News: How to Topple an Authoritarian Regime

You do if the people writ large side with the minorities and liberals. Right now, according to all polling data, Americans are doing that. Trump is far underwater.

If I wanted to destroy America, I would do a false flag attack, faked to seem Iranian. Other nations would probably work well enough, too. But do something serious enough that Trump could plausibly rally the MSM and centrist Democrats around starting a war.

Because based on the current trajectory, Trump is losing. He needs to upend the game board, or else in a year, at least the House and possibly the Senate will have Democratic majorities with subpoena power.

 

One observation to this post: the US actually has a pretty powerful culture of protest, but it is one that is aimed at persuading or shaming the government to enact the desired changes - and one that is meant to operate through normal electoral processes. The abolitionist movement, the women's suffrage movement, the civil rights movement, all operated in accordance with this strategy.

However, this does not work when you are dealing with a government that is as shameless and irrational as the current one and who is actually intent on undermining or even destroying the traditional electoral process in order to create a permanent rule for itself. Thus, the American opposition (civic and political) is like a deer in the headlights, because the US lacks completely a culture of protests aimed at toppling a government. In Europe, there have been many instances when mass protests led to a government resigning or being voted out by the national Parliaments - even actual dictatorships. In the United States, this never happened.

 

And yet the equivalent thing more or less has, many times-- John Adams, John Tyler, Stephen A Douglas, William Howard Taft, Herbert Hoover, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Bush I...

 

Well stated. As to the culture of protest, I would include things like having well trained and experienced protesters - ones who know how to maneuver, how to deal with tear gas and rubber bullets, or how to have limited riot.

We are at the point that we should be talking about how to shut down commerce, hinder interstate and rail, close airports, cripple ports, blockade hotels, prevent junta operatives from sleeping, clogging court systems, and so on. Oh, if only Antifa were a real thing.

 

This thread title would make a great title for a punk album...or possibly an U2 album, but I know I'm also thinking of "How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb".

 

And do you think that could possibly turn into a wider world war? I ask because minutes ago in another thread you said it was totally unrealistic to think Trump could drag us into such a war, but here you lay what you consider plausible scenario for how Trump could drag us into such a war.

 

Trump on his own couldn't do it because he doesn't have the attention span but with constant prodding from the Steve Miller Band and others, it could be pulled off.

 

Huh? What does this mean, because none of these examples are those of a government toppled by nation-wide protests. Stephen Douglas was not even president.

The closest to this definition are LBJ and Nixon, and they still do not qualify. Johnson simply decided not to run because he concluded he would have lost the election.

Nixon is the only one who actually resigned and he was compelled by the looming Senate conviction to do so. Sure, his collapsing popularity did not help his cause, but it was not widespread protests that brought him down.

 

The US government is intentionally designed to be responsive to protests through the will of the people. Adams of course did not depend on the popular vote-- but the collapse of the popularity of the post Washington Federalists brought him down, John Tyler was so unpopular that he was ejected from his party while the sitting President. Steven A Douglas was the heir presumptive to Buchanan until street rallies and the like elevated Lincoln to the Republican nomination, and the Democratic majority broke up on the rocks of the various approaches to preservation or rejection of slavery in the various states. Lincoln was a minority President in his first term, but his faction beat the others because they would not unite behind Douglas. Taft was so desperately unpopular both in and out of his own party that TR ran against him, splintering his party. LBJ didn't drop out because he thought he would lose the election-- he did so because he was sure he could not win the primary, because Gene McCarthy was drawing such a huge protest vote. His literal plan for another term was for McCarthy, Humphries, Kennedy, and Wallace to stalemate at the Convention, forcing it to draft him. A fragile possibility which died at the hands of Sirhan's gun and Daley's police riot. And Nixon resigned when Goldwater told him he would get a maximum of eight vote in the Senate, and he, Goldwater, would not be one of them; the Senate votes at the time were massively influenced by the demonstrations filling the streets. Senators were themselves worried for their jobs if they didn't pay attention.

That's how our government is supposed to work-- by voters voting failed governments out-- or if necessary, legislators being aware of the rejection of an administration due to its actions, and taking constitutional steps. But in each of these cases, outcomes were heavily impacted by public demonstrations against a President or administration.

