Is a coup still ‘electoralism’?
My only issue with the argument that Trump won't or can't do anything is that it rests on Capital being competent. If Capital can create a global ecological disaster that will likely end the human species then they can create a monster they can't control. I think the absolute best case scenario right now is that the Secret Service has to physically remove Trump in January, possibly after a Bundy-like standoff. At worst, he just refuses to leave. Just like with the impeachment stuff, he ignores everything. He simply refuses to react and bunkers down inside the White House. I know people will swear that kind of thing somehow contradicts historical realism, but I don't think it does. It's not "great man" theory shit for a dictator-aspirant to act like a dictator.
If I may run my mouth a bit, you have people like Felix running around on twitter mocking people for thinking anything would happen. Because those kinds of people are so invested in nothing fundamentally changing, that they can't imagine it. The world has to remain the same, but get slightly shittier, because that's what they've built their entire worldview around. I go by more of a punctuated equilibrium idea. The kind of thing where there are years where nothing happens and weeks wher-- you know the thing. Yes politics is boring and banally evil most of the time but then there's little spurts of oh-shit moments and then things do change. People who haven't even been alive 35 years are telling everyone how things never change. When really, that's the thing that's against Marxist theory. It's not thinking Trump can only coup if Capital backs him. The betrayal of leftist values is thinking history doesn't change because it made a good soundbite on a podcast.
So yeah, if this doesn't go far enough I will be owned somehow. But I'm not saying that this has to end in a civil war. It can be Trump refusing to leave, SS carries him out, we laugh about it for a week. Then back to a boring ass Biden administration for 4 years. But it will have been another turn of the screw on the way to fascism. Whatever Trump does now will be a template for future Republican presidents. Trump rejecting the system, no matter how tiny, matters. It'll be worse next time.
Yep, I don't really see how a Trump coup would contradict Historical Materialism.
Napoleon III, a man very widely mocked by contemporary French Liberals for being an incompetent failson, managed to coup the French Government to prevent his removal from office.
A pretty smart guy named Karl wrote about that, and said something pretty interesting:
History repeats itself "the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce"
Marx belabors the point a bit there I think.
While Nappy 3 wasn't his uncle, he was actually a pretty competent guy as long as you didn't put him near an army and just let him appoint people to execute his ideas. Just because they start as failsons doesn't mean they stay that way. He just had the misfortune of living in a time when Bismarck also lived and where material conditions weakened the French hold on Europe.
Haussman for instance single handedly made Parisian revolts nearly unviable with his urban renewal strategy. the Commune had a much harder time of it than the Sans-Culottes or the Les Mis crowd.
IMO It's a bit naive to compare 1848-1849, one of the most revolutionary periods of history, to the present moment. A Trump coup doesn't align with a historical materialist analysis because there's no segment of capital that truly gains anything from installing him over Joe Biden. Napoleon III toppled a fledgling republic where no faction had firmly entrenched itself at the helm. A Trump coup is not impossible, but it would be up against some of the most entrenched nodes of power on the planet.
SC seems unlikely to side with him. I think he’ll go the faithless elector route.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/11/what-if-trump-refuses-concede/616424/
no this is wrong
the PA SCOTUS case about mail-in ballots received after election day is at 4-4 deadlock right now
Justice Barrett has not recused herself from that case... and looking at the specifics around the nature of mail-ballots in PA and their "secrecy envelopes" & whether ballots were received without postmarks, and this (along with the 5-3 decision in WI properly applied) could decide the outcome alone
Trump said if he won he would purge the DoD, FBI, NSA and CIA leadership, probably to install loyalists. Those agencies have nothing against right wing populism or any of Trump's more egregious policies, but they don't like his aversion to full on war and the fact that he ostensibly represents industrial capital over financial capital.
If I was going to stage a coup, this is what I would start with. I do think that the natsec deep state is more powerful than he realizes though. I mean they killed JFK. Their leaders rotate all the time, the institutional memory is clearly the real "leader".
I'm confused by why Zuckerberg seems to have sided with the industrial side.
He sides with whatever is best for Facebook's profitability. At this point the most engaged Facebook users are probably Trump supporters, or at least they have a significant plurality
I don't think he has, I think he just sees the rising right wing movement as a fat juicy source of cash. I will say that tech seems to be the least loyal of the financial capital sectors much like Oil & Gas is the least loyal of the industrial sectors.
Lol I think Facebook having stupid Trump meme pages is not taking sides. You need to look at what their money is doing. Even Peter Thiel even if he is nominally a Trump supporter has his wealth is doing the same thing as Zucks: building the surveillance infrastructure for a future techno feudal US where everyone uses apps giving them chores they can do for people who can build and maintain software systems.
