember the mother of my girlfriend at the start of the Iraq War saying, "Look, Tom, everyone knows that Iraq had nothing to do with anything, but we had to push some Arab country up against the wall and slap it around to show we meant business." (Her husband bragged about the black men he had killed as a cop, and said, "I believe in God, and guns" - this, a man never known to either go to church or quote the Bible.)

The participants in the coup were completely clear what they were doing - they were starting a revolution, which means taking up arms against elected officials simply because you don't like the results.

They should get the same penalty that America would give to group of dark-skinned Arab-American Muslims who broke into the Capitol with weapons, injuring police officers, stealing things, and smearing their shit all over the walls, after loudly proclaiming their intention of violently overthrowing the government. Cruel, but fair.