Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/10/12/trump-is-too-inept-and-too-unpopular-to-stage-a-coup-says-nyt-columnist.html
…
7 Likes
Competence and popular support are important assets to have if you want to take control over the mechanisms of government, less important if your goal is to tear them down.
60 Likes
Hm. Really? Douthat? Hm.
35 Likes
Everything Ross Doubtthat says is a lie, so…?
21 Likes
Nothing is a given. Be prepared.
27 Likes
For sure.
I think I mostly object to his line of thinking here because staging a coup isn’t about smarts or intelligence. It’s about power, more than anything, and power often does not take much smarts to wield. There isn’t much evidence that Hitler or Mussolini were smarter than your average bear.
42 Likes
I don’t know if you’ve ever encountered a playground bully. But even the stupid ones that are failing in class can have a significant following of brown nosers and cronies.
29 Likes
Tell that to the militias. Really, please tell them…
21 Likes
Great. Let’s goad the gilt baboon.
3 Likes
And the people who are supposed to keep the bullies in check tend to look the other way because disciplining bullies is not something they want to do.
14 Likes
We really need to start calling them what they are.
29 Likes
I agree he lacks the power to actually stage a coup. Most importantly, he lacks the military… He lacks devotion from many of the key holders of power. He lacks any ability to actually plan it out.
What he does have is some fanatical support as his base. They might be able to stage small coup attempts locally and/or terrorist attacks. That is the most probable danger as I see it. The worst case scenario I see is we experience a time like The Troubles in Ireland, or Iraq post Saddam.
19 Likes
Good point.
5 Likes
“Your cancer has a very high survival rate. Why are you even worried, much less bothering me about it?”
–Ross Douthat, offering you a cigarette
27 Likes
Ross Gregory Douthat is even more likely to engage in “proof by blatant assertion” than even Thomas Loren Friedman. So let’s split the difference and suggest: Trump is too inept to know he’s too inept to stage a coup and may well go ahead and try to do so. (and here’s hoping that the DNC has a phalanx of lawyers at the ready)
21 Likes
Yes. Always remember that it’s not Trump who is in charge, but the people he owes money to.
19 Likes
He’s also too stupid not too try, which will cause a mess, but the likely outcome will be lots of dead white supremacists, maybe a bunch of Fox News assholes in jail for legitimate sedition charges, and Trump in prison.
21 Likes
I see the situation kind of like having an angry rhinoceros on the bridge of your starship.
He may not be smart enough to navigate the ship to where he wants it to go, but that doesn’t mean he won’t be able to fuck the place up.
37 Likes
As far as support for trump goes, I live in a very red state and the number of trump bumper stickers and yards signs is way, way, WAY down from 2016. The novelty of the orange clown has worn off. He’s toast.
10 Likes
The question here is also what would constitute a coup - if we’re talking about dictatorship for life, I also doubt that he’d be able to achieve that, but stealing the election with the help of Barr, Republican governors, and the Supreme Court is very much a possibility, that’s enough of a coup in my eyes. .
18 Likes
