Posted on 10/11/2019 8:24:13 PM PDT by OddLane
I’ve lived through a few coups. They’re insane, random, and terrifying, like watching sports, except your political future depends on the score.
The kickoff begins when a key official decides to buck the executive. From that moment, government becomes a high-speed head-counting exercise. Who’s got the power plant, the airport, the police in the capital? How many department chiefs are answering their phones? Who’s writing tonight’s newscast?
When the KGB in 1991 tried to reassume control of the crumbling Soviet Union by placing Mikhail Gorbachev under arrest and attempting to seize Moscow, logistics ruled. Boris Yeltsin’s crew drove to the Russian White House in ordinary cars, beating KGB coup plotters who were trying to reach the seat of Russian government in armored vehicles. A key moment came when one of Yeltsin’s men, Alexander Rutskoi – who two years later would himself lead a coup against Yeltsin – prevailed upon a Major in a tank unit to defy KGB orders and turn on the “criminals.”
We have long been spared this madness in America. Our head-counting ceremony was Election Day. We did it once every four years...
(Excerpt) Read more at taibbi.substack.com ...
“Shock-and-awe are wonderful sphincter-tighteners. Some mass firings would also help.”
Firings aren’t good enough. I won’t be happy until there are arrests and prosecutions. A FReeper posted he/she had heard this could happen via military tribunal at Gitmo. It’s a nice dream, but probably not true.
If it goes to some diverse low-IQ jury in DC, there’s no way the coup players will see justice. Gitmo sounds good to me.
“the people pushing hardest for Trump’s early removal are more dangerous than Trump. Many Americans don’t see this because they’re not used to waking up in a country where you’re not sure who the president will be by nightfall. They don’t understand that this predicament is worse than having a bad president.”
Well put.
Yes, indeed!
The Left ( communists) would kill us if they could. They just can’t get away with it....( yet).
That’s the problem. Republicans play by the rules, Dems have no rules.
“The window Barr has is closing rapidly. Soon he will be ‘Overcome by Events’ and irrelevant.”
Yup. BarrSessions is running out the clock on purpose, I think. “Ignore it and it’ll go away.”
BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES:
A PROCLAMATION
WHEREAS the laws of the United States have been, for some time past, and now are opposed, and the execution thereof obstructed, in the States of Virginia, Maryland, New York, Arkansas, Illinois and the District of Columbia, by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, or by the powers vested in the marshals by law.
Now, therefore, I, DONALD JOHN TRUMP, President of the United States, in virtue of the power in me vested by the Constitution and the laws, have thought fit to call forth, and hereby do call forth, the militia of the several States of the Union, to the aggregate number of seventy-five thousand, in order to suppress said combinations, and to cause the laws to be duly executed.
The details for this object will be immediately communicated to the State authorities through the Defense Department.
I appeal to all loyal citizens to favor, facilitate, and aid this effort to maintain the honor, the integrity, and the existence of our National Union, and the perpetuity of popular government; and to redress wrongs already long enough endured...
Darth Vader has been hinting about a coming military resolution for some time.
Nope - he knows that the plotters winning would result in an even worse and more iron-handed ‘government’ than the old Soviet union (warlords who used Stalin tactics to keep the subjects terrified and in line)....like what the dems are trying to do.....
They've already done that and are insatiable. There next degeneration of their souls is to incarcerate and group execute contrived capital punishment without any fair trials on their opponents.
They won't be satiated until they spill innocent blood to publicly tout their power. They are arrogant.
Pretty obvious the deal Barr made was to shut down Mueller. In exchange the coup plotters get to go free.
I’m afraid you’re right. However, I think Trump could’ve withstood a longer Mueller investigation better than America can withstand having the perps walk the earth. (But that’s just me.)
It isn’t new that thinking elements of the far left and the far right are at times closer to each other than the disgusting muck in the middle. Both groups love America, but have a different vision for what the nation should be. The coup are the ones who bought into something really sinister and most of them don’t even know that.
That’s what I took away, too. You expressed the summary and conclusions very well.
I think Taibbi has described our possible (probable?) national descent into Hell in a new, more plausible, and far more frightening way.
Very good article. I honestly can’t think of any good resolution to the situation. I wish Trump could simply dissolve the intelligence services and start over, just using military intelligence and lower-level law enforcement agencies. But what if they refused to be dissolved? I think, unfortunately, that’s what would happen.
The CIA has been a leftist rogue agency for decades and I think has often betrayed US interests by deliberately misinforming presidents and thus shaping their policy. Bush certainly was misinformed by the regarding Iraq, and I think it may even go all the way back to JFK, who I think sincerely wanted to end Communism in Cuba but was betrayed by the CIA.
As for the FBI, I think they had a combination of arrogance (ask any police force in the country that has had to work with them or had a case taken away by them!) and ruthlessness that made them a prime candidate for use towards political ends. I think their politicization really began under Clinton.
But their current open and openly political attack on the executive is a wholly new thing and I too am concerned about how it will end. I think if he fired them, they’d just refuse to go and proclaim that they were now in charge. And the Democrats would support them. Very frightening times, which Taibbi seems to acknowledge even though he’d be on the winning side. The only encouraging thing is that he shows that there are at least a few sane leftists out there.
That would be nice but it ain’t gunna happen. Better to let the leftists keep thrashing and showing their asses to the world. People are waking up as evidenced by this piece. Trump’s most likely to win the propaganda war and the backlash will be epic.
I think we’re past that stage but hoping you are right.
Nah. They are ever so slowly and sure being "hoisted upon their own petard". Articles like this show that the worm is turning and even the those who are not hard core revolutionaries are starting to see the light.
An impeachment vote will be held - at this point, MUST be held. American government must inevitably be done by the numbers, we've nothing else but chaos.
He missed the Leftist coup to get Nixon out of office. That was the true turning point in the American political system.
Nixon was a saint compared to these BASTARDS!!!
There can be no co existence
The problem is not in Dealing in DC
The problem becomes how to deal with radical neighbors and relatives that must be eliminated.
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