Of all of the things happening, the administration looking like it intends to turn DC into an armed camp is the one most likely to accelerate us from 'civil disturbance' to 'civil war' once these guys lose an election, which seems pretty likely to happen sooner rather than later.
All the glory of the Republic, her grand ideals and monumental achievements and the vastness of her citizens and the nobility of her laws, and even her faults and failings, are to be trampled by muddy pigs for the sake of the rotting ego of a narcissistic pedophile and his pack of cranks and madmen.
The risk of a dictatorship when the regime uses military force for everything is real, but the risk isn't a Trump dictatorship. The risk is that the military decides they don't need the president anymore and starts pointing their guns at the White House.
The US military has a lot of guardrails against that in the form of training and indoctrination. It seems to have significantly fewer in not following illegal and immoral orders.
Well, if a military coup happens, the argument will likely be that they are ignoring immoral orders and are protecting the constitution. No one starts a coup saying that they want to have all the corruption for themselves.
I wouldn't worry about that. He won't lose any election, because he's going to make sure the ballots say exactly what he wants them to.
Bret, you of all people could best answer this. How many troops are needed to occupy a city the size of Washington? How about Chicago? Could they occupy multiple cities at once with ICE + National Guard? How about with Marines and Army?
I think 'occupy' is not a helpful frame here, because different levels of force create different paths that resistance might follow. Napoleon overthrew the French revolutionary government with only a few hundred grenadiers.
What prevents Trump from overthrowing the government with ICE is not an artificial 'occupation ratio' or something, but the presence of other armed bodies (Capitol Police, DC's MPD, the National Guards of Maryland and Virginia) which might intervene to stop something like that.
One obvious concern here is that those groups are made up of some of his strongest and most reliable supporters.
Other question is how many people in a variety of agencies would be compromised by having participated in the violence before and those might fear Regime change?
Creating a precedent that the president just regularly pulls red-state national guard units into the capital opens the door to, for instance, moving those units into DC in preparation for a self-coup in response to a lost election.
I will believe that you believe what you are saying when you tell me you have not only bought a gun, but you and your gun owning neighbors are organized
"I will believe this guy who keeps saying how intensely he wants to avoid paths that lead to large scale violence believes that he wants to avoid large scale violence when he buys a gun" is a triumph of failing at reading comprehension.
what ever your post says that it is likely we will have civil war if you think it is likely , then you prepare
If you have, in fact bought a gun and have, infact organized emergency Plans with your neighbours you should probably not say so on social Media especially if you have any kind of reach.
yeah
At which point, the peaceful, democratic methods of resolving disputes will be lost and the question will come to violence. That violent calculus is extremely different. A few hundred ICE guys, backed by a couple thousand passively accepting national guard is enough for a coup...
...but for, say, a nation-wide campaign of counter-insurgency in response to civil unrest or even effective civil war as a *result* of that self coup? Well, 200,000 wasn't quite enough for Iraq, a country 7 times smaller in population and 20 times smaller in land area.
The good news is that Hegseth is purging the military of everyone competent.
And I’d argue that the existence of multiple large, economically, politically powerful cities in the US would make things exponentially more difficult than Iraq. Bagdad had a pop of ~7 mill in 2010, and the second largest city, Najaf, had ~1.1. Seize DC, and you have ~ 20 bigger places to deal with.
Yeah, so a lot would depend on how much resistance you could expect from US cities.
And who do you really expect to put their lives on the line? How many? The time to call on all members of the armed services to fulfill their oaths to defend the Constitution is right now. (Reply not directed at you as much as to the general thread.)
Many of the things being asked of service members are constitutional due to the actions of Congress over the last century. That’s why this is a civ-mil relationship crisis, and why the general populace needs to stop putting this on institutions to stop. 1/
In this scenario, I take comfort in the fact that wars are ultimately won not by killing some specific % of the enemy, but by breaking the enemy's will to fight, and "self-coup by an unpopular leader with a legally laughable rationale, followed by widespread civil unrest" is a morale killer.
Also after he fired most of the security state
an important dynamic here is that DC is only the political center of power. Lots of other countries have a giant metropole where the government, financial, cultural, and population are all centralized. You control that you have the country in other words. But in this case, DC is just A Place.
when the capital sends out orders and they get ignored is generally when stuff starts to get messy - if they can't be compelled or convinced to obey, at that point you de-facto have a split country, even if it's not legally stated or acknowledged at that point
You can only resolve disputes peacefully with people who dispute in good faith. With fascists, only the fear of God and lead will work.
