It was an auto-coup.
The morons interrupting the certification were one part of it and they were largely successful, they delayed the proceedings for hours. What they were doing wasn't the objective, just a necessary step.
All the other steps failed.
The fact you dismiss this as no big deal is just evidence of the fact you don't care about democracy or America as long as you get what you want.
I'm Canadian, but I do care about democracy. A lot.
I just can't wrap my head around the hypothetical end game of Jan 6:
a. I don't get how delaying a largely symbolic procedure was supposed to play any sort of role in any sort of overturning of the will of the people. I mean, I get that "it failed," but how could it possibly not fail? Surely there's not some procedural loophole that is going to have any sort of real world chance at overturning the will of the electorate "if only we can buy a little more time." It feels a little like a "Mike Pence can just cancel the whole election if he feels like it" sort of thing to me.
b. More importantly, I don't get how you enlist a few thousand people as conscious co-conspirators to this odd attempted coup. And without the Secret Service getting wind of it to shut it down? That's an awful terrifyingly large group of superhumanly disciplined tight knit insurgents.
This isn't me downplaying anything. I'm just the sort who likes to pin things down in a precise way that makes sense.
So far, what makes sense to me is:
a. Yes, Trump had some strange people around him who had all sorts of weird theories about how you could game the system with quasi-legal end arounds and declare yourself president for life. Not the first time I've seen this sort of thing in American politics (I remember when Hilary supporters figured she could still beat Obama for the nomination after losing the primaries if she could rally some superdelegates... and the Dems had a plan for Pence to overturn a democratic election before Trump's crew did). But, yes, Trump et al took it to the next level. Still doesn't feel like it had any shot at working.
b. The whole storming of the Capital on January 6 was the entirely unpredictable end result of an over hyped and massively attended protest turned mob. We've seen mobs try to storm buildings before, with various degrees of success. Their success in breaching the defenses on Jan 6 was almost entirely due to the massive size of the crowd. Feels way to unpredictable to be part of the larger plan, and feels like an outrageous conspiracy to suggest the mob was in on that plan.
It's serious stuff, either way, but I can't bring myself to wrap it up in a narrative that doesn't make any sort of logical sense to me. I don't see the need to try to paint it as something more (or less) than what it was.
If we're looking for something egregious connected to Jan 6, it's the continued drum beat of politicians and certain media sources trading in the idea that the election was stolen. You're playing with fire with that stuff. It brings the temperature up and before you know it you've reached a boiling point and you have a mob storming the capital. And then for Trump to kick back and cheer it on in private rather than speaking out and trying to cool things down (which he had the power to do had he wanted to) is just beyond the pale.
