Posted on 07/20/2016 9:11:44 AM PDT by Kaslin
Turkey’s failed coup, combined with the disastrous disunity and polarization in the United States thanks to Barack Obama, have gotten people talking about whether it could happen here. For example, part-time law professor and full-time Instapundit Glenn Reynold has recently taken some serious looks at the issue of coups within the context of the American system of checks and balances. So what if next January Obama and his barely post-puberty band of juice box screw-ups in the West Wing decide they don’t want to leave? And the issue is even more pressing with Donald Trump sneaking up in the polls – Nate Silver gives him a 34% chance of winning, which is up from the approximately 0% chance a whole bunch of people gave him a year ago, your author included. If a couple more disgruntled cop haters with totally obvious unknown motives and a few more [OMITTED] radicals go on kill sprees, Trump might well be our next president.
So, could Barack Obama pull off a coup to keep himself in power rather than turn over the keys to the Oval Office?
Of course not. At the outset, what makes you think he would suddenly become competent enough to pull off that kind of sophisticated scheme, especially with him leading from behind the wheel of the Ivy League clown car that is his administration? These twits can’t even beat a bunch of Bedouin banditos sitting out in the open in the middle of a desert. But it never pays to rely solely on the incompetence of your opponents, so let’s run through a scenario and see how it plays out.
Donald Trump gets elected, snatching Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan from Hillary when the people liberals have spent the last half-century dumping on get mad and vote. Gracious as always, Trump’s victory speech promises that Attorney General Chris Christie’s first job will be to investigate and prosecute Pantsuit von Pervenabler and President Faily McWorsethanCarter.
That gets Obama’s attention faster than a delicious doggie at dinner time. His post-presidency plans involve sucking up the residual adulation of the idiots who love him; they don’t involve dodging subpoenas and maybe even indictments. Hillary, after she sobers up, calls him and shrieks that he has to do something. Obama quickly says, “Valerie, it’s for you” and hands over the phone, but it’s quite clear – this whole peaceful transition of power thing just can’t happen. Plus, he tells himself, the rule of law is racist anyway. And so the coup plotting begins.
Now, a coup is generally a small group of people quickly seizing power, often bloodlessly. This is in contrast to a civil war, which is usually neither quick nor bloodless. In the American system, it would likely mean one part of the government (here, the executive) moving to essentially unmoor itself from the checks and balances of the other branches. In other words, it would be Obama doing what he has tried to do for the last eight years, except with guns.
So, how does one pull off a coup in the United States? It’s actually harder than it appears. A coup by definition is covert – you have to try and keep the active force as small as possible to maintain secrecy yet still have enough assets to do the job. The problem for Obama is that a significant portion of the most important element, the military, has nothing but contempt for him.
That does not include the military’s senior leadership. The sorry spectacle of senior officers slavishly going along with troop-imperiling idiocy like transsexual integration instead of throwing their stars on the table and walking out is a disgrace. So a significant number of generals would be intimidated into doing whatever Obama asks – if they can’t tell him that “No, America’s greatest strategic challenge is not slightly warmer weather,” then they haven’t the intestinal fortitude to tell him “No, I’m not putting a mech battalion on Capitol Hill.”
The next challenge is to get the troops to actually do it. “Wait, colonel” says Captain Smith of Rapid City, South Dakota. “You want me to take my infantry company into Washington? And maybe shoot American citizens? Sir, did you start at the O club a little early today?”
Assume the good captain passes that manifestly unlawful order to his troops (My own captains would have assumed that I had stuck my head and politely dragged me away to get an MRI). So, then Sergeant First Class Jones and most of the rest of the company NCOs would report that some unexplained maintenance problem had rendered most of the unit’s vehicles deadlined. “Oh well, sir,” he’d say, shrugging. The military runs on NCO power; when they stop playing, you don’t have an army anymore. You have a bunch of government employees sitting around dressed like shrubs.
But assume the military does act. What’s it do? How about seize the prime media outlets? Well, there would be no need to seize many of them– the New York Times and the alphabet networks would cheerlead a coup. But the others? Which of the thousands of radio and TV stations would they grab? And how about the internet – where do the soldiers go to take over the internet? Mark Zuckerberg’s hacienda?
And there’s another problem – Texas, plus a bunch of other states with administrations that still have an affinity for that wacky old Constitution of ours. How do you imagine Governor Abbot reacting to Obama informing the nation that he thinks he’ll just stick around for a while, only without those meddling kids in Congress? Probably not so well. Governor Abbot has most of an infantry division that works for him. All the other loyal governors have forces too. And, it being their home, those local boys and girls will fight.
