The necessary complement to a successful coup is the failure of pro-democracy forces to prevent it.
In the coups discussed by RBG, “secrecy” was essential, so the “journey into the public domain” of information about them was problematic. In contrast, the slow-motion coup that is now taking place in America is being carried out in plain sight. The plotters have made their intentions and plans explicit and public. Their ongoing successes are public as well; to cite a couple, there are the January 6 assault, and the autocratic connivance and atavistic behavior of nearly all elected Republican officials, including their enactment of voter suppression and election subversion legislation.
Biden has expressly stated that he recognizes that American democracy is under threat. Perhaps he does not understand that Americans are suffering from mass psychosis, and that halting the coup requires addressing that psychosis, specifically by setting limits in the form of severe legal punishment of the plotters. But he certainly understands that democracy cannot exist without the rule of law, and that America cannot remain a democracy when one of its two major political parties is dedicated to destroying democracy, and to that end engages openly and with impunity in massive criminal activity, including subversion, and in public incitement to such activity. Before Biden took office, Robert Mueller documented major crimes committed by Trump, and stated that Trump could be prosecuted for them after he left office. Biden could have appointed an attorney general fit for the job, who would have set prosecution in motion in January 2021, while informing the public of the general lineaments of his efforts. Instead, we are not even getting a counterpart of Joe Manchin’s congressional stalling-charade. (According to Sarah Kendzior, Garland’s lifelong political mentor is a self-described mob lawyer.) Garland‘s motto seems to be that of the British Empire: “Never apologize, never explain.” As in Charles Dickens’ novel “Bleak House,” we will be let in on the joke, that there was never going to be anything there, only after it’s too late to do anything about it.
Biden’s long political record shows that he has a more oligarchical conception of American democracy than most Lucid readers probably have. But he cannot want to be a one-term president, remembered for being the last American president before the line of American Caesars began. The failure of American democracy to defend itself, using the means it clearly possesses, requires explanation.
Why is Biden failing to do something he knows must be done and that he has the means to do? What is constraining him? Is there a model for the knowing and willful failure of a democracy to protect itself from its internal enemies? There is the “Neville Chamberlain” model for appeasement, that is, for passively submitting to a militaristic foreign autocrat. There are the “Quisling” and “Vichy regime” models for collaboration, that is, for being a puppet for a foreign autocrat occupying one’s country. And Hindenburg and Papen are notorious as members of an elite who foolishly submitted to a nascent domestic autocrat. But “Hindenburg” and “Papen” hardly resonate as generic terms for a type of historical phenomenon as do the terms “Neville Chamberlain,” “Quisling,” and “Vichy regime.” Apparently, assisted suicide committed by a democracy is not well understood.
The only explanation I can think of for American democracy‘s assisted suicide is the hand of our plutocracy, hidden in plain sight. The federal government is their almost wholly-owned subsidiary. Corporations have long been understood to be more powerful in many ways than any government. In plain sight, our plutocracy is doing nothing to protect American democracy. Their inaction is of course not discussed in the mainstream media, because they own the mainstream media. The perversions of Fox News are a convenient distraction from what the plutocrats are doing by not doing.
What our plutocracy is really doing should be understood in the perspective of the historical evolution and expansion of American plutocracy. First our plutocracy presided over ethnically cleansing native Americans and stealing their continent. Then it presided over the enslavement of millions of people, serving as a major basis for the creation of American wealth. Then it presided over the acquisition and maintenance of an empire that continues to plunder the resources of other countries and to exploit their people as captive markets and cheap labor. Now in the 21st-century, many nations, including Russia and China, have become mafia states, states controlled and run by criminals for the purpose of self-enrichment. The mafia state has been globalized, with plutocrats and politicians in every country inextricably involved in the operations of (in Sarah Kendzior’s phrase) an international crime syndicate masquerading as sovereign governments. American plutocracy is an integral and major part of this international crime syndicate. (Some investigators believe the global flow of the dark money of plutocrats is larger than the legitimate global economy; South Dakota is one of the major centers of international money laundering.) Evidently the syndicate’s tentacles have metastasized so deeply throughout the economic and political fabric of every nation, including the US, that it is impossible for any government or corporation, let alone any individual official, or businessperson, to resist it. Perhaps the autocratic coup now underway in America is better understood as democratic assisted suicide.
But, with a little help from our friend Mark Meadows, it finally dawns on me that this January 6, 2021 take over of the Capitol Building was not just a bunch of lame brain, disaffected Trumpees who suddenly threw a fit in the middle of a protest gone wrong.
