I'm adding by voice to the coup camp

[matt819]

Look, I get it. Sure, there was suspicious activity between the 45 campaign and the Russians. That's bad. And, yes, Sessions should resign or be impeached, or whatever it is you do to cabinet secretaries.

And, sure, Wikileaks seems to have been an arm of the 45 campaign.

But a silent, bloodless Russian coup, as some have argued? As Seth Meyers would say, "Really?"

Well . . .

Obamacare Repeal: Creating chaos, turmoil, uncertainty. Outrage from the right and left.

EPA: New secretary says humans not responsible for global warming, or some such. Strips the US of any role in the international community on the response to climate change. Elimination of clean water and clean air regulations. The impact will be evident relatively quickly. The fiscal and economic impact will be huge.

HUD: New secretary seems to embrace multi-billion dollar cut in budget and further flays the social safety net, creating - you got it - chaos, turmoil, and uncertainty.

Immigration roundup: Pits communities against federal authorities and local police, destroys families, businesses. Creates tension, fear among more than 10 million undocumented aliens. Harsh tactics from CPS and ICE on travel out of and into the US. Again, creates anti-US sentiment from allies. Australian intelligence chief detained for hours. Foreign born writers unable to visit for book tours. Oscar winner unable to visit to receive Oscar. Scientists, academics, historians unwilling to risk travel for normal cultural, scientific, academic exchanges, further eroding confidence in and relationship with the US and Americans generally. Creates potential for radicalization of this demographic over the next generation.

Department of Commerce: Mexico likely to export its sugar elsewhere because there was no one available to discuss sugar trade. Repeat after me - chaos, turmoil, uncertainty. Also, reduced sugar supplies likely to scramble the supply chain for food producers and result in price increases. Also, follow the money. Who comes in to supply sugar?

Department of State: Secretary stands to earn Exxon Mobil and himself billions upon billions of dollars by undoing Obama-era sanctions against Russia. Embassies and Consulates are the front line of the US presence abroad. Cutting staff, eliminating services for American travelers, reducing ability to issue legitimate travel visas. All erode confidence in the US.

The wall: Unnecessarily creates tension with one of America's largest trading partners, etc., etc.

Military: Build-up alone raises the expectation of the US willingness to use that buildup. Undoes decades of more or less rational reductions in nuclear stockpile.

Muslim ban: Violates constitution, increases tensions with Islamic world, raises likelihood of radicalization of Muslims in the US, etc., etc.

Distraction/The future: At some point rational human beings will resume control in Washington. It may be four years, or 8, or 12. And the cost - in energy, time, and money - to undo this damage will be tremendous. In the meantime, Russia will have gained itself time to do whatever it needs to do to ensure its own goals in Crimea, Ukraine, the former Soviet Republics, and more. Also, the continued erosion of American domestic infrastructure and the distraction that causes will be occurring while China reinforces its own geopolitical and military objectives. Consider also the "distraction" caused by the alt right, by Wikileaks, by the internal political conflict.

I could go on, and commenters are welcome to add. But my point is that these are the steps that the US or the Soviet Union would have taken from the 1950s onward to destabilize countries for any number of reasons. Look at US actions in Latin America and Iran in the 1950s and the Soviet Union through much of the Cold War, e.g., Hungary in 1956, Berlin Wall in 1961, Cuban Missile Crisis. These very steps, or variations, are being taken in the US today, by Americans, by the American government, probably at the behest of Russia.

If it looks like a coup, feels like a coup, etc.

Or should I load up on tinfoil when I go to the grocery store tonight?

[dchill]

1. If it looks like a coup, walks like a coup, and quacks like a coup..

It's a coup.

[pkdu]

2. Not sure I'd call it a Coup...but its pure Bannon "burn the State down"

Nov 2018 cant come soon enough.

[GliderGuider]

3. It's perhaps not a coup in the classical use of the word, but

The goal of the Russian state is to disable the USA as a world power. Their stated method for doing that (per Dugin) is through internal destabilization, factioning society and creating general chaos. The Trump administration is doing all three. The Russians are pretty evidently on-side with most senior members of the administration.

No matter what you call it, it smells like duck shit to me. No tinfoil needed for this one.

IMO waiting for a political solution in 2018 is a not an option. The social and institutional damage will be so great by then that it will take the US a decade or more to recover. In fact, some aspects of the social situation - like the empowerment and radicalization of the deplorables, and the hard rift that has split American society - are already a fait accompli and may never be rectified without a wholesale restructuring of society. A remedy must found immediately, outside of the political process, if anything is to be salvaged. That's why I pray that the intel community, the Secret Service and some part of the FBI are still functional enough to bring legal actions to bear on these vandals.

[ananda]

4. Totally agree!

2018 will be too late!

It's pretty much now or never!

[pinboy3niner]

5. From your title, I thought you were starting one

[First Speaker]

6. I do think Putin is consciously counting on the GOP to destroy America...

...he knows that only as a liberal democracy can the US oppose authoritarianism in the world, as in World War Two and the Cold War. He knows that the Repubs are determined to destroy liberal democracy. He merely needs to nudge them, and they'll do the heavy lifting. I think he regards Trump as a sort of gift dropped down from heaven--a US President who's an honest-to-goodness asset. But he doesn't, in a fundamental sense, need him. All he needs is letting the GOP keep doing its thing. It's as if Lindbergh had been President in 1940 and made a deal with Hitler, like Philip Roth suggested in *The Plot Against America*. Or if by some bizarre chance Henry Wallace and the Communist party had gained control of the Dems, during the Cold War. Putin's new Fascist International has a recruit in Trump, and a whole party closer to his goals than to the ideals of the USA.

[Kingofalldems]

7. Chile: 1973

What the repubs have always wanted.

[Hortensis]

8. Look, our votes were counted. We may hate to admit it,

but almost half of We the People soaked up all the lies, got carried away with all the partisan hostilities, and did this to ourselves.

We're, what, 8 weeks into what could/should have been a Democratic presidency and Senate, maybe even House? Hillary and other Democrats would be voting in and signing the biggest infrastructure investment in decades, and with it the creation of many thousands of good pay/good benefits jobs. Now.

It's time for self-reflection and honesty, not conspiracies that put all the blame on outsiders.

[matt819]

9. I like s conspiracy theory as much as the next nut job

I don't think my op qualifies as such.

Take a look at this link: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10028778670

Or maybe we're all crazy.

[Hortensis]

10. Oh, there are a bunch of conspiracies, all right.

Yoooge conspiracies to manipulate the democratic process to gain power. My objection was to the notion of a "coup." I'm kind of literal/anal about these terms.

Voter polls swung like crazy those last couple of weeks as the nation was covered with blizzards of propaganda, but in the end absolutely no one but each voter himself decided who to vote for and marked the ballot to reflect that choice.