We need to clear some things up before they get any further out of hand, as the Dems insist on making this stuff every day’s front page. For starters, please stop saying “Reichstag moment.” Also there was nothing even close to a coup on January 6, and those who fan the flames claiming we were “close” to a coup, overthrow, losing our democracy, etc., have evil designs on freedom and we should not listen to them. Done.
If the aliens flying around Navy ships were to stop long enough to listen to a couple of hours of “news,” they could easily believe Trump is still president, or at least still running against Biden. The MSM has him dominate the news, typically by recycling stories from his time in office, even recently reviving that he is a Russian asset. When Grandpa Simpson and Kamala “Silent Shadow” Harris tottered into the White House, they became president. Done.
Some 500 protestors taking selfies inside the Capitol building is a tantrum not a coup. Among other things, a coup must have some path towards success, in this case, preventing Joe Biden from becoming president. The rioters at best might have delayed the largely ceremonial counting of the Electoral College votes until the next day which would not have been a coup, or forced Congress to meet at Starbucks to do its job, also not a coup. Done.
Not done. The latest addition to Coup Cannon comes from then- and somehow still- Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Mark Milley, apparently auditioning for a retirement job as a CNN analyst. Milley was so shaken Trump might attempt a coup or take other illegal measures after the election he and other top officials planned to stop Trump. Neither Milley nor any of the others actually spells out what Trump might have realistically done in some Calvinball-like way to make said coup happen. Milley’s Strangelovian performance art is based on nothing but the spittle running down his chin. American soldiers have been required to refuse illegal orders at least since Biden wore diapers, so Milley’s histrionics are just that.
Milley nonetheless felt “growing concern” after Trump placed “loyalists” in positions of power after the November 2020 election, replacing both Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Attorney General William Barr. He feared based on his own sizable gut these moves “were the sign of something sinister to come” (Update: Nothing sinister came.) Milley failed to recognize all presidential appointees are “loyalists” and somehow Trump did not replace Milley, who clearly had not read his oath recently, especially the part about taking orders from the civilian head of government.
In fact, if anyone is a threat to democracy it is nutjobs like Milley, who feel free to weave in and out of answering to the Commander in Chief based on their personal “concerns.” The general’s tough love for the Constitution apparently did not include the right to assemble, as he referred to a pro-Trump march protesting election results as “the modern American equivalent of brownshirts in the streets.” Dems now want to make a hero out of a man who feels his judgment is superior to the Constitution.
While Milley was rewriting 230 years of military prudence in late 2020, Paul Krugman of the NYT wrote there were “substantial odds America as we know it will be damaged or even destroyed” by the election (Update: it was not.) He told us to “expect violence from Trump supporters, maybe lots of it, both to disrupt voting on Election Day and in the days that follow” until Trump “stops counting of absentee ballots, claims massive fraud, and probably tries to get the Supreme Court to overturn the result” (Update: that did not happen.) Elsewhere in the Times’ bunker, Thomas Friedman said America today reminded him of the Beirut at war with itself he covered as a cub reporter (Update: Beruit was way worse.)
Over at The Nation they simply assumed Trump would illegally remain in power. The writer’s real concern was “we have the moral high ground. But we don’t have, frankly, the military leadership in place to direct a guerrilla campaign against an illegitimate regime. We don’t have a government-in-exile waiting to take power. We don’t have international allies. We don’t have an underground network of spies and saboteurs. . . but we can lay our bodies down in front of the tanks.” Any hope for the rule of law? Nope. “The Supreme Court too is, fundamentally, an anti-democratic institution run by people who are not subject to the popular will of our diverse society.”
The Nation should not have worried about having to go Red Dawn unarmed. General Milley said “They may try [a coup] but they’re not going to f**king succeed. You can’t do this without the military. You can’t do this without the CIA and the FBI. We’re the guys with the guns.” An interesting take on where power lies in a nation whose founding document begins with We the People…
Milley’s real plan was to prevent Trump from using the military in a coup by using the military in a coup against civilian leadership to gun down American citizens. CNN reports after January 6 Milley feared an attack on the presidential inauguration, telling senior military leaders: “Here’s the deal, guys: These guys are Nazis, they’re Boogaloo Boys, they’re Proud Boys. These are the same people we fought in World War II. We’re going to put a ring of steel around this city and the Nazis aren’t getting in.”
