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Trump's Coup d'état.

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cosmicaug said:
We can call it fear mongering but perhaps fear is the proper response. You need to treat a real danger as real in order to manage it. The notion that it magically "can't happen here" because of reasons is an awful framing. Acknowledging that it could happen here is the proper framing.

I think he's unlikely to get away with it. Unlikely does not mean impossible, however (though it asymptotically approaches impossible with every passing day). He should not get a pass for his incompetence though: he is attempting a coup (and yes, it counts even if he's not, presumably, counting on the military stepping in —I think it has only been Skeptic Ginger who brought up military support as if somehow it was implied or needed).

We have gotten lucky in that this election was not close and that, rather than some alleged decency of state level Republicans, is at least one thing that has kept the sort of shenanigans needed to overturn the election at bay. Trump was not even very subtle about telegraphing an exclusive focus on Pennsylvania & their initial moves were consistent with that. However, the results we got require overturning more than PA, which they clearly had not expected nor planned for (turning the whole enterprise into this bizarrely incompetent improvisational effort now led by the inimitably deranged Giuliani).

Right now, the Wayne County Board of Canvassers relented & certified their county results because of public pressure. That pressure, presumably premised on outrage at this attempted coup, is as it should be (it's good that everyone did not simply ignore it because it allegedly couldn't succeed). Others are watching what happened with this canvassing board and the fact that it went down as it did matters. If, instead, this had turned into a weeks long certification standoff it also would have mattered (having the effect of possibly emboldening others). GOP politicians are on standby because they are trying to figure out what other GOP politicians are trying to do. Hopefully, this will collapse like a house of cards at some point (but it should not be treated as some sort of inevitability).

Calling it a con, is not helpful We all know it's a con. It can be both a con and an attempted coup. It can even be a con and successful. Just look at these last 4 years: if his presidential campaign was a con (which I think it was: I think it is likely that the presidency did not even particularly interest him), then it was a successful con.
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Is there a "what should I do" in there somewhere?


Because if not, I'm sticking with: "don't buy into the con". I actually think that framing has useful consequences.
 
The core message of Trump and his Republican supporters is this:

Democracy doesn't work, because it is too susceptible to fraud.

For the good of America, we have to abandon Democracy.
 
Well this thread has convinced me the imprisonment of the MAGA bomber was a travesty of justice because he was far too incompetent to be considered a real threat. He should just have been ignored until he proved he could build a bomb that would blow up.
 
Shadowdweller said:
The Nazi Party was laughed off by the German public after the Beer Hall Putsch as well.
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I suggest we stop worrying about Godwin for at least the immediate future.

It’s said that it’s not so much that history repeats itself, but that it rhymes. I think it’s critical that we examine how other Democracies have fallen, and how authoritarianism begins, takes hold and eventually prevails.

We have to be alert for what modern analogues of historic events may be. Will we have a pseudo Kristallnacht, but perhaps with immigrants or Muslims as the target rather than Jews? When does “MAGA-Hat-Wearing” start to resemble “Brown-Shirt-Wearing? What would the modern equivalent of the Reichstag Fire look like?

I never in my wildest dreams expected to seriously consider any of the above. But I also never expected the crumbling of norms and checks-and-balances, nor the hijacking of the Justice and State Departments and the pathetic subservience of an entire political party to the interest of one man. But here we are.
 
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The Great Zaganza said:
Trump's coup is more along the lines of Erdogan or Orban.
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The USA is currently more along the lines of Duck Soup (Danish title: En tosset diktator = A Crazy Dictator):
"The last man nearly ruined this place, he didn’t know what to do with it
If you think this country’s bad off now, just wait till I get through with it"
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(I guess it’s easier to laugh for people who don’t live in Freedonia.)
 
Fast Eddie B said:
... It’s said that it’s not so much that history repeats itself, but that it rhymes. I think it’s critical that we examine how other Democracies have fallen, and how authoritarianism begins, takes hold and eventually prevails. ...
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There was a historian interviewed the other day on cable news, Thomas Ricks, whose new book, First Principles, examines this point, which I agree is important. It would seem many involved in drafting the Constitution had examined republics in antiquity and found they inevitably failed and ended in tyranny, leading Madison, among others, to create a model of governance with widely dispersed power (lots of power to the States, three branches, etc) so that it would be theoretically hard for anyone to have access to all the levers of power at once. Or so I gathered from the interview.

