(10-13-2021, 04:11 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:(10-12-2021, 10:15 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:(10-12-2021, 09:28 AM)David Horn Wrote:(10-11-2021, 06:07 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Well, the January 6 Putsch did happen.
... and that recent past may only be prologue. There was an underlying angst that finally reached the surface, and it's still there. With nothing happening on the legal front, the players in that putsch have every reason to assume they can do it again, but better.
The scary thing is that some people thought it a good idea.
We Americans can no longer complacently state that that sort of thing could never happen here. When I thought of a possible coup in America I was thinking of Seven Days in May in which the military decides the President "weak" in standing up to America's enemies of the time. We got seven hours in January instead. At least in this scenario the Armed Forces opposed the coup.
We have had some ugly incidents of violent plots against elected officials. One is against the Democratic Governor of Michigan and one is against Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). I'm not sure about the political orientation of the person making the death threat... does it matter? If guilty as charged, this offender deserves a long stay in a high-security federal pen. I expect some very long terms in the Michigan plot. I live there, so you can count on me keeping us all informed.
Political violence is an anathema to a country that elects its politicians. This said, political violence is much like any bad habit: the more to which one gets accustomed to it the more one accepts it.
Not only is another attempted putsch likely, but perhaps a couple of years of right-wing unrest and attacks/terrorism by mid-decade. What's even more threatening is that these new nazis could take over by supposed-electoral means, just like in 1932-33 in Germany. The right wing has 40%+ support and a charismatic leader whom they worship. They are trying to suppress voting by those who tend to vote against them, and they are trying to install loyal partisans in place of ethical election officials. They are seeking to enable legislatures to decide state electoral college delegations. They have the congress bottled up against reforms that would stop these practices and expand democracy. The people will need to rise up and provide a super-majority vote in the 2022 midterms to stop this authoritarian takeover, which if it succeeds will not even need to carry out a civil war or a putsch. It will be up to the Left then to violently revolt, which will not succeed, and may not get much farther than blind riots by young people, or to get some states to secede, whose success may depend on how eager the authoritarians are to invade the seceding states.
Let's admit it: Donald Trump has charisma. He can get people to audacious things for a cause. So could the Antichrist of the 20th century, the Satan Incarnate... you know who. A country whose democratic institutions do little to shield people from political violence and economic distress is easy to overthrow when someone who claims to have a solution for everything. This is a treatment of the parliamentary vote in Germany from 1919 to 1933. No, the Commies were not nice guys, and the German Nationalist People's Party (fascism lite) frustrated any government in which it was not a part and never joined any coalition to save the System when it most needed saving. It threw its fortune with the Nazis and was outlawed once Hitler got power.
We are not in Weimar Germany. We have no left-wing violence anything like the Spartakist Uprising and no disaster such as the Bavarian Soviet Republic to scare moderates into thinking that the best defense is to consider the Hard Right a viable option. We have not had a hyperinflation that destroyed all savings. If anything our mass culture is becoming more wholesome (if no less stupid).
45% of the vote is enough to get control in a 45-40-15 split of the popular vote. If the 45% is totalitarian, then the system is cooked.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.