Steve Sailer writes: Judging from the reaction to Trump’s arrival at today’s Army / Navy football game among military cadets, young military officers wouldn’t be on board.
Comments:
* I do wonder what Trump is going to do to the people at the CIA who have gone all in on attacking him.
It’s not the usual thing for employees to go out of their way to trash the incoming CEO publicly. Can they be so smug that they don’t think there will be consequences?
* I think this is why he’s been behaving extra-Presidential ever since he won. In order to ensconce himself in the minds of many people as possible as the incumbent, in order to deter game-playing with possible recounts, the Electoral College actual vote, and potential coups. In other words, he’s behaving like he’s already President to dare them to try any of those shenanigans.
* Heavily armed rural whites will always be outgunned by the government. I think that what it would come down to is whether the white soldiers and lower-level officers who come from these communities would obey orders to fire on their friends. It could go either way.
I like to play out what would happen if/when the government decides to confiscate firearms door-to-door like in Australia. Despite the noble cries of “from my cold dead hands,” I don’t think that most responsible gun owners would really take it to that level when the SWAT team shows up. It will all come down to whether the ATF/FBI agents obey orders. I guess the Feds will marshal the agents from Boston and San Francisco field offices to go to Alabama and Wyoming to carry out the task to improve their odds. I wouldn’t count on resistance to succeed, though it could get messy.
No doubt the left is acutely aware of this risk, hence their efforts to eviscerate the cultures of the military and federal police forces, and to try to nationalize local police departments. A few more generations of their recruitment, social programming, human capital management, and purges, and they may succeed.
* It looks like they’re trying to lay the groundwork for a Tahrir Square or Ukraine Maidan style campaign during Trump’s presidency, with massive protests in the major cities, amplified by media coverage, to try to get Trump impeached or removed from office. The particular event or thing that would initially trigger the movement and protests are unforeseen at this point, but this is obviously a psyops/info campaign by the CIA to delegitimize Trump and lay the groundwork for a potential uprising and removal. The most charitable interpretation of the CIA’s actions here would be that the Russians have simply penetrated too far into Trump’s orbit. This would also explain why Trump is being surrounded by generals.
These nonviolent coups are based on the work of Gene Sharp, and many of the tactics have been field tested. They don’t depend on military personnel, rather they try to use military attempts to quell the protests to further delegitimize the regime.
If this situation turns into a hot conflict, it would quickly turn into a proxy war between Russia and NATO on the North American continent.
* A successful coup in the United States wouldn’t look like the Turkey coup at all.
What they would do is assassinate the President, and possibly simultaneously assassinate the Vice President. The exact circumstances depend on a number of factors. They may want to feel out the VP for a year or two and see if he will play ball. If he will, then he is the replacement. If not, they will take him out too.
Hypothesize that Air Force One is shot down or crashes while the President and Vice President are aboard. The Secret Service at the point would basically take the speaker of the house into custody. Whatever intelligence agents and generals were around the speaker at that moment would basically be in charge of the country. They could feed the speaker whatever “intelligence” they wanted to, and in that environment, the new president wouldn’t have the means to do any independent analysis at all.
“Mr. President, it turns out the previous president and vice president were making a deal with Russia to do XYZ, and the deal fell through, so the Russians had them killed. The following members of the administration should be considered suspicous: the attorney general, the secretary of state, this general, that admiral, etc.”
If they could make it look like an accident or a lone wolf job that might be even better. But if they can tie it to some perceived enemy, they can isolate the incoming president, and get him to execute an emergency purge of the government.
I believe that this is how any coup would go down.
The problem with such a coup is that there are something like 17 intelligence agencies currently operating in the United States. This type of thing would require broad consent across all 17 intelligence agencies that the current administration is so dangerous to the current paradigm that immediate action has to be taken, at high risk to everyone involved.
* Exhibit 1. The video from the Army/Navy game.
Exhibit 2. Financial markets have voted vigorously in favor of the election outcome.
Exhibit 3. The US dollar. The dollar spot index is up 3 to 4% since the election. https://www.bloomberg.com/quote/DXY:CUR
Say what you want about elites or the deep state — they aren’t big on risk. Trump isn’t all that risky. He promised to spend more money on the military. And if he quits sending them into losing battles in the Middle East, whats not to like?
Army just snapped a 14 year losing streak in their annual matchup. The Cubs won the series. Is the system ‘rigged’? Isn’t Trump proof that it isn’t rigged?
The real danger to Trump is the Republican establishment. If they have any sense they will look back and see how poorly it worked out for them to trade LBJ for Kennedy. Consider swapping Trump for Pence/Ryan. If they actually got their entitlement reform and privatize Medicare and Social Security, that would prove less popular than the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Democrats lost the South forever. Old people vote.
The US needs some strong economic growth and taking the shackles off ‘tight oil’ and actually encouraging the banks to lend money is a plausible path. Note that the Democrats and Elizabeth Warren are still trying to refight 2008. The best performing sector since the election has been financials.