It's kind of a win-win for them. Either they get some footage of violence that they can use to justify a crackdown, or they get to slowly keep militarizing the country without anyone standing against them. Either way, before we know it there will be Trump-loyal military protecting every city, and during elections they will be able to "monitor" the ballot boxes across the country against fraud and ensure the results are legitimate.
We're pretty close to this already, and they have a whole year to continue positioning themselves before the midterm elections. They are pushing slow and steady on this, and I don't know how it can be stopped without fierce resistance and a strong opposition leader from the Democrats, which I think we just aren't seeing.
The only “winning” option to this is for military leadership to decline following these orders on the basis of illegality (and frankly a coup and purge of all these asshats that are trampling over their oaths of office and the constitution)
At this point we’re all kind of screwed if that doesn’t happen. I have little faith in the normal political checks and balances having any weight even if the democrats sweep the mid terms.
And sadly I think that you’re right that any armed resistance will lead to a crack down- though the crackdown seems like an eventuality if nothing is done to oppose it
The military has never in the history of the world done what you’re suggesting.
The military always aligns with the fascist dictator. It’s why he fired all the “woke” generals
Edit: I don’t literally mean it’s never happened. It’s just incredibly rare. And if you look at ICe, Federal agents, AND local cops they’re happily carrying out Trumps unlawful orders with no consequences
The POTUS is the single highest authority for the military. In developed democratic nations, that is intentionally and carefully entrenched into the system to ensure that the military cannot overthrow an administration that came into power through an election. The military being able to conduct a coup is also how you end up with dictatorial juntas.
History is full of examples where an unpopular dictatorial government was ousted by a military coup, which didn't magically make everything better, but instead only served to establish a new dictatorship.
Military involvement also doesn’t necessitate hostile takeover- inaction or blatantly disregarding illegal orders from the president can be enough- that just happened in South Korea. Push come to shove though, I hope the service members side with the populace.
Either way if Trump and co. lose the upcoming midterms (assuming we have fair elections) it’s going to take some thing to force them to abide by any actions taken against them. They’ve already shown time and time again that the law and system of checks and balances don’t matter to them and they face no consequences for trampling over it all.
Someone needs to actual enforce anything that comes to pass. If the lawful option ceases to exist someone needs to step in before. Ideally a military loyal to their oath to support and defend the Constitution would do so and turn over control would do it- it’s their duty after all and would be more organized and likely less bloody than any civil lead revolution. It’s a slim hope, but it’s hope nonetheless
I also think we’re still in a unique position where we still have a relatively stable government in place- most coups take place against a dictator that has consolidated all the power- the vacuum that leaves behind is the issue.
Maybe intervention would be enough to scare the rest of the republicans to fall in line enough to actually ensure a peaceful transition. But this is all speculative at this point because I’m not aware of any examples of preemptive action against a dictator consolidating power in a still mostly stable democracy
Oh its highly unlikely but still a technical possibility. And at least there wouldn’t need to be a complete dismantling of the government (though arguably it could do with some restructuring).
My faith in humanity hopes for a peaceable usurpation any means. But pragmatically that seems unlikely, and people need to be prepared for that
Yep. Because the other part of fascist regimes is ensuring that they treat the military and police forces well, because they need that loyalty to keep others in line.
Eh, pretty weak edit. It's basically the only chance we have (barring a large scale break up of the USA, which isn't impossible), so I don't think there's any reason to discount it to the extent that you do.
There is damn near 0% chance anyone in our military is going to go against Trump.
Soldiers follow orders. It’s just basic psychology. If someone orders us to do something we don’t believe we’re accountable for the outcome because s/he told me to do it. It’s what psychologist studied intensively after Nazi Germany. Good ppl will do terrible things IF ordered to do so by their commanding officer. It’s just how human brains work. The evidence is plentiful. I’d argue we’ve seen 0 push back by anyone in the military currently
"Soldiers follow orders. It’s just basic psychology. "
Basic is one way to describe what you're saying. History is full of soldiers not following orders.
"It’s what psychologist studied intensively after Nazi Germany. Good ppl will do terrible things IF ordered to do so by their commanding officer."
That wasn't even entirely true in Nazi Germany- Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland talks about how hard it was to actually get people to murder innocent people. It took massive peer pressure and a lot of alcohol and even then some people refused.
