Insurrections are common but yesterday’s aborted insurrection on Capitol Hill was unique, because the purpose of mobilising a mass of people and deploying their sheer momentum against the edifices of power — a Royal or Presidential Palace, or a Parliament — is of course to take power through the very act of seizing that iconic building.
But that is logically quite impossible when the ruler is not the enemy to be replaced but rather the intended beneficiary of the insurrection.