Zuck gives the people what they want, the problem is the people are awful.
He's just trying to build a brand for himself leveraging qanon in the exit from the white house that the Republicans can use as their own version of "Russiagate" over the next 4 years. This shit really isn't that complicated.
actually this is the most probable analysis here. All american politics is theater, has anyone seen especially in the past 5 years how stupid this shit is? its a narrative that you have to keep watching at the edge of your seat. while distracted they will do disgusting shit tho, but something like this? i just... unless president trump is too dumb to really understand what is required..
I don't buy that he has the military on his side. Is there any general who's hurrah pro-Trump? I figure most are like Mattis who think he's a clown. They especially have no reason to overthrow Biden. If it was Sanders, that'd be another story
the military has said they would remain neutral, so if the republicans can find some "constitutional" way to remain in office I don't think they would intervene on behalf of dems either.
Only one in every three generals supports Trump. The lowest of a Republican president in recent history.
trump's bad for business, the military industrial complex needs blood and trump hasn't spilled any. at this point, they'd probably take anyone, republican or democrat, who wants to reboot the war economy
Trump has spilled plenty of blood. Killed more civilians with drone strikes in 4 years than Obama did in 8.
Trump bombed Iran in 2017, massively expanded the drone program and revoked a law that forced the military to report civilian casualties.
Seems most people on this site think the military industrial complex is a hivemind and don't understand that it's a handful of capitalists at the top who have their own interests, most of them contradicting one another.
Also, US imperialism has been declining for years. It was in a decline before Trump stepped in office. Ask neolibs and necons about the failures of Obama's presidency and the first thing they'll bring up is foreign policy. Obama screwed around in Afghanistan, which is now completely overrun with the Taliban to the point the US has lost that war and their puppet government toppled. Obama also completely squandered Syria and he was seen as a weak coward for not getting aggressive with Russia after Putin had his own power trip in the eastern bloc with seizing back the Crimea and invading Ukraine.
All through 2014, conservatives were yelling "boots on the ground" in regards of Syria. They constantly talked about how WEAK WEAK WEAK they seen Obama to be for his foreign policy efforts, something that was also heavily criticized by the neolibs who worship at his altar.
The media simply changed sides when Trump came into the picture and because 70% of all our media has a liberal bias, you suddenly heard about the US empire in decline, cause they refused to really cover it years ago.
Trump is a failure much in the way Obama was in his second term, and Biden isn't going to fix it for them either.
It's really that Hillary Clinton was a war hawk in a way that Kerry wasn't as well. Many of these same people also describe Biden as more dovish than Obama.
Biden has promised limitless blood already. Warmongering in China, Syria, Bolivia, Venezuela, you name it. He's serving the world up in a buffet platter.
ROFL a war on China is not happening. Both parties love to yell at each other over China, but it's just them acting tough and that's been going on for over 30 years now. Republicans ran this same propaganda calling Obama soft and cowardly on China, and even in the 90s, Bill Clinton was called "soft on China". Over 70% of our commodities are made over there. There isn't going to be a war any time soon.
The US already squandered their chances in Syria years ago back in Obama's presidency. They can't really do anything except bring in more troops.
Bolivia and Venezuela might have coups engineered by the capitalists within the military industrial complex. But full on 2004 style war, is unlikely.
No mention of Iraq or Afghanistan I see, which are the biggest failures of US imperialism as of late. The Taliban have pretty much taken over in Afghanistan to the point that the US has lost that war and the Taliban could force them out in the near future. Both of the puppet governments that the US and NATO propped up have failed. Those countries have become failed states. If there is any imperialist effort to be done in Biden's presidency, I'm pretty sure it's going to be Iraq and Afghanistan long before it's China.
So many leftists seem to think it's still 2004 and come up with laughably bad takes on foreign policy acting like the military industrial complex is some hivemind, when it absolutely is not. It's a handful of capitalists with their own interests in natural resources spread out across the world and if you pay attention long enough, you start to see where they contradict themselves and run into conflict over said interests.
The US war machine has been declining for the past decade. Biden isn't going to fix it. If anyone actually paid attention to Obama's foreign policy failures in his second term, this would be clear to them. Obama's entire second term was mostly foreign policy failures on the US's behalf. Trump was a bumbling moron and he made things worse by escalating tensions in Afghanistan and increasing the drone program. The only thing he really did that made matters worse for the war machine was that he and the neo-cons in his cabinet were willing to defund NATO all to make a few extra bucks.
It's not 2004 anymore.
You don't actually need to go to war to feed the beast, just beat the drums at paper tigers and spend trillions on broken weapons systems. Biden is continuing that proud tradition of "everyone who isn't white is our mortal enemy, ready to pounce at any second". Trump did too, but he wasn't as convincing about it. He's not saying these things because he believes then, he's saying then because the MIC knows that this means their profits are safe under Biden.