But Milley is also a liar, claiming publically at the same time “I foresee no role for the U.S. armed forces in this election process. We will not turn our backs on the Constitution of the United States” while planning his Ring of Steel (it sounds better in the original German, Ring aus Stahl.)
Our observer from Mars might be confused. As far as a threat to democracy, it is General Milley who was preparing to disobey the Constitution and take a patriot-sized dump on his chain of command. It is progressive porn rag The Nation telling their readers they will fight a guerrilla war against other Americans, and that the Supreme Court, the third branch of government, is an antidemocratic institution. Who again is the threat? Trump’s out of office; Milley still holds command of the entire U.S. military.
And so to the Reichstag. With as little knowledge of history as they have of coups, the MSM turned the Reichstag fire into shorthand for everything they fear Trump would do but somehow never did. The 1933 Reichstag fire was a false-flag arson attack on the home of the German parliament in Berlin. The Nazi Party used this as a pretext to claim communists were ready to overthrow the elected government. Left out of the current misuse of the analogy is Hitler had already become Chancellor before the fire. More importantly, missing when trying to connect 1933 to modern America, is a full lack of context.
Hitler had already achieved power, transparently on promises to conquer the world, implement the Final Solution, and all sorts of other Mein Kampf stuff. He had announced plans to abolish democracy via the Enabling Act, which gave him power to pass laws by decree without the involvement of parliament. That next step needed an excuse, a trigger, to crack down, not a prime mover to seize power. The Germany around him was also over ripe for change, having been humiliated in WWI and suffering near-crippling unemployment and inflation. Historically Germany had had only a few years’ taste of a wimpy democracy, and a long history of autocracy. No matter how dramatic someone wants to portray Trump’s non-actions, none of what never happened came within miles of what the real Nazis did.
If there was no coup on January 6, and no possible road to a coup, why are we still talking about all this? We should be mocking those who have no basic understanding of current events, never mind history. But we are still talking about all this (with Nancy Pelosi’s deck-is-stacked “investigation” looming) because the Biden agenda is stalled. He has decreed a few things that undecreeded a few things Trump decreed, but is unlikely to make much progress on all those promises of infrastructure, immigration reform, or student loans. Inflation is at a 13 year high even as gas prices eat away at what’s left of our middle class. There is no vision to end the COVID panic. The social justice and culture war issues which dominate Democratic mindspace seem even more flaccid with Trump out of office. So what do Democrats have left to run on?
Trump. The Democratic message for the midterms and beyond is Trump, coups, January 6, white supremacy, racism-a-go-go, militias, domestic terrorism, a veritable Nazi renaissance. Dems have little else but fear of things that never happened to work with, and hope to milk the “But at least we’re not Trump” cow one more time. So get ready to party like it is 2020. And just wait for #Reichstagification to start trending.
Copyright © 2020. All rights reserved. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity.
Rich Bauer said...
1Peter, you know the “right” is usually wrong about the biggest lies that BURNED this dumbass country:. Domino Theory. WMDs. Rigged elections. You made the connection that the military industrial surveillance complex gets rich while poor Americans pay with their lives. American conservatives supported these lies because they were so profitable.
08/7/21 9:20 AM | Comment Link
Rich Bauer said...
2(Edit) FYI: AND There was no rigged election
Amazing that American Conservative never seems to run articles from its deep thinkers to address this issue. Don’t want to get cancelled like Larison, hmmm? Go for it, Peter. Truth will set you free ..to apply for unemployment.
08/7/21 9:51 AM | Comment Link
John Poole said...
3Got it! So it wasn’t a historical coup but instead a misguided showing of love by Trump zealots. Let’s move on. A trillion dollar bill may pass to rebuild and restore America’s aging and decrepit infrastructure. Where will the replacement parts and materials come from? Who will do the demanding labor? Will it be shoddy materials coming from overseas and put in place by the undocumented or the same contractor grifters whose work PVB observed during his time in Iraq? PS. Will there even be a 2024 election? Maybe only the Martians know.
08/7/21 10:01 AM | Comment Link
Joe said...
