My doubt regarding a military coup isn’t just because of “rational minds”; the US military is a vast sprawling quasi-corporate enterprise that is really difficult for a few people to actually control, and like any large corporation the key quality in climbing the ladder is conformance over creativity or independent thought. Unlike small militaries of ‘developing nations’ where becoming an officer is often a matter of buying rank or currying political favors, officers in the US (and other large professional militaries) spend a couple of decades making very careful footwork to avoid offending anyone or getting the wrong kind of attention in the hope of getting within spitting distance of flag rank, and then desperately hoping that someone above them retires out or keels over at their desk at just the right time for them to get short-listed. They’re also indoctrinated from OCS though their senior billets into protecting and defending the Constitution, and you’ll find most senior officers take that duty with the seriousness of religious belief even if they are career-minded to the point of obsession. It’s the kind of mindset that doesn’t really turn to coups because it is just too disorderly of a process without any rules or assurance of permanency. That is not to say that some might not support a civilian political ‘coup’ or takeover, especially if it can be justified as not violating the Constitution and somehow being ‘better’ for the country (which I’m sure is how someone like Mike Flynn sees it) but even then there is only so much of the military that a handful of conspirators can actually control.
If that was in reference to this post in which I said parenthetically “… (and the typical contempt that enlisted have for the lack of competence of high ranking officers is often not misplaced)…” it was specifically with respect to the statement that “…the average Trump-supporting enlisted man can probably be fairly easily convinced that the generals purposely messed up the Afghan withdrawal.” Not hatred, but a general feeling that high ranking officers (i.e. those well above the lieutenants and captains they regularly see and maybe interact with) don’t value the ground pounder or sailor who is directly in harms way, and often make decisions that are beneficial to their own career over achieving objectives worth the risk posed to their men and women.
So, while I don’t doubt that Trump fully intends to intern immigrants in concentration camps if he can’t immediately deport them (to where?), I don’t think he or anyone else advocating for this has any notion of what the scope of this would look like. Elsewhere, I noted with respect to the internment of Japanese-Americans in WWII that:
Even if Trump could manage to round up millions of undocumented immigrants (using what labor force? how will they be processed and transported? where does the budget and administration of this effort come from?) finding space and erecting even temporary facilities to contain people, even with some subminimal standard of hygiene and care, would be essentially impossible. It took the Nazis years to establish a system where they could transport and intern (and murder, and bury or cremate) the approximately 17 million Jews, Roma, homosexuals, Communists, et cetera, and Trump is promising to do this in his first few weeks or even months? It’s complete nonsense; that that this would prevent him from trying, but like every ‘constructive’ thing he actually tries to do he’ll make a complete hash of it because he has no clue how things actually get done and won’t tolerate lessons from subordinates about how to actually get what he wants.
Stranger