It’s hard to think of any actual, successful military coups or anything
similar except in Africa anytime recently. Certainly not in any country
remotely as “advanced” and complex as the US. However, The Republican party has
certainly been high methodical and quite successful in setting the
"Words have meanings" is one of those sayings that needs to go away. It
sounds so sure, so blunt, but it obscures so very much. Yes, words have
meanings: they have lots of meanings, many of them ambiguous or
contrary, and those meanings change to keep pace with historical
circumstances.
This
Dear Steven,
I would disagree! If Trump is capable of getting the military on his side
(which is unlikely) - and he has tried to some extent in post-election
installment of his loyalists in the Pentagon, firing of Sect of Defense,
etc. then this mentality/intention seems to me to be in line with
Interesting perspective Ted, but I can’t call the examples you cite a coup. The
use of political power to reorganize institutions to better solidify a person’s
or party’s advantage or even to gain a political monopoly is most of what
politics is. Machine politics or the attempt to build a
Interestingly, the best articles on this situation came from one researcher
of stalinism, Anne Applebaum in the Atlantic and one historian of the
holocaust, Timothy Snyder in the Boston Globe. While the first reminded us
that Trump's political career began with spreading the "birther myth" to
If there will be no coup, Steven, that's because there already was one.
But let me explain.
Debates about a "coup" in the US are useless, because they're bogged
down in endless anticipatory "post hoc ergo propter hoc" arguments
("after this therefore because of this," just before *this*