There will be bloodshed, probably a proxy war (revival of funding to Turkic Nationals maybe?, Definite continuation of whatever projects were happening under Trump), And the war profiteering will cause countless deaths in America from the austerity that funds it.
Healthcare pls.
Trump did too, but he wasn’t as convincing about it. He’s not saying these things because he believes then, he’s saying then because the MIC knows that this means their profits are safe under Biden.
What makes you think the military industrial complex is some hivemind with the president at the center? It's not a hivemind. It's a handful of capitalists, all with their own interests spread out across the globe. I mean, we literally got a full example of this with Elon Musk of all people being involved in Bolivia.
It's not 2004 anymore. There is no full on; boots on the ground, waving American flags with the war machine when coups happen. And what you describe with military profits happens even without war. Our budget is so inflated and a fair share of that is not even going to the military, it's going to the private corporations and private sector which is controlled by these capitalists.
Go back and read about Obama's foreign policy errors that I highlighted and do some digging there on articles from 2014 and 2015. War in Syria didn't go so well for them and they put a lot of effort into that. Obama also screwed up with Ukraine and the Crimea, when he had he biggest neolibs and neocons SCREAMING for war over that.
This shit isn't as simple as most of you think. War has changed a lot since 2004, and the US has been getting their asses kicked in Afghanistan and Iraq since Obama's second term. The Taliban have practically taken over Afghanistan to the point that they can push the US out in the near future. I know some armchair leftist genius is going to respond to this with "that's not true! Biden can just put more troops on the ground and turn the tide!' but that's not how war works. They tried that in Obama's second term and it backfired and will backfire again.
There will be bloodshed, probably a proxy war (revival of funding to Turkic Nationals maybe?, Definite continuation of whatever projects were happening under Trump), And the war profiteering will cause countless deaths in America from the austerity that funds it.
The austerity that is going to come here in the US will be to raise police budgets and the national guard. The military budget is already inflated through the roof and they have that covered. The war on terror is coming home. Few of you seem to realize this with how the state is preparing for all our war with the protest movement in the street. We'll see a bipartisanship effort early on next year to pass some law furthering military police to suppress protests. The word we keep hearing is that the federal government is broke and that austerity is going to fund all this shit for them to make life hell for us.
I am in total agreement, we're heading towards a massive domestic conflict. A heightening of class warfare and subsequent violent crackdown by the imperial bourgeoisie.
They're failing miserably to succeed in projecting power in the colonial territories so that industry has to go somewhere, and the police are absolutely going to be getting a massive windfall over the next decade or so.
In case you folks aren’t familiar with Gina Haspel, here’s a snippet from her wiki:
Haspel has attracted controversy for her role as chief of a CIA black site in Thailand in 2002 in which prisoners were tortured with so called "enhanced interrogation techniques", including waterboarding.
lmfao remember how the media coverage of her when she was appointed was basically "girlboss can torture just as good as any man"?
I think they're attempting the coup but they just don't have the keys to power. The middle civil service ranks don't support him enough, and nothing can jam the works like a functionary who doesn't want a thing done.
He's an angry senile man that just had covid and spent the past month on steroids and experimental drugs. We can't necessarily assume he's entirely coherent.
Reading your comment, I really hope this part is included in the historical interpretation of Trump’s presidency 60 years from now (boldly assuming the US and rest of the world still exist, that is).
We got to live during a pandemic with an already senile and mentally unstable sociopath as a president, and he caught the virus, almost died, and the steroids melted his brain. Then he disputed the results of a fairly cut and dried election, and is threatening not to leave lmao. I mean, that’s hilarious and would be a historical event I’d be into.
Absolutely. His entire brand is being the big winner who never gets owned, despite it happening a lot. Even if they don't pull off this maybe coup, he can inflate the actions they're taking now as his struggle with the deep state or some bullshit like that.
Would make a great movie for his future network since he's definitely not going to jail.
I honestly can't wait for TrumpTV, it's gonna be a blast. Like a 24 hour Steven Segal movie marathon, but with more.
He's literally asking to be prosecuted by the Biden administration at this point. Like if he just backed down then Biden would absolutely not do shit, but past a certain point this shit absolutely does become personal.
What if they do a faithless elector route where they maintain the presidency without a military coup
SCOTUS just decided yesterday that state penalties on "faithless electors" are constitutional
in fact, that ruling yesterday, which I think was unanimous, would make it easier in a situation where GOP-held state legislatures in contested states contravene results for Biden
but that's only if SCOTUS doesn't invalidate mail-in ballots counted after last Tuesday in PA & WI and elsewhere lol
What does "states" in that context mean? Who exactly penalises? And What is the penalty? And is it just a penalty or is the vote of the faithless elector reversed?