No, it was much more sinister and premeditated than that. The very upper echelon of American Government (doing Trump’s bidding) had a plan to nullify the vote of “We the People"… in the event “We the People” didn’t reelect the the Orangeman. And that attempted cancellation of the American vote was, indeed, a right wing, premeditated coup by the collective minds of those who favor a Donald Trump Kingship over a George Washington Democracy. This is not just my team is good and your team is bad. This is about the fundamental threat to destroy American Democracy, and those too blind to see what’s going on, or those who refuse to see what’s there to be seen.
Thank you politician Mark Meadows and journalist Ruth Ben-Ghiat for the symphony of my epiphany.
Yeah, it's all very concerning, but I'm sure high-level people in the military and government are discussing the possibility of a Carnation Revolution-style military coup after the Republicans steal the elections in 2024. The electoral system already is undemocratic and allows for minority rule, so having some small-d democratic military officers step in to ensure basic standards will probably be the best option to restore democracy.
Another devastating piece from RBG. I downloaded the PowerPoint presentation because I want to be able to show my great grandchildren (I know, I am thinking too far ahead!) what went down on January 6th, 2021.
Fox News will spin this and their audience frankly, doesn’t care because it’s all “fake news” and everyone is “just out to get Trump.” But as each piece of the puzzle is revealed, millions of Americans who are not engaged with democracy will perhaps start to realize just how close they came to living under an authoritarian regime.
The USA is definitely not out of the woods, but the sweater of deceit and treachery is unravelling with each passing day.
There are 80 million Americans who DO NOT VOTE. If you read RGB and you know one of these people, you need to quietly and carefully engage them in what it means to live in a democracy and what it means to NOT live in a democracy.
I’ll admit, this is very hard to do …but it’s the ONLY way democracy will thrive in the USA.
Even getting 1% of those non-voters to vote will make a huge difference.
Especially, If you live in Nevada, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona or Wisconsin or as I call it: PAWNGM you MUST reach out to these non voters.
Ruth: Thank you for another wonderful piece! The Power Point and now the text messages from Congress members are interesting. The thinking now is names will be attached to them during public hearings. It’s up to us to push on this!
Meadows had said that the National Guard would be ready to protect the pro-Trump rioters. I found that comment disgusting. The Trump administration was ready to turn a branch of our military against our quasi-democracy, in favor of authoritarianism. It takes a certain degree of psychopathy, sociopathy or megalomania to do something like this. To hear the inner workings of the planning, shows the lunacy, similar to other coups in history. The total lack of a conscience by the coup plotters is obvious. Trump being a sociopath (ADP) with no conscience and massive grandiosity, was fertile ground for a power grab. The plotters need prison time to discourage this from happening again.
The new year will see the J6 committee holding hearings in public and releasing more information, documents and testimony that will further reveal the conspiracy and plotters who tried to overthrow the government of the United States in an (autogolpe) self-coup. This comes in the lead up to a big off year election in the fall in which Republicans are expecting to take back control of the House of Representatives.
However, weeks and months of hearings and testimony from the committee will cast Trump and Republicans as traitors, who perpetrated a big lie that the election was stolen in order to subvert democracy and the peaceful transfer of power. This was a direct attack on our democracy. It is far from over. We are in an ongoing slow moving coup. We haven't seen anything like this in our history since confederates seceded from the union and started a civil war in 1861 in an attempt to preserve their slave oligarchy.
This particular coup presentation wasn't secret! Lara Logan linked to one version of it on Jan. 5th. Almost everything in that presentation was already flying around in Trump World by mid-December. This was basically a sales presentation used to recruit members of Congress to support the coup. And it was done by an outside group to give Trump "plausible deniability" (as implausible as that seems).
On the other hand, some other information that Meadows turned over was part of the secret plot. Meadows was working with a Member of Congress to install Jeffrey Clark as Acting AG in December. That was well before anyone else at DOJ knew about it. And it appears that Meadows was in the loop on the decisions regarding the use of the National Guard on Jan 6 as well.
It seems that we all agree on one major point and that is how urgent it is that this information is not just brushed aside or not acted upon, we can not allow for complacency. I fear most people just don't even know this is happening or even think it's a potential problem. How do we change that? I believe most of us in the United States want democracy regardless of whether we agree or disagree on policy, but many still don't realize how close we are to losing it. This is serious and we all need to take all of this seriously.
It is one thing to know about a coup. It is another to do something about it. We need to continue to put pressure on on congress to take the coup seriously and to hold those responsible to account. We citizens cannot let this knowledge simply dissolve into non-action.
Why, oh why, has this January 6 coup plot story not made it to mainstream media? Written proof on multiple levels by multiple people, and the media just goes on like it's another regular day (or names a tax-evading narcissist person of the year, like TIME).
On a more positive note, thank you, Ruth, for providing the historical context of this, it helps us get our heads around this craziness.
Interesting to see what is happening in Chile at present.
The necessary complement to a successful coup is the failure of pro-democracy forces to prevent it.
