Since I posted recently about Trump’s reshuffling of personnel in his administration, I think I should also post this as a follow-up. Trump doesn’t have what he needs to use the military to keep power, and here’s why:
As the video says, and as I will keep saying, the best way to oppose something like that in the unlikely event that it were to happen is organizing and coordinating collective power. It’s past time to stop relying on electoral campaigns and voting to maintain our democracy – that’s not sufficient. We need to be taking direct action, both for the trend towards authoritarianism, and to deal with climate change.
The number of people needed to police a conquered nation with a restive population is 1 soldier on patrol for every 50 people in said nation or around 6 1/2 million boots on the ground for a population the size of the US. The US military is about 2.2 million strong (active duty + reserves). Imagining all of them going along with this means that you’d still be missing 2/3 of the manpower required. And it is worse since that 2.2 million includes the navy, all the people needed to support the people actually on the ground (on water and in the air) and management, you’d end up with 350k to 450k people actually doing the policing, which is about half of what is needed to just control/police California.
The results of not bringing enough people can be seen in Iraq and Afghanistan. Especially Afghanistan where the warlords were more worried about the other warlords then the US military. Which is a not so nice example of what is going to happen in the US if the military tries to take over, militia vs militia vs the remains of the US army. So yes any general/admiral worth their rank will be against it.
A military takeover requires a military capable and willing at the highestand. The words of the US’s own generals make it clear that’s unlikely.
But there is a paramilitary in the US that is heavily armed and willing to use violence and to murder civilians without hestitation: cops. And they would be willing to obey Cheetolini directly.
I meant to say “highest and lowest levels”.
I think the police, and right-wing paramilitary groups are a concern, but I doubt they’d be able to actually control an area the size of the US.
I think fascism is a real concern, but I don’t think they have their proverbial ducks in a row for that yet.
Trump is moving on to rigging the electoral college. We’ll have to see if the Republican Swing State legislators will play along and appoint pro-Trump electors.
Yeah, if he holds power, it’ll be through things like that.
He’s throwing everything at the wall to see if anything will stick.