 

I don't think those jokers could pull it off. What are they going to do, get a big old jet airliner to fly into a building? They're just going to do their best to steal as much as they can while they can - you know, take the money and run - and then fly like an eagle to a country that doesn't extradite to the US. Abracadabra, they're gone with the money they stole.

 

You do realize that what you said above is basically the same thing as this: "US actually has a pretty powerful culture of protest, but it is one that is aimed at persuading or shaming the government to enact the desired changes - and one that is meant to operate through normal electoral processes."

Pretty much all the examples you brought forward are of popular movements who attempted (and succeeded) to "persuade or shame the government to enact the desired changes" and to influence the electoral process, not toppling an existing government. You said so yourself: "The US government is intentionally designed to be responsive to protests through the will of the people". That is correct, but the American society does not know what to do when that does not happen anymore and when the point where the US government does not give a shit about the will of the people/electoral legitimacy is reached. None of the governments you mentioned were intending to subvert the constitutional order and retain power regardless of electoral results. The removal of the politicians you mentioned was also an indirect and belated effect of the protests - not a direct and immediate one. If the midterms are fair, that would be one thing - but right now, the overwhelming concern is that they won't be. And in that case you can protest until you are blue in the face and Trump's approval rate can drop to historical levels - it still won't matter.

Out of those, I can give you Nixon, but the protests were nowhere near the level required to topple a regime similar to Trump's and did not reach the point where they shut the whole country down.

Basically, pretty much all those governments were responsive to the normal democratic processes - now, you have a government which is adversarial to them, which is an entirely different context, one that it is not clear the anti-Trump opposition is prepared for.

 

Possibly, sure. But I wouldn’t “expect” it.

Since you brought that from over there to here…why can’t you just say, “yeah ‘expect’ was the wrong word to use?”

You even later said you don’t “expect” it. But you’re still bringing it up.

If you write that you exaggerated and take it back, nothing bad is going to happen to you. You won’t lose posting privileges. You won’t have to pay a fine. You could have just done that and we could move on. I’ll move on if you will.

 

Authoritarian Monitor - have you seen this protest in negative temps?

 

I responded in the Greenland thread.

 

I think what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan is precisely why we aren't at full fledged war with Iran right now. That and mountainous terrain.

I've been thinking a lot about this class I took in college. It was the British Empire through Film. We would watch the movies chronologically not by date depicted, but by date of film creation. And our whole process was to show how the movies reflected how England and its artists felt about their Empire. So Lawrence of Arabia/Bridge on the River Kwai hit a little different than say Amazing Grace/Viceroy's House. What aspects of empire are they focusing on? Who's story are they telling? That kind of thing.

In the context of your questions, if I was in college today and I was writing about American Empire I would have a lot to say about how most movies that have been made since Iraq about War have been implicitly Anti-War movies. I would have a lot to say about how the most pro military movies that have been made seem to always kind of have some sort of alien being the bad guy (because who could seriously challenge American Empire). And finally I find it very interesting how popular the Marvel Movies were because they are about unrealistic Super Heroes that paint the world in pretty Black and White strokes (with some obvious exceptions!).

Ok done with my not so good Žižek impression.

 

Yeah but where are they going to go? The South Africans came here. The Nazis came here. Where else can they go? Russia? What other country is whiter? In Russia they would lose the ability to involve themselves in state craft, lest they find themselves thrown off the top of the building. Argentina? Is that why Trump bailed them out? Back up place to colonize?

At a certain point we all need to realize that Parasites need Hosts. And these people at the tippy tippy Epstein/Trump Class top are Parasites. Their money isn't fun if it can't be held in fun places.

 

AM - what did Minneapolis get for their marching in -10 degree weather? Another dead citizen.

 

Do bobbies still carry nightsticks only?

 

Sorry if I'm bringing up real world situations not some generic "rise up, you lazy Americans like we would" claptrap.

Every time I see people in Minneapolis gathered around a murder site I think "you got the numbers, just overwhelm them and beat them to a pulp" But there are moms, dads, grandparents, college kids etc. who will have to die to do that. And toss in the fact that Trump and his murder junkies have proven that they don't value Libs' lives one bit and actually get off on killing us. So any provocation could set off the powder keg where they could declare martial law and really go berserker.

 

Interesting word choice there