In the coups discussed by RBG, “secrecy” was essential, so the “journey into the public domain” of information about them was problematic. In contrast, the slow-motion coup that is now taking place in America is being carried out in plain sight. The plotters have made their intentions and plans explicit and public. Their ongoing successes are public as well; to cite a couple, there are the January 6 assault, and the autocratic connivance and atavistic behavior of nearly all elected Republican officials, including their enactment of voter suppression and election subversion legislation.
Biden has expressly stated that he recognizes that American democracy is under threat. Perhaps he does not understand that Americans are suffering from mass psychosis, and that halting the coup requires addressing that psychosis, specifically by setting limits in the form of severe legal punishment of the plotters. But he certainly understands that democracy cannot exist without the rule of law, and that America cannot remain a democracy when one of its two major political parties is dedicated to destroying democracy, and to that end engages openly and with impunity in massive criminal activity, including subversion, and in public incitement to such activity. Before Biden took office, Robert Mueller documented major crimes committed by Trump, and stated that Trump could be prosecuted for them after he left office. Biden could have appointed an attorney general fit for the job, who would have set prosecution in motion in January 2021, while informing the public of the general lineaments of his efforts. Instead, we are not even getting a counterpart of Joe Manchin’s congressional stalling-charade. (According to Sarah Kendzior, Garland’s lifelong political mentor is a self-described mob lawyer.) Garland‘s motto seems to be that of the British Empire: “Never apologize, never explain.” As in Charles Dickens’ novel “Bleak House,” we will be let in on the joke, that there was never going to be anything there, only after it’s too late to do anything about it.
Biden’s long political record shows that he has a more oligarchical conception of American democracy than most Lucid readers probably have. But he cannot want to be a one-term president, remembered for being the last American president before the line of American Caesars began. The failure of American democracy to defend itself, using the means it clearly possesses, requires explanation.
Why is Biden failing to do something he knows must be done and that he has the means to do? What is constraining him? Is there a model for the knowing and willful failure of a democracy to protect itself from its internal enemies? There is the “Neville Chamberlain” model for appeasement, that is, for passively submitting to a militaristic foreign autocrat. There are the “Quisling” and “Vichy regime” models for collaboration, that is, for being a puppet for a foreign autocrat occupying one’s country. And Hindenburg and Papen are notorious as members of an elite who foolishly submitted to a nascent domestic autocrat. But “Hindenburg” and “Papen” hardly resonate as generic terms for a type of historical phenomenon as do the terms “Neville Chamberlain,” “Quisling,” and “Vichy regime.” Apparently, assisted suicide committed by a democracy is not well understood.
The only explanation I can think of for American democracy‘s assisted suicide is the hand of our plutocracy, hidden in plain sight. The federal government is their almost wholly-owned subsidiary. Corporations have long been understood to be more powerful in many ways than any government. In plain sight, our plutocracy is doing nothing to protect American democracy. Their inaction is of course not discussed in the mainstream media, because they own the mainstream media. The perversions of Fox News are a convenient distraction from what the plutocrats are doing by not doing.
What our plutocracy is really doing should be understood in the perspective of the historical evolution and expansion of American plutocracy. First our plutocracy presided over ethnically cleansing native Americans and stealing their continent. Then it presided over the enslavement of millions of people, serving as a major basis for the creation of American wealth. Then it presided over the acquisition and maintenance of an empire that continues to plunder the resources of other countries and to exploit their people as captive markets and cheap labor. Now in the 21st-century, many nations, including Russia and China, have become mafia states, states controlled and run by criminals for the purpose of self-enrichment. The mafia state has been globalized, with plutocrats and politicians in every country inextricably involved in the operations of (in Sarah Kendzior’s phrase) an international crime syndicate masquerading as sovereign governments. American plutocracy is an integral and major part of this international crime syndicate. (Some investigators believe the global flow of the dark money of plutocrats is larger than the legitimate global economy; South Dakota is one of the major centers of international money laundering.) Evidently the syndicate’s tentacles have metastasized so deeply throughout the economic and political fabric of every nation, including the US, that it is impossible for any government or corporation, let alone any individual official, or businessperson, to resist it. Perhaps the autocratic coup now underway in America is better understood as democratic assisted suicide.
I suspect everyone is ahead of me.
But, with a little help from our friend Mark Meadows, it finally dawns on me that this January 6, 2021 take over of the Capitol Building was not just a bunch of lame brain, disaffected Trumpees who suddenly threw a fit in the middle of a protest gone wrong.