4John: You raise interesting questions about the new Infrastructure Bill, so let’s take a look at some clues to possible answers easily found online. In April factcheck.org posted that “Biden, Buttigieg Exaggerate Projected Job Gains in Infrastructure Plan” – link below:
https://www.factcheck.org/2021/04/biden-buttigieg-exaggerate-projected-job-gains-in-infrastructure-plan/
And in April they also posted “Underselling the Infrastructure in Infrastructure Plan,” which demolished a Republican claim that only about 6% (!) of the plan would actually go to infrastructure by clarifying that the total was nearly a whopping 17% (!!) – link below:
https://www.factcheck.org/2021/04/underselling-the-infrastructure-in-infrastructure-plan/
And just a couple of days ago the (non-partisan) Congressional Budget Office also advised that contrary to claims that the bill would “pay for itself,” it would actually add over $250,000,000,000 to the national debt over the next ten years; even the Washington Post and NY Times had to report on that one, links below:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/cbo-estimates-infrastructure-bill-would-add-256-billion-to-deficits-11628196739
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/05/us/politics/infrastructure-cost-senate-cbo.html
So who’s *most* likely to benefit from this windfall? Why corporate America of course, by way of Federal funds channeled to it via state and local contracts. But surely a Democrat controlled government would cap corporate profits from these contracts, ensure they were only signed for truly necessary projects and also ensure anyone who worked on those contracts received a living wage and reasonable benefits, right? Ha ha, nope doesn’t seem to be any information (or interest) in that at all – apparently the Federal government’s various OIG’s (you know, the same ones who oversaw our infrastructure development spending in Iraq and Afghanistan) will look into any allegations of fraud, waste or abuse associated with this new bill. Same old same old, this time brought to you by Biden, Pelosi and Schumer. But hey they did also give us a new Federal holiday, so we all have that going for us now right?
08/8/21 1:42 PM | Comment Link
Rich Bauer said...
5(Edit) FYI:And there are no vaccine microchips
Peter is currently writing his next novel “American Psychosis” and gaining invaluable research while writing for The American Conservative, whatever that means. TAC, deep into psychobabble, has never addressed this latest threat to our bodily fluids, which suggests it believes as do many as one in five Americans the COVID-19 vaccine contains a microchip, a recent Economist/YouGov poll reveals.
“When respondents were asked how likely they thought it to be true that “the U.S. government is using [the vaccine] to microchip the population,” 20 percent of U.S. adults said they thought it “definitely/probably true” and 14 percent weren’t sure. 66 percent denied such a claim as “definitely/probably false.” Notably, when broken down by vaccination status, 51 percent of “vaccine rejectors” believed the microchip theory, as opposed to just 9 percent of those who are fully vaccinated.
On a more broad level, 85 percent of those who don’t want to get vaccinated believed the “threat of the coronavirus was exaggerated for political reasons.”
Good thing the dead cant vote.
08/9/21 8:20 AM | Comment Link
John Poole said...
6Joe: I imagine there will be many works of art by Hunter Biden hanging in the private suites of Haliburton executives just prior to Joe Biden’s infrastructure bids being put out. That is the beauty of bipartisan business reciprocation in DC?
08/9/21 11:53 AM | Comment Link
John Poole said...
7Bauer: I was hoping the microchip implant during inoculation theory was true since at my age I might wander off the premises. Such a chip would be a good means to track me down. I think all we addled geezers should be “chipped”. I’ll even go to the local vet for any third dose Covid booster.
08/9/21 4:04 PM | Comment Link
Joe said...
8John: DC is a weird place for sure. But if it could turn Chelsea Clinton into a news pundit and Nancy Pelosi’s husband into a stock picking expert, why couldn’t it also turn Hunter Biden into an art prodigy? “Nothing to see here folks, we’re the good guys! Just ignore the man behind the curtain!”
08/10/21 6:13 AM | Comment Link
John Poole said...
9Joe- More DC weirdness. Former DC resident Obama is being criticized as hypocritical for his 60th birthday bash -200 non distancing guests and no masks with Delta Covid on the rise.
Obama bought a 15 million dollar mansion 10 feet above sea level on an island in deference to his warnings about the inevitable devastating effects of global warming on low lying coastal areas. Why not? He thinks he can con Poseidon as easily as he conned his devoted followers and worshippers who never imagined they were voting for a closeted plutocrat.
08/11/21 3:45 PM | Comment Link
Joe said...
10John: Yeah, dear old Saint Barack is another prime example of the modern neoliberal Democratic party – “Do as I say, not as I do” should be their motto. Hypocrisy at its finest. It’s nice to see some folks calling him out on it, but we both know many others will just handwave it away because it doesn’t fit in with their worldview – which is also a great example of cognitive dissonance. Despite all our progress, humanity is still a bunch of odd ducks, eh what?
08/12/21 12:26 PM | Comment Link