May 17, 2017

To prevent coup by brass, Trump must rally rank-and-file troops and agents

It's clear now that the Deep State will never stop its coup attempts against the People's President, whether they are soft or hard, and whether they come monthly or yearly.

The factions here are not only the three-letter intelligence agencies whose leverage is ability to leak damaging information, but also the Pentagon whose leverage is control over the armed forces.

Trump arrived in Washington with minimal political leverage, at least in the currency that the local swamp creatures trade in -- favors, connections, blackmail, campaign war chests, and the like. He was catapaulted over the White House gates by his voters, not by party elites, donors, media hacks, etc.

Rather, Trump's only leverage is the size of his support base that he can call into action -- to display signs, to attend rallies, to make phone calls, to spread info online, and to cast a ballot on Election Day.

That is the bargaining chip that Trump has at the negotiating table, but which the Establishment does not -- and which the Establishment would like Trump to call off and put away, lest the people march on their state capitol buildings, hold protests at the Pentagon, and so on and so forth, disrupting business as usual for the swamp.

This appeal to the forgotten people at the bottom of the hierarchy must also be leveraged within each of the major Deep State groups that threaten to push him out of office. There is no way that Trump commands the loyalty of the Pentagon brass, else they would not have sent their own boarding party into the Cabinet early on (Mattis, Kelly, McMaster).

The Trump movement's vision for foreign and military policy is at odds with the Pentagon consensus in too many ways, and at too severe of a magnitude, for them to just tolerate his planned re-orientation of their agency. They are still hell-bent on making Russia their #1 enemy, and antagonizing any of the nations that refused to fall under the US sphere of influence during the Cold War (Iraq, Libya, Syria, North Korea, and Iran). Trump says let's focus on combating jihadism, with Saudi Arabia being the main enabler of Islamic terrorism, including the terrorists who blew us up on September 11th.

Likewise the three-letter intel agency brass are dead set on aggrandizing their own power to manipulate domestic and foreign affairs, rather than assess threats and respond to them in the interests of the American nation as a whole, instead of in the interests of the Deep State and power establishment itself. Trump says drain the swamp, prosecute damaging leaks, and restore fairness to the justice system.

A collision course is unavoidable between Trump and the Deep State leaders. Trump has little to defend himself with at the elite level -- not only would those intel and military brass undermine him, so would "his own" party's leaders in Congress, who are part of the Establishment. Nor does he have much weaponry to go on the offense with at the elite level. At best he could try to play one elite faction off against another, but they appear to be forming enough of a united front to avoid that obvious of a play.

So Trump must resort to what his only strength has been all along -- his popular appeal to the lowly and middle layers of society's pyramids. His populist and nationalist message speaks most to their concerns, and his no-BS charisma and tone resonate the most with them.

The rank-and-file troops just want to protect the homeland from serious foreign threats, not to police far-off zones of a crumbling global empire. And the rank-and-file intel agents just want to figure out who's up to bad things and prevent them from carrying through, not to weaponize information in order to destroy political figures who the boss has a vendetta against.

Trump must do this deliberately, frequently, and energetically -- as though he were once again in "rally the troops" mode leading up to an election where it would be his army of voters vs. the other candidate's army of voters. Hold small gatherings, large rallies, and anything in between that will build the emotional energy between him and them. That will keep the rank-and-file in the Deep State agencies engaged, sympathetic, and even enthusiastic to support their leader.

In any coup attempt, it would be these rank-and-file who would be pressed into service as foot soldiers against the President by their agency's brass. If the rank-and-file are unwilling to commit the high crime of sedition, their elites will have no way of pulling off a coup.

That does not mean Trump has to openly bring up the topic of Deep State coups, nor that he needs to openly encourage mutiny. It simply means that if he wins over their hearts and minds -- their active rather than passive loyalty -- the brass' efforts to take him out will be shooting with blanks.

9 comments:

  1. Weev said it well when he said that the Establishment doesn't seem to understand is that Trump is not the last chance for us, he's the last chance for them.

    I almost wonder if he's trying to get the Puzzle Palace to come at him. What usually happens to the instigators of a failed coup? The smarter ones have good enough sense to eat a bullet before loyalist forces take them into custody.

    As for rank-and-file military... yeah. I'm just up the road from Anniston Army Depot and from what I know of them, they'll take up arms against Trump right after the truckers, ranchers and coal miners launch a general strike against him.

    As bad as failure would be, I wonder what their plans are for handling the civil war that would follow Trump's removal...

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