No, it was much more sinister and premeditated than that. The very upper echelon of American Government (doing Trump’s bidding) had a plan to nullify the vote of “We the People"… in the event “We the People” didn’t reelect the the Orangeman. And that attempted cancellation of the American vote was, indeed, a right wing, premeditated coup by the collective minds of those who favor a Donald Trump Kingship over a George Washington Democracy. This is not just my team is good and your team is bad. This is about the fundamental threat to destroy American Democracy, and those too blind to see what’s going on, or those who refuse to see what’s there to be seen.
Thank you politician Mark Meadows and journalist Ruth Ben-Ghiat for the symphony of my epiphany.
Fred “no longer clueless in Detroit” Lauck
Yeah, it's all very concerning, but I'm sure high-level people in the military and government are discussing the possibility of a Carnation Revolution-style military coup after the Republicans steal the elections in 2024. The electoral system already is undemocratic and allows for minority rule, so having some small-d democratic military officers step in to ensure basic standards will probably be the best option to restore democracy.
Another devastating piece from RBG. I downloaded the PowerPoint presentation because I want to be able to show my great grandchildren (I know, I am thinking too far ahead!) what went down on January 6th, 2021.
Fox News will spin this and their audience frankly, doesn’t care because it’s all “fake news” and everyone is “just out to get Trump.” But as each piece of the puzzle is revealed, millions of Americans who are not engaged with democracy will perhaps start to realize just how close they came to living under an authoritarian regime.
The USA is definitely not out of the woods, but the sweater of deceit and treachery is unravelling with each passing day.
There are 80 million Americans who DO NOT VOTE. If you read RGB and you know one of these people, you need to quietly and carefully engage them in what it means to live in a democracy and what it means to NOT live in a democracy.
I’ll admit, this is very hard to do …but it’s the ONLY way democracy will thrive in the USA.
Even getting 1% of those non-voters to vote will make a huge difference.
Especially, If you live in Nevada, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona or Wisconsin or as I call it: PAWNGM you MUST reach out to these non voters.
Ruth: Thank you for another wonderful piece! The Power Point and now the text messages from Congress members are interesting. The thinking now is names will be attached to them during public hearings. It’s up to us to push on this!
Meadows had said that the National Guard would be ready to protect the pro-Trump rioters. I found that comment disgusting. The Trump administration was ready to turn a branch of our military against our quasi-democracy, in favor of authoritarianism. It takes a certain degree of psychopathy, sociopathy or megalomania to do something like this. To hear the inner workings of the planning, shows the lunacy, similar to other coups in history. The total lack of a conscience by the coup plotters is obvious. Trump being a sociopath (ADP) with no conscience and massive grandiosity, was fertile ground for a power grab. The plotters need prison time to discourage this from happening again.
The public anger is mounting. Will it help or hurt the final results of the @January6thCmte ?
The new year will see the J6 committee holding hearings in public and releasing more information, documents and testimony that will further reveal the conspiracy and plotters who tried to overthrow the government of the United States in an (autogolpe) self-coup. This comes in the lead up to a big off year election in the fall in which Republicans are expecting to take back control of the House of Representatives.
However, weeks and months of hearings and testimony from the committee will cast Trump and Republicans as traitors, who perpetrated a big lie that the election was stolen in order to subvert democracy and the peaceful transfer of power. This was a direct attack on our democracy. It is far from over. We are in an ongoing slow moving coup. We haven't seen anything like this in our history since confederates seceded from the union and started a civil war in 1861 in an attempt to preserve their slave oligarchy.
This particular coup presentation wasn't secret! Lara Logan linked to one version of it on Jan. 5th. Almost everything in that presentation was already flying around in Trump World by mid-December. This was basically a sales presentation used to recruit members of Congress to support the coup. And it was done by an outside group to give Trump "plausible deniability" (as implausible as that seems).
On the other hand, some other information that Meadows turned over was part of the secret plot. Meadows was working with a Member of Congress to install Jeffrey Clark as Acting AG in December. That was well before anyone else at DOJ knew about it. And it appears that Meadows was in the loop on the decisions regarding the use of the National Guard on Jan 6 as well.
It seems that we all agree on one major point and that is how urgent it is that this information is not just brushed aside or not acted upon, we can not allow for complacency. I fear most people just don't even know this is happening or even think it's a potential problem. How do we change that? I believe most of us in the United States want democracy regardless of whether we agree or disagree on policy, but many still don't realize how close we are to losing it. This is serious and we all need to take all of this seriously.
It is one thing to know about a coup. It is another to do something about it. We need to continue to put pressure on on congress to take the coup seriously and to hold those responsible to account. We citizens cannot let this knowledge simply dissolve into non-action.
Why, oh why, has this January 6 coup plot story not made it to mainstream media? Written proof on multiple levels by multiple people, and the media just goes on like it's another regular day (or names a tax-evading narcissist person of the year, like TIME).
On a more positive note, thank you, Ruth, for providing the historical context of this, it helps us get our heads around this craziness.