Not sure there are all that many examples of republics in antiquity such as to draw firm conclusions; however and nevertheless, there are at least two seemingly irreconcilable opposing forces that seem, in my mind, to doom democracy in the end:
  1. The pendulum that swings along with capital as it first flees royal whim (taxes, cronyism, confiscation), then flees popular will (taxes), then embraces tyranny to put down the popular will (Germany 1930s, a factor in the USA since the 1960s), but then faces a form of royal whim once again, only to support a new distribution of power... rinse and repeat.
  2. The clear need, recognized by the authors of the Constitution, for rationality to act as the foundation for functioning governance, especially in the courts and in legislation. This runs counter to the also clear fact that humans are fundamentally irrational and, save purposeful deliberation, will more often rationalize than reason, self-interest being blind to all that runs against it.
The consistent GOP attacks on government, taxes and regulation fit squarely into the first, and the advent of Donald Trump has shown that the second is perilously the case; i.e., that we need fact-based reasoning, now as a matter of life or death, but find there are many, as one nurse in SD writes, who literally go to their deaths still repeating the irrational memes taken from Trump. Whoa, that's some kinda nuts.

A less obvious but also critical issue, I find, is the lost sense of what it was to come in from the steppes and first settle in a civilized manner while yet cognizant of the extreme savagery and precarious life left behind, and all that has been gained, including key innovations, such as writing and a trade economy that allows for personal private property (this last having its own downside). In short, when Thatcher and Reagan declared that "there is no society, only individuals", unwittingly they were reclaiming... the extreme savagery of the steppes, the freedom of the axe-wielding tribesman hellbent on eliminating the competition the old fashioned way. And here we are.
 
Hlafordlaes said:
There was a historian interviewed the other day on cable news, Thomas Ricks, whose new book, First Principles, examines this point, which I agree is important. It would seem many involved in drafting the Constitution had examined republics in antiquity and found they inevitably failed and ended in tyranny, leading Madison, among others, to create a model of governance with widely dispersed power (lots of power to the States, three branches, etc) so that it would be theoretically hard for anyone to have access to all the levers of power at once. Or so I gathered from the interview.

Not sure there are all that many examples of republics in antiquity such as to draw firm conclusions; however and nevertheless, there are at least two seemingly irreconcilable opposing forces that seem, in my mind, to doom democracy in the end:
  1. The pendulum that swings along with capital as it first flees royal whim (taxes, cronyism, confiscation), then flees popular will (taxes), then embraces tyranny to put down the popular will (Germany 1930s, a factor in the USA since the 1960s), but then faces a form of royal whim once again, only to support a new distribution of power... rinse and repeat.
  2. The clear need, recognized by the authors of the Constitution, for rationality to act as the foundation for functioning governance, especially in the courts and in legislation. This runs counter to the also clear fact that humans are fundamentally irrational and, save purposeful deliberation, will more often rationalize than reason, self-interest being blind to all that runs against it.
The consistent GOP attacks on government, taxes and regulation fit squarely into the first, and the advent of Donald Trump has shown that the second is perilously the case; i.e., that we need fact-based reasoning, now as a matter of life or death, but find there are many, as one nurse in SD writes, who literally go to their deaths still repeating the irrational memes taken from Trump. Whoa, that's some kinda nuts.

A less obvious but also critical issue, I find, is the lost sense of what it was to come in from the steppes and first settle in a civilized manner while yet cognizant of the extreme savagery and precarious life left behind, and all that has been gained, including key innovations, such as writing and a trade economy that allows for personal private property (this last having its own downside). In short, when Thatcher and Reagan declared that "there is no society, only individuals", unwittingly they were reclaiming... the extreme savagery of the steppes, the freedom of the axe-wielding tribesman hellbent on eliminating the competition the old fashioned way. And here we are.
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Highlighted.

What you need is leaders, that see the country, the entire country, as something bigger than themselves and that they are in service of it. To all of it and all the citizens in it.
And not just giving lipservice to this ideal, but really believing it.
 
erwinl said:
Highlighted.

What you need is leaders, that see the country, the entire country, as something bigger than themselves and that they are in service of it. To all of it and all the citizens in it.
And not just giving lipservice to this ideal, but really believing it.
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Sure, but not just the leaders. The people must also cherish democracy and democratic ideals.

A lynchpin of democracy is a popular belief and trust in that form of government. In a democracy people may volunteer to participate in the franchise and vote. If enough people lose faith in that form of government, then that same franchise can be used to empower a leader with anti-democratic intentions.

If trust in democratic principles and government is eroded and people no longer trust their democracy, then that same franchise can be used to elect a tyrant. That seems to be what is happening now. Trump is telling his people that you cannot trust your democracy. Once that trust is destroyed, how do you get it back?
 