Speaking of fighting, that brings us to one more little obstacle in the road to Coupville. That’s us – the American people. It’s been Obama’s greatest disappointment that he has been unable to crush and humiliate the decent patriots of this country who keep and bear arms for the defense of themselves, their families, their community and – oh yeah – the Constitution. Disarming us isn’t just fun; it’s a strategic necessity for a coup to work.
But American patriots buy 60,000 firearms every single day. That’s four infantry divisions worth. The U.S. military has (very) roughly the equivalent of 25 active and reserve infantry and armored divisions. Their troops’ dubious loyalty to some usurper president aside, that means every week loyal Americans arm themselves in numbers in excess of the basic ground combat forces of the U.S. military.
This is not the place to dispel the tiresome assertions of some Twitter keyboard commandos who argue that small arms in the hands of the populace can’t effectively oppose a modern army. They would not be the guys who had to run resupply missions across a state like Pennsylvania that was filled with several million ticked off deer hunters packing 30-06s. But let me just share a few words with you on that subject: Vietnam. Iraq. Afghanistan.
So, in the end, Obama will leave in January, and good riddance. Wargaming the possibility of the elite trying to retain its grip on power is an amusing exercise, but in the end, it’s those damn bitter clingers who would once again mess up the liberals’ scheme. Of course, we know those bitter clingers as something else – patriots.
"I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God." (Title 10, US Code; Act of 5 May 1960 replacing the wording first adopted in 1789, with amendment effective 5 October 1962).
"I, _____ (SSAN), having been appointed an officer in the Army of the United States, as indicated above in the grade of _____ do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office upon which I am about to enter; So help me God." (DA Form 71, 1 August 1959, for officers.)
I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic...
That statement is first for a reason. No human can usurp the Constitution.
Well, it seems to me there are 30+ states that would not take kindly to their duly certified election results being ignored, and all of those states have armed forces at their command.
>>Well, it seems to me there are 30+ states that would not take kindly to their duly certified election results being ignored, and all of those states have armed forces at their command.
But would they use them? You can bet that Soros/Jarrett/Obama are weighing the probabilities. Even in the Progressive “religion”, the end-game requires some amount of force. The only difference between them and a full-bore revolutionary Communist is that the Red Commie starts with violence. The Prog just accepts that there will be those who do not accept the “nudge” and will require more forceful means of assimilation.
“But would they use them?”
They’re as likely to use them as Obama is likely to try and stay in office past the end of his term :P
The government doesn't have enough guns for that.
“Yes but most people don’t have more that a few thousand rounds of ammo if that, and we have no source of resupply.”
Of course we have a means to resupply our ammo stash. The feds bought billions of rounds. I can think of three other sources of ammo and weaponry.
Shoot him?
“Obama will arise as a leader in exile with his own loyal military, and he will challenge the incoming President with the threat of real force at some point early in the next administration.”
One Ranger or Marine platoon will take care of that “threat.”
You always have interesting information.
Thank you for posting.
I was in the military too late to note that custom.
Note to author: With a name like “Kurt Schlichter” you probably shouldn’t be putting anybody else down for not being macho enough to pull off a successful putsch.
Probably not in NJ; in areas where gun ownership is easy she’s probably more likely to get shot first (he wouldn’t have a bat but his own gun instead).
His election WAS a coup
You’re right about that. I said so in ‘08.
Obama might just be crazy enough to try a General’s coup.
But it the time of a coup, it’s the colonels who count.
I must know different military wives, I am telling you the ones I know would likely shoot him whether he had a bat or firearm.
and what if it turns out both Killary and Donald are both Alien Reptilians..?
WHAT’LL WE DO THEN..?
It's a credit to our armed services dedication to democracy that there hasn't been a coup to remove him.
Can’t believe I’m still seeing incompetent to describe BO. He has accomplished much of what he set out to do, destroying America.
Me too. And I'm pretty sure that my Dad [born 1920] and most of his WWII-era vets were as well. But my maternal grandfather, a veteran of the pre-WWI Pancho Villa raid on Columbus, NM and a WWI Navy vet, filled me in on the firsthand accounts he'd heard from Phillipine Insurrection veterans, mostly while they were still young.
My paternal grandda passed away two years before I was born; I wish I could have heard several of his *interesting* stories firsthand too.
Do? Why....we'll celebrate, Earthlings! Hahahahahahaha!
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