They could, but its surprisingly hard to bribe/threaten/subvert electors. The parties tend to appoint party loyalists.
One person can't make a coup. Coups take a huge amount of political capital, and not with random poor people, with secret police, media, national bourgeoisie, generals. The risk is there, but I just don't think Trump has anywhere near the political capital necessary to do a coup. Hell, he doesn't even have a coordinated brown shirt style paramilitary.
All this lib hysteria comes from the fact that they live in a world of pure ideology. They just have zero ability to do a material analysis.
He has 70 million people firmly behind him, not to mention all the boog Q nuts which make up a substantial part of that. It's not a coup as in it's not a military junta organizing behind the scenes to oust Biden and force him into exile, but the warning signs are absolutely there. I don't know how any leftist could claim otherwise considering that power brokers in Latin America would immediately be crying foul and getting their ghoul neolibs at the MSM to spout off about how we need military intervention
Like I said, the risk is there. It doesn't really matter if he has 70 million supporters for two reasons:
There are 70 million people to counter his 70 million.
His 70 million are not well coordinated.
A successful coup would require decisive action. For a paramilitary coup to be successful they would need take over media outlets, legislatures, and also quickly purge the left to stop a leftist counter revolution. All while fending of a similarly sized if not larger radical left. His paramilitary support is not NEARLY coordinated enough to pull that off. He needs real military or secret police support to do that. Not to mention the fact that a shit show like that would be a foreign policiy DISASTER. Japan, South Korea and probably even European allies would run for the hills. The only significant ally that would probably stay the course would be Canada. A lot of good that wil do to counter China.
If Trump is going to stay in power, he has to do it "legally" by manipulating the electoral college. I think this is a very real possibility, but he still has no real way to garner support with the secret police and military moving forward. These institutions depend greatly on US soft power and Trump would only be further alienating them with this move. CIA and DoD have every reason in the world, materially, to support a Biden presidency and absolutely no sane reason to support Trump aside from potentially ideologically, which is not something I would expect to see outside of the rank and file of major institutions.
Not seen many democrat supporting Militias. Moot point though as you say if he does go for it it will all be done legally, the dems are wet paper bags and will offer only token resistance if he gets a legal victory through the court.
Militias? No. The ability to mobilizes 100s of thousands of protestors in virtually every city in the country? Yes.
counterpoint: trump's side is infinitely more fanatical, more dedicated, more united and more armed, and definitely willing to give up their time to drive into cities for protests
I agree, but I don't think that it's likely to keep him in power via a decsive power grab. I do think it's very likely to lead to widespread violence similar to the troubles in Ireland on a scale orders of magnitude larger.
I think you could make the point that that would create enough of a smoke screen to keep him in the white house, but I think at that point you have chaos on a level where basically anything could happen.
My guess would be that at some point the DoD would just say enough is enough and either take control directly, or take control through a puppet president.
It's all just speculation though at the end of the day, and frankly I don't think any of this changes what the strategy should be on the left aside from probably a far greater emphasis on personal and online safety than was necessary in the past.
I wouldn't say that his 70 million is worse than the dem's 70 million, his base is much more fanatical and better armed. If Trump really bought into his own ego I can see him deluding himself into thinking that he can pull this off.
I totally agree that he might be delusional enough to try it, but I doubt the rest of the republican party is, and to go on without them is just suicide.
Still he might be that crazy in which case he will just fail in my assessment.
and to go on without them is just suicide.
why? It's not suicide if it's successful
It's all speculation. If your analysis is that he has what he needs to be successful, then that's great. I am just giving my opinion. Time will tell.
Oh, it could very well escalate, it just don't think it will escalate towards anything resembling a "normal" second term for Trump.
I THOUGHT I COULD JUST TUNE OUT AND GO TO BRUNCH
THIS ISN'T FAIR
I DON'T WANT TO HAVE TO GO TO A PROTEST AGAIN
Joe Manchin needs to be magically sealed back into the lump of coal he escaped from.
Good luck running a coup out of the State Department.
This is going to be such a shit show.
department of energy coups the government, everyone enslaved to work in power plants starting next wednesday
Allow me to answer your question with another question.
Is there a US embassy in the United States?
Worse, the US State Department has its main headquarters here
If these two can't decide, I say give it to the rightful president Juan Guaido. He deserves this, it is his time. :guaido:
I am going to be naive and assume this is in preparation to declassify the existence of aliens :)
Harry Reid has been saying aliens are a thing for years lol.
It's probably brainworms. That and I don't want to exist in a universe where they actually coup for Trump of all people lol.