VA seems key here, I wonder if part of the timing was to try to get as many armed personnel in before the VA elections
You said that about nat guard in la, what’s different about dc I bet in a few weeks it quietly fizzles away
Differences in DC: He has more authority in DC because it's not a state, if he has national guard in DC on/after the election, that will mean *he has troops in the capital* and since he has already once attempted to use violence to prevent a transition of power...
I’ll bet in a few weeks they’re all gone
There would've been a civil war long ago if Trump was a Democrat. Or he'd get assassinated before that. It's always the one side that chooses violence.
i don't think you can have a civil war with fewer combatants than January 6th
I think it's important, this far out, to start thinking about gathering a physical crowd in DC on the day the next Congress is seated
could glenn yungkins & winsome sears callin guard units from dc to do a third manassas in the event spanberger wins virginia governor election in november?
There won’t be any more elections
Remarkably unlikely. Even Putin's Russia has elections, just not fair ones. The electoral apparatus of the USA is not under the control of the executive branch. And the GOP clearly expects to keep having elections, however fair or unfair.
This "there won't be elections" sort of doomermism strikes me as profoundly pointless - it engenders a sense of hopelessness in your friends while accomplishing nothing against your foes. I am very close to just blocking it whenever I see it, because it does nothing but aid the fascists.
The unfortunate reality is that the situation is, in fact, hopeless. Sure, maybe we'll get Putin/Assad rigged elections instead of no elections, but I think you'll forgive me for considering that a distinction without a difference. POTUS clearly considers himself king, & intent on ruling as such.
The us is hard to centrally control. And their democratic political culture is much deeper ingrained. The dice are very much still up in the air.
Eh, there's nothing they can do if 2 million people walk to the Capitol. Which will probably eventually happen, even if we aren't as badass as the South Koreans.
Ideally what would happen here is the courts would step in and say, 'no, there's obviously no emergency, the guard has to go home.' But I have little confidence in this, because SCOTUS will, though they know that's true, issue an unsigned order finding no one has standing to hide from their jobs.
It is remarkably frustrating to me to watch a system break down against a kind of threat its systems were *designed* - reasonably well designed! - to defeat because everyone whose job it is to actually *do* that is busy hiding under their desks hoping against hope someone else will bell the cat.
It was the job of senate republicans to remove & disqualify this lunatic after January 6 and they chickened out. It was Garland's job to put him in jail for doing crimes in broad daylight, and he dragged his feet. It was SCOTUS' job to disqualify him under the 14A, and they hid under their desks.
It was OUR job to NOT FUCKING ELECT HIM, and YET.
and a trustworthy national media's job to weed him out in spring 2016 or ANY other time after that
That's not exactly what they did. This is as much a Roberts dictatorship as a Trump one.
It was Biden's job, recognizing the peril in 2023 not 2024 to get the f&#$% out of the way and give the Dems time to mount a real campaign (and perhaps pick a different candidate - or at least give her time to pivot).
Biden was pretty good and governing and used office to improve people’s lives—so he made two errors; thought he should stay in office and that he would win
It was the job of guys - Mattis, McMaster, Kelly, etc. - who served in the first admin. not to mumble their "he's a fascist" warnings but charge on to TV to scream it so that it got and drove coverage. It was the press' job to cover that this guy's handpicked dudes thought he was a fascist!
Everything you raise here is the fault of the press, who wants Trump to win
Institution after institution, created, constructed, designed, funded, maintained, for generations for this exact moment and the cowards at the top, all of whom know damn well what they've got on their hands, did nothing and hoped someone else would bell the cat.
Not to mention most people
Seeing this, I think you're mistaken. The system and culture of US governance have over time changed to accommodate fascism. It is now doing exactly what it mutated into because Trump's the amorphous glob that could slot into the void that kicked all the gears into motion. Trump didn't start ICE.
Trump didn't create the current corporate media environment that is doing its level best to sanewash and hide what's happening. Trump didn't create the Republican party as it currently exists. Authoritarian and xenophobic, actively hostile to facts and expertise. Trump didn't create the Democrats.
Someone else, since early Cold War, vested the President with sweeping 'Emergency Powers,' ill-defined.
Goes back farther. Congress started seeding the presidency with emergency powers in the 20s and 30s. Wilson and FDR increased the power of the executive to higher levels. Eisenhower helped make congress more comfortable with empowering the executive. Nixon finally made it normal.
