No, ten years after a coup has occurred, the new regime has settled into power and can do whatever it wants without fear of opposition. Because if the new regime is still around ten years after the coup, it won.
At the time of the coup, the outcome is still uncertain. Nobody knows yet whether it’s a coup or a failed coup. So Trump can’t order an Air Force pilot to napalm a crowd and be confident that pilot will follow the order. Trump has to worry that the pilot will say “No, Mr Trump, President Biden says all troops should stay in their bases and not follow your orders.”
Yeah I get that. But it still pisses me off that Trump supporters are allowed to perform such egregious and illegal acts. The sword, right now, is more mighty then the pen. That does not boad well for the future.
It is nice to see Trump less in the news. And I’m sure it’s really pissing him off. The more people that see Joe on TV, the more they will accept him as President Elect.
We have seen Joe being more presidential in the last few days that Trump has done in 4 years. He is doing his job regardless of how Trump tries to stop him.
Yeah but that is only 1 out of 10,000 of those who call for civil war. Only a fraction of Americans would be calling for civil war in the first place. So you might end up with only a few thousand Americans actually going to the streets to fight the government, which is manageable.
Trump is only as powerful as people think he is. If he claims he won and locks himself in the White House, we’d ignore him and carry on. Biden can be president anywhere.
It doesn’t matter how many claims he makes as to his legitimacy if the people who support the office don’t accept him. If the guys who drive the car, cook the meals, schedule meetings, connect phone calls, and so on recognize that they don’t work for him, he’s just a flopping fish running out of oxygen.
“But what if Supreme Court and faithless electors and…” Doesn’t matter. Trump needs people to enforce it, and he doesn’t have them. There’s maybe 3% of the population that gives any genuine support to his “I’m the real president!” BS. It just won’t work.
But what if the “coup” happens before Jan. 20? Say it looks like Trump and his cohort are just flat not going to cede power. He’s already installed lackeys in top Pentagon posts. If crowds gather and Trump orders that Air Force pilot to napalm them, there’s no “President Biden” yet to countermand those orders.
These things snowball, it depends on if there’s a catalizing event that gains momentum. It’s true that people generally are very reluctant to put themselves out on the line first, but if a critical few do get the ball rolling it is much easier to gain traction. Any civil conflict today would be very very different than anything we’ve seen before, just as the US Civil War was in many regards the first modern war. There would be sabotage, hacking, arson, bombings, occasional outbreaks of urban fighting with firearms, probably a lot of reprisal murders, hijackings, kidnappings. Think the Troubles in Ireland/Great Britain combined with elements from conflicts like Syria and eastern Ukraine. It’ll be very grim.
I actually suspect more likely what would happen is that the states would more or less start going their separate ways, rather than some sort of military kingmaking.
The same general principle still applies. That pilot is going to be asking himself what happens if he follows an illegal order from President Trump to kill a crowd of Americans - and then Joe Biden becomes President. He’ll be spending the rest of his life in Leavenworth.
This is the central issue of a coup. People are going to be reluctant to break any laws for the new regime until they feel confident the new regime will succeed and be able to protect them from the consequences.
No, the court martial would be for the general who gave those illegal orders and the pilot would be there as a witness for the prosecution.
Do you really believe that American troops could be ordered to kill a crowd of unarmed Americans and they would do it? And that the legal system would support them?
I’m going to be honest and say that I have no idea how many Americans would attempt an armed uprising against an illegitimate government, but I don’t know that the ratio of internet tough-guys to lone gunmen is a useful data point.
But you seem to be assuming every Trump supporter will show up. Let’s be generous and assume the same percentage of true believers exists on both sides. That means we’ll have a few thousand people fighting for America against a few hundred fighting for Trump.
Okay, assume that. But you KNOW Trump will be trying to use the military because besides being a lying lyer who lies – he is also cheating cheater who cheats.
Today I learned the word “autogolpe”: " in which a nation’s leader, despite having come to power through legal means, dissolves or renders powerless the national legislature and unlawfully assumes extraordinary powers not granted under normal circumstances."
What this boils down to is Trump getting one officer to cut orders and the officer to find one tactical pilot to carry it out. That sounds absurd right now, but a president refusing to cede power in a peaceful manner was absurd before Trump.
But let’s double down. If Trump can get one Air force General to order a strike, and one Army General to order just ONE single tank and one pilot and four guys (or gals) in a single tank agree to show up, that will end ALL physical insurrection period!! That is less than a dozen people involved and any resistance at all by civilians is laughable at best. Even if Trump could never duplicate the situation, how many villagers with pitch forks and torches are going to ever consider going up against even fifty year old military hardware let alone current day weaponry.
And consider this. If one tank shows up and takes an operational stance, and one plane makes a couple of low passes without firing or dropping a thing. That show of force would likely discourage all additional “protests”. For that matter, if a fire suppression aircraft dropped water on protesters they would disappear and never, ever return. The institutional advantage of being the nominal ‘commander in chief’ of the world’s largest military (even if only potentially for a temporary term) has a YUUUUUGGGEE advantage.
The other factor to consider is that the longer America is accustomed to, and expecting, Biden to be the next president, the more jarring a sudden Trump snatch-of-power would be.
However…if Trump can make his snatch of power a slow and gradual grab - say, have the courts spend weeks on the issue, and send the election to the House of Representatives - then America gets more and more accustomed to the idea of Trump being president for another term after all. (Note that “accustomed to” does not mean “liking it” - blue voters wouldn’t like the idea of Trump staying in power - but rather, that as the media kept reporting headlines for weeks of “Legal battle could send election to House of Representatives in January” or perhaps “Pennsylvania election outcome suddenly in doubt after all” - people would consider a Trump 2nd term less and less unthinkable.)
