AMERICAN COUP

This morning I had intended to do some research on The Enlightenment to balance out my qualms about the industrial stage of “civilization”, but instead I’m sitting here with my mouth hanging open and reading about the 

conditions of a coup in America

http://neurocritic.blogspot.com/2017/01/why-do-political-figures-lie-so.html

What would happen in the minutes and hours after a coup in America? http://bit.ly/2jVCxBK 

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/donald-trump-security-force-232797

These are the steps suggested in Mike Pearl’s VICE article.  (The second link above.)  It’s worth reading the article to get our heads out of what we’ve always taken for granted.  This is sort of like realizing your respectable family has been a crime syndicate all along and, in fact, your prosperity and self-respect has depended on that conviction.

Step 1: Everyone Opposes the President

Step 2: Every Other Option Has Been Exhausted

Step 3: The Military Tells Trump He's Not President Anymore

Step 4: The Coup Plotters Make Their Pitch to America

Step 5: There's Pushback from Trump Supporters

Step 6: Trump Stages His Last Stand

Step 7: The New Regime Tries to Rule the Country

Several unorganized thoughts come to mind.  One is that we’ve all watched enough spy thrillers to know that it’s possible to arrange ways to rub out any individual that are nothing like an assassin arriving on a theatre balcony with a pistol in his hand.  Rather the target “has a heart attack,” which is believable enough for a seventy-year-old man with Alzheimers, and cannot be countered with a health record if the only physician who has had even the slightest contact is a flaky guy.

Now stories begin to come out about Trump’s private army AKA security force which does not get along well with the USA protection agencies who are formally delegated to protect the president.  Cheney had a private army, of course, with a deadly reputation.  No one rose up to oppose private armies (army=armed) under private political control in that case, but some big city police forces have seemingly and organically appointed themselves into that sort of body without any obvious “head” except their conviction that US citizens they accept (male, white, rich) would approve.

Several potential opposing bodies of thought, affinity and revolt exist.  We all saw the Women’s March but they were unarmed, nonviolent, and even in this massive surge, not a big enough percentage of the people to support anything like opposition from corporate forces.  There is another source of solidarity and it is MUCH underestimated;  I’m talking about Native Americans both on and off reservations.  They are appealing enough to be a catalyst for a movement of “brown” people: Hispanics, American blacks, Asians, and possibly even whites of low status.  And they ARE armed and experienced, tough folks.  

The most effective affinity resistance group is invisible, as invisible to the general public as are very rich people who pay the media to ignore them, and without national boundaries.  I’m talking about Internet users.  China is trying hard to control them, but a natural biological force is opposing those in charge — usually older and male — while supporting the numbers and motives of those who no longer are so much guerrillas or terrorists as hackers.  The only real way to shut them down is to close the infrastructure (transmission towers and satellites) or their sources of electricity, which has the wretched side-effect of shutting down the economy.  In the era of handhelds and cloud storage, one can’t simply seize a room of desktops as we see done in movies.

In fact, internet gaming has so educated the younger people that they are coyotes against cows, and they reproduce faster in greater numbers.  If they reach critical mass, we would simply have to wait until they are old or hope for a plague.  Some suggest that governments are not above seeding a plague into populations they dislike and then withholding a cure.

It’s not natural to think in these terms, but we knew these terms were coming: the limits of physical resources like coal and oil; the persistence of famine in the face of growing populations; the displacement of peoples in numbers too great and over distances that destroy all the cohesive forces of culture.  We didn’t expect to pollute the ocean to this extent, to diminish animal ecologies so drastically, or to raise the temps while making the air unbreathable.  I had thought I would die before all this happened and I didn’t think about what it would mean in political terms.

Here’s the new loop in the snare wire:

The Associated Press @AP 

BREAKING: Trump bans EPA employees from providing updates on social media or to reporters, bars awarding new contracts or grants.

Two reporters were arrested at the Women’s March, just like some tyrannical country that depends upon suppression.  This only creates and intensifies the underground economy of news.  This morning the NYTimes nailed Trump and his press secretary for lying.  No doubt pressure being brought to bear backstage, unless those in real power (not the people we think) have supported this as part of the discrediting necessary for a coup.  

What the heck is going on when the Little Red Riding Hood defender of the President ends up throwing punches at a formal dignified ball, even after she has been valorized as a Barbie Doll?  Talk about mixed messages.

This first cut bravely made by Mike Pearl into a snake-snarl of things formerly undiscussible will no doubt release a lot of “Game of Thrones” comparisons and even more hoarding of survival equipment and supplies.  This recent week of dry camp certainly reminded me that I was not really prepared to go it alone if major geological or meterological events happened.  After all, one needs a good deal of water and it needs to be in liquid form, not piled up to block the roads.  This is not an “alternative fact”.  I hope that a coup never becomes our alternative. strategy.