Everyone whose job it was to stop this, had some counter-incentive. The GOP Congresscritters who should have helped impeach him both feared his base would punish them in a primary - and that if their party was tarred with this kind of crime, they'd lose the general election even in safe districts.
The SCOTUS justices either also feared for Republican chances in the next several elections, or their own jobs if they admitted the guy who appointed them should have never gotten that chance in the first place. Garland knew he had to make his case absolutely airtight, so he spent too long...
...trying for perfect and not quite getting there, before finally filing what should have been good-enough cases he could have filed months earlier. The whole court system wanted so badly to be ostentatiously giving Trump every possible chance so as to not seem to be railroading him, that he...
...was able to drag it out further and further until it all became moot. And everyone hoped and prayed the voters would rebuke him at the ballot box strongly enough to break his hold on the Republican Party.
And so this nefarious maniac is now apparently basically digging in in the capital as his poll numbers sink because millions of Americans went to the polls firm in the belief that he'd lower prices and no do any of the shit he's actually doing. Just astounding infuriating.
Evergreen bsky.app/profile/slee...
It’s maddening that he won election promising mass deportations, political persecutions, deploying the military against Americans, reversing all the legal and cultural progress of the 20th and 21st centuries, plus raising taxes on the poor and middle-class, which voters hate now that it’s happening.
Don’t forget the media that downplayed and obfuscated that he was going to do the things he was obviously going to do and instead parroted his transparent lies.
I suppose my consolation prize is that, having been vocal about all of this instead of hiding under a desk, if everything does fall apart I'll end up Marc Bloch'd by these asshats before having to live with the shame of being the broken link in a two-and-a-half-century tradition of being a republic.
Try raising an army against the enemies of the Republic
Sorry dudes, we live in the stupidest timeline— nobody gets to go down heroically like Marc Bloch. None of us are that important. Mostly we’ll die because of some treatable infection. Or we stroke out while pushing our shopping carts across an arid wasteland looking for cans to recycle.
💯 I totally agree with this whole thread. I agree that our system was reasonably well designed. During the decades leading to breakdowns of our three branches of government, Congress could have created laws to reinforce our Union. Relying on rules & norms to fill in the blanks was beyond reckless.
bsky.app/profile/tams...
2.5 centuries was a pretty good run though.
I've heard that this is the historical average lifespan of a democracy 👌
Don’t be too quick to call it, either. Things are going to get bad if we don’t reverse course soon, but it takes some *really* bad times to take down a country like the US.
Would have been nice to beat the Roman Republic.
dont be so pessimistic, the united states can still live on as a creatue not too dissimilar from the diseased husk that is the russian federation if it splits apart into Sane and Insane states, well, given how long it took before constantinople fell, Newsomville, CA has a thousand years to go
“Marc Bloch’d” 😭😭😭 I mean, he was pretty badass though.
Honestly, if it all falls apart I'm going to be incredibly annoyed that the "250 year empire lifespan" dipshits will be right about us despite being entirely wrong on the concept. Because of course Trump can't miss a chance to piss me off, even when he isn't aware of it.
_Hanging on in quiet desperation is the english way_ Well. Why don’t you try to go on strike ? Sincerely, France
Bc a meaningful strike in america requires logistics that don't yet exist. We need a large amount of people to be willing to potentially destroy their economic lives and trust that we'll have each other's backs. Yet things are still just comfortable enough meanwhile no strike infrastructure exists
Yet you can tell this is self defeating. Have hope. If Boeing can do it. America can do it. Come one, they don’t even know how to make a plane that fly upward, _how hard could that be_
A strike big enough to matter *at all* to the President, much less get him to back down on an issue, much less get him to resign, is effectively impossible in the United States. America is not France.
More seriously. Resignation is not possible, even in France. But. It’s hard for a government to wreck through whith their own agenda if they have to put out fire on the street constantly. Trump is constantly gaining leeway by acting crazy and the noose is getting tight. He’s red carpeting Putin…
Because most of us, ESPECIALLY the people feeling the majority of the impact, are one missed paycheck away from losing our homes, not having food, etc. And even if we can afford enough missed paychecks to cover a strike (or use PTO, for those who have it), if you get fired you miss far more 💰 days.