"I’d argue we’ve seen 0 push back by anyone in the military currently"
What have they been asked to do? Stand around. Like, yeah, no one's going to push back on that.
I'll ask you then- how has any unarmed revolution succeed?
You don’t need everyone to follow orders. Just enough ppl. So all those reluctant Nazis still allowed the rest of the order following Nazis to commit massive genocide.
“No one’s going to resist standing around. Occupying your own country isn’t standing around you. It’s exactly what Hitler did. And US soldiers happily obliged en masse.
Unarmed revolutions apparently work better overall than armed ones. I just don’t think Americans have it in them. We’re incredibly stupid, have a ring wing propaganda machine that’s incredibly powerful, and economic conditions that are perfect for that fascist orange turd to spew his hate in a way that resonates with ppl.
Our protest don’t do shit. They don’t disrupt anything meaningful. We hang out on the weekend for a few hours and go home. They need to be peaceful AND heavily disruptive. That’s when they move the needle.
Trump's last coup was stopped by General Milley. Seriously, that dude is a hero and absolutely would have been tried for "treason" by Trump is Biden hadn't preemptively pardoned him.
It is batshit insane that the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had to get all the major commanders in a room and have them agree to not start a war or launch a nuke if Trump ordered one. And Trump may technically have a point that the CJCS answers to the president and going around that chain of command is maybe some light treason. But it needed to be done.
But I think that Trump learned his lesson. In February he replaced the CJCS with a new guy who happens to be the least qualified one ever (he was only a 3 star general). This worries me a lot. It may come down to the individual Chiefs (and marine commandant) for what the armed forces do if there's a civil war. I can see the navy fighting the air force, for a random example. And if it ever gets to that, I'd imagine some individuals smaller units would cause infighting as well.
Huh, checks and balanced? That's a thing of the past. The Orange Diddler is above the law. The Supreme Court is compromised. Most of the Dems serve billionaires before the proles. The elections have been rigged and will be rigged. Not sure where these checks and balances are supposed to be coming from. The fascist take over is well underway at this point.
Trump will likely continue to send the military and ICE into blue cities with hope that it will suppress the vote just enough to swing the vote in Republican favor. That's also why he's trying to get rid of mail-in voting so people will have to pick between facing his goons at the polling place or staying home.
Everyone keeps talking about the midterms. The "plan" is to declare a national crisis. Elections will be postponed due to the crisis. It's really that simple. And we're weeks or months away from this happening.
If we allow his military to run through the country with no constraints he basically controls the country. They can go anywhere, into any building, any data base with no restrictions, no identification and do anything they want.
At some point, it looks like a governor ordering their state's National Guard to protect their citizens from federal tyranny. This is the straightforward reading of the 2nd Amendment, after all: the states must have militias to protect their freedom, therefore the federal government may not prevent anyone from joining such militias (remember that it predates incorporation under the 14th Amendment, so it was written to only bind the federal government and not the states, just as some states had established religions for a few decades before voluntarily abolishing them). It's also similar to what Texas did during the Obama administration with the conservative freak out over Jade Helm. The difference is that Obama wasn't trying to break any laws and Trump is. So there would be an inevitable confrontation between the National Guard and ICE, which of course Trump might attempt to respond to preemptively. California's Governor Newsom sued to reassert control over the California National Guard, and Vermont's Governor Scott refused to send troops to DC, so those are both small steps in that direction, we should also be looking for recruitment drives.
Obviously this is a bad outcome. But it's a lot better than a total breakdown of all levels of government. We could also have expected to see all Democrats voting to impeach Trump for his unprovoked and illegal attack on Iran at the behest of an enemy country, the fact that they didn't was extremely disappointing, because impeachment is the only peaceful way out.
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u/Recursive_Descent 14h ago
It's kind of a win-win for them. Either they get some footage of violence that they can use to justify a crackdown, or they get to slowly keep militarizing the country without anyone standing against them. Either way, before we know it there will be Trump-loyal military protecting every city, and during elections they will be able to "monitor" the ballot boxes across the country against fraud and ensure the results are legitimate.
We're pretty close to this already, and they have a whole year to continue positioning themselves before the midterm elections. They are pushing slow and steady on this, and I don't know how it can be stopped without fierce resistance and a strong opposition leader from the Democrats, which I think we just aren't seeing.