• PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat
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    3 days ago

    Please create beef with the military.

    If Trump were smart, he’d play the long game at this point. He’s won. Install friendly sycophants in charge of all the elections, keep stuffing the Supreme Court, and depend on the lock on power created by that and the current electoral trifecta to consolidate all his power. Keep the Democrats around as a puppet opposition to siphon off any energy from a genuine resistance, and live out the rest of his days as a king without creating any massive upset that can go sideways on him.

    Trump isn’t smart. He wants to create massive disruptions in civil society, for reasons of his own, and now he wants to commit the classic bloodless-coup-er’s mistake of firing a bunch of military people so they’re left wandering loose in civil society, still with all their connections and skills and respect in place, available to be slotted into a resistance against him if it goes beyond a certain point, in which role they can transform it from a laughable potshot-bunch into a modern fighting military. And, ensuring loyalty by randomly punishing people who are judged to be disloyal makes everyone disloyal. They just won’t be disloyal to your face.

    I’m not saying this definitely won’t work. But tangling with the military at this stage introduces what they call a critical success factor into his plan. Again, for no reason. The military isn’t going to get involved if he only usurps society on the civilian side.

    Edit: Typo

    • humble peat digger@lemm.eeOP
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      3 days ago

      See. If he’s just wanting to fire people out of spite - I don’t care.

      But I feel he may want to stuff generals with his hires to then just invoke a martial law and execute a coup.

      • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat
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        3 days ago

        That’s absolutely what he’s trying to do. My point is that the US military doesn’t operate like Toys-R-Us or Twitter or whatever. You can’t just fire the boss of the division, bring in a new guy who says we’re going to go shoot some protestors now, and have all the battalion commanders under them say, “Oh, okay, that’s weird but w/e.”

        At least, I hope not. I’m pretty sure though. It’s not simple like Trump is thinking, and he doesn’t have the level of understanding to pull it off and make it work.

        Remember this? Listen to them cheering:

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUosuzrY8gg