Hey, I was not trying to hurt your feelings. We sincerely feel your pain. It’s because of this that strikes are popular in Europe. We know that the moment we let the situation slip, our ability to collectively organize and defend our rights will be taken away just like that. Take care
This is not even getting into impact on family or dependents, disruption to medical coverage (because again, the most vulnerable are also more likely to be needing their medical care, and anyone striking could be a target of police brutality and suddenly need care).
Every one of those institutions and the powerful "elites" who run them have left the rest of us to be prey, while still demanding we defer to them. And NOW if we ordinary people try to push back, we will risk our lives and freedom. We should ask them, EVERY day, "what exactly is the point of you?"
Are his poll numbers really that bad? Like I hear people talking about consequences at the polls for Trump, but every poll I see still have his diehard cultists at 40+% support with minimal change in general support, even if they grumble about specifics.
He's doing the racism & the misogyny. Those were the big numbers. All of those people got what they voted for...
someone else would what??
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belling...
Not everyone at the top are cowards. Many (more than we would prefer to admit) share Trump's policy goals and are grateful for the excuse to do what they already wanted to do.
No one wants to lose their privilege. They see that Trump will use the power of state to threaten and intimidate them and that is enough to break them. Better to retreat than lose money or material comfort.
Honestly the “we keep us safe” abolitionists have a point
Given how the Dems are doing in 2025 I’m not terribly convinced a “real campaign” would have helped here—I’m imagining Newsom knifing Harris in the back before getting iced at the polls—but it would have been different at least
Did the voters have a job at any point?
"and he dragged his feet." False.
To be fair the SCOTUS have been fucking compromised since FDR, primarily occupied with trying to nix anything progressive that comes near them rather than actually being a legal body.
Well I mean the failsafe is supposed to be the electorate but
aw nuts
yeah I mean what were the odds
Although I find it strange that the members of SCOTUS are chosen politically. Even common sense suggests, it might not work if politicians get to choose the judges...
The Serious People turned out to be pretentious, well mannered, self interested cowards.
It was designed with the assumption that the central power would have almost none of the military potential of the US at it's command.
And they actually nailed exactly what would do it: the formation of parties. Obviously that is not fixable but if we recover from this something needs to be done to reduce incentives to extremism. Ranked-choice voting? Proportional House seats instead of voting districts? Dunno.
Many other countries in the world have parties. Most of us are managing to avoid a slide into dictatorship
I’m not against political parties, they’re a necessary part of liberal democracy, but the US Constitution was written by people who saw them as deadly court factions. As a result parties weren’t incorporated into the system of checks and balances designed to prevent any sector from seizing power.
But it wasn't the formation of parties that was the problem - after all, parties formed almost immediately (because they're both inevitable and *good*), but this state of collapse is quite a recent phenomenon.
I don’t know about good but definitely necessary. Had the founders recognized that instead of getting tied up with ideas of Roman factions they might have put more formal organization tying them into the Constitution. Regardless, I only mean the parties are the mechanism that enabled rapid capture.
(Your suggestions are good, but they're not mitigating parties, they're about providing *more accurate representation* of the electorate)
What's *not* sustainable is that a major party has become increasingly, and increasingly explicitly, anti-democratic, and that opposition has not treated this with the seriousness it deserved. Trump was a foreseeable (but not inevitable!) product of a decades-long anti-democratic political project
“The purpose of a system is what it does” - Stafford Beer.
“Nobody wants to make crazy assholes mad and have to deal with their ire being pointed at them” ended up being the defining problem of our time
If the systems were well designed, this wouldn’t have happened, but they’re not. Institutions won’t contain authoritarianism when they’re based entirely on norms and the widespread assumption that the people wouldn’t elect a president who is a psycho and a party that is a slavish cult.
Coordinating is hard something something simplest things are difficult
Have I mentioned you should run for congress? This is a better speech about what is happening than AT LEAST 99% of the people IN Congress have given.
I think the courts couldn't do anything here. Who would have standing?
I think the bigger issue(biggest?) is that even if the courts said that, Trump and his goons would likely ignore it, and who then has the authority and force to step in and make them obey? So far the cops and soldiers seem pretty happy to play along with the clownshow.
I begin to see the point of all those political scientists who claim that Presidential systems are particularly prone to dictatorship.
That’s why the troops and NG are there. When they steal the mid terms and people lose their shit, they will be crushed
It is not an administration. It is a regime.
Well said! 🧵
Which is why they have absolutely zero intention of allowing a free and fair election to be held.
📌
Yeah, you summed it up nicely in this thread.