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Fast Eddie B said:
On point opinion piece in New York magazine.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/20...p-lindsey-graham-ron-desantis-fraud-vote.html
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Yup. :(

Quote from the article:

The popular Republican stance has been to indulge Trump’s lies while dismissing the danger he poses. “To launch a coup you need more than a giant, suppurating grievance and access to Twitter,” Wall Street Journal opinion columnist and former editor Gerard Baker scoffs. “You need a fanatical commitment, a detailed plan, an energy, a sophisticated apparatus of revolution.”

Not exactly. Those are the things one needs to carry out a coup. To merely launch a coup, you only need a party leader who refuses to abide by an election and recruits allies to cancel its result. That isn’t a fright story told by wild-eyed liberals. It’s what’s happening right now.
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If it doesn't work this time around, people in the US will have been softened up for four years and it will have been normalised by 2024.
 
But that's been Trump, and the Trumper's most favorite go-to excuse for a while now.

"We're being dramatic. He can't actually do it!" as an excuse because we don't want to watch him learn how far he can go.

Can Donald J. Trump successfully complete a dictionary definition, According to Hoyle, coup?

*Shrugs* Maybe, maybe not.

But outside of "Burn it all down" nihilism what's the point in seeing how close he can get?
 
The Don said:
If it doesn't work this time around, people in the US will have been softened up for four years and it will have been normalised by 2024.
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I'd say the system as a whole (not just attitudes in the electorate) has been eroded to make it easier (though certainly it started before Trump but the erosion has been accelerated & brought to light more under Trump). There's no doubt in my mind that the potential for damage from Trump's authoritarian nature is orders of magnitude greater in a hypothetical second term than on his first for multitude reasons. Most of that doesn't go away simply because candidate x in 2024 is someone other than Trump. Heck, there isn't even anything to stop some level of continuity with the Trump years (ie. Bill "everyone dies" Barr serving in a hypothetical 2024 administration).
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
Is there a "what should I do" in there somewhere?
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Here you go:

cosmicaug said:
...the Wayne County Board of Canvassers relented & certified their county results because of public pressure. That pressure, presumably premised on outrage at this attempted coup, is as it should be (it's good that everyone did not simply ignore it because it allegedly couldn't succeed).
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The basic idea is to vigorously push back whenever someone tries to steal the election, even if they are trying to jam up just one county.

Skeptic Ginger said:
Is there an action plan on any of those links, or just fret-festing?
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https://www.waynecounty.com/elected/clerk/board-of-canvassers.aspx

https://www.waynecounty.com/elected/commission/contact-us.aspx
 
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Fast Eddie B said:
I suggest we stop worrying about Godwin for at least the immediate future.

It’s said that it’s not so much that history repeats itself, but that it rhymes. I think it’s critical that we examine how other Democracies have fallen, and how authoritarianism begins, takes hold and eventually prevails.

We have to be alert for what modern analogues of historic events may be. Will we have a pseudo Kristallnacht, but perhaps with immigrants or Muslims as the target rather than Jews? When does “MAGA-Hat-Wearing” start to resemble “Brown-Shirt-Wearing? What would the modern equivalent of the Reichstag Fire look like?

I never in my wildest dreams expected to seriously consider any of the above. But I also never expected the crumbling of norms and checks-and-balances, nor the hijacking of the Justice and State Departments and the pathetic subservience of an entire political party to the interest of one man. But here we are.
Click to expand...
I remember when you were a quite a strident Republican or rather conservative when the two were meant to be synonymous. It's a credit to you that you didn't let your political beliefs cloud your judgement over the last 4 years. If more people had your honesty we wouldn't have got to this stage.
 
lomiller said:
Is there a mechanism to rescind these votes? This could just be Republicans wanting to play both sides. They vote one way, but then tell their base they rescinded that vote but the evil liberals counted it anyway.
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There are a few things going on here.

The Republicans changed their vote after a compromise that asked for an audit of Wayne County. The Dems say that the ask was never a certainty and the state official has not signed on, far as I know. The Republicans say they believed that the compromise was that an audit would be done, not just requested.

I reckon that an audit is reasonable and ought to be granted, though I don't know that it should delay the statewide certification.

The second is that Trump contacted one of the Republicans by phone. She insists she did not feel pressured to change her vote a second time and he was just expressing support regarding the flak she had initially received. Even if what she's saying is true and no attempt to change her mind again was intended by this sensitive and empathetic president, the call was ridiculously inappropriate.
 
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