I agree re: the inherent issues with attempting to look impartial and the asymmetric tactics of stakeholders. That is what I was referencing with Trump’s team looking to capitalise on it, and the consequences of that.
And you may very well be right about his most militant supporters actually being weaker than many believe. I certainly hope you are.
But we have seen in the past initial insurrection attempts fail, be called weak and feeble by learned analyst and laymen alike, the danger and likelihood of a more systematic and effective attempt being widely downplayed, and the ringleader of that attempt not being dealt with earnestly and appropriately by the very court system they were looking to destroy, only for the second insurrection to be horrifically successful. The Beer Hall Putsch, the subsequent trial of Hitler and other members of Kampfbund, and Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor in 1933, after the success of the Nazi Party the following elections, comes to mind. Eerily, both the Munich Putsch and the 6th January Insurrection involved around 2,000 people.
In fact, there are so many uneasy parallels between the events in Germany between 1922 and 1932 and the events of the last 10 years or so in the US that what America is currently seeing makes a student of history quite apprehensive.
Often the mere act of proving something is actually possible—in this case that there was a large enough group of Americans willing to storm and occupy, however incompetently or cowardly, the capital building in Trump’s name—makes its reoccurrence much more probable in the future. That’s especially the case when considering idealogical exposure and media amplification effects.
But, as you say, this is indeed quite a lot of conjecture.
All we can do now as influence what we can for the outcome we want (for we non-US citizens that is a fairly limited opportunity) and hope for the best, whilst preparing for the worst.
Oh, and mercilessly take the piss out of Don Poorleone and his cronies.