Defenders of Democracy

~ Clarissa

You hoped for a military coup and you believe it’s a good idea to express that wish in public?

The defenders of democracy strike again.

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Published by Clarissa

16 thoughts on “Defenders of Democracy”

  2. To be fair, there was and is a decent chance that the upper ranks might have gone for it, the question would be the mid to low ranks.

    Until about WWI, the military high command had a mix of mustangs, officer academy graduates, and people who bought commission, typically by recruiting and providing companies of soldiers on their own dime. President Theodor Roosevelt was one of the last category; he created and led the Rough Riders in the Spanish-American War. To give you some idea of what that last category looked like.

    At some point after WWII the upper command started only being staffed with officer academy graduates, with the occasional mustang added in.

    A translation of this is, most of the high command were promoted because of politics. Who was the best brown-nose, etc. A Mustang is a soldier who got promoted due to his actions. They typically make really good officers, but the more brown-nosing ones often don’t care for them. (Now keep in mind this is in general, not every case.)

    So by the time Obama was president the high command was fairly well fitted out with yes men, there were some who would follow the constitution first, but a sizable chunk were there because they wanted money, fame, and power.

    Under Obama the US High Command was gutted. He purged most of the upper ranks of those who were not yes men. Those guys who were yes men are mostly still there. Since they tend to promote yes men themselves. From what I can tell once you get to Major its less about your abilities and more about how much you can impress your superiors in order to get promoted. So the yes men typically get promoted over mustangs or more patriotic men.

    So while I will state comfortably that most of the lower rank are patriots and a decent chunk of the middle ranks. The upper ranks I would not trust to watch my pet rock.

    So yes, it was and is entirely possible that the high command could attempt to oppose Trump. It is less likely now, but the possibility is still there.

    • – W

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    1. True. And it would have been the textbook military coup which every decent person should abhor. That these people float this fantasy around so glibly shows that they have lost all touch with decency and patriotism. You want a military uprising because you don’t happen to like this president? And then what? A junta? Suspending the constitution? How can one wish that on one’s own country?

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      1. I was a officer in the United States Air Force for twenty-one years, and whoever wrote “We used to think the military would stand up to Trump” is an idiot who should move to a third-world banana republic where military coups are fashionable.

        In America, the President in the military commander-in-chief, and the military’s job is to follow his orders and fight foreign enemies, period. Military personnel who don’t like the President have exactly the same rights as every other American to state their objection — and that is the right to vote against him in our free electoral system.

        Dreidel

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  3. The logic here is that you are already living under the fascist system (I disagree, although if he keeps doing what he is doing there is a non-zero chance that it will happen… because conservatives are as eager to solve problems “po ponyatiyam” as the left, they just have different “ponyatiya”), and therefore it goes under the rubric of “one should not obey criminal orders” and “one will not have the excuse of just following orders”… But yes, the people who seriously believe that the military will disobey Trump, and are not using this construct as a purely rhetoric exercise, live in a bubble.

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    1. I’m starting to teach a course on Latin American dictatorships on Monday, and I believe that not even as a joke or a rhetorical device should anybody wish for a military coup. The Pinochet coup was against a really sucky pro-Soviet government but that doesn’t justify it. The Franco coup in Spain, the same. Whatever problems we have, should be resolved at the ballot box.

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          1. Agreed, but the problem is hardly limited to Canada, it is throughout the West. One can clearly observe current the resistance in the USA: not only from the economically subsidized illegal aliens themselves; nor restricted to the selfish animals that benefit economically from cheap labour; but also from those poor gentle souls with short-sighted compassion. No one even knows how many illegals are in the USA, because immigration hasn’t been controlled since Ike’s “Operation Watbeck” ;-D

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              1. I agree, Trump has been very disappointing on deportations. And these fake shows he stages to distract attention from that are very annoying.

                I’m not happy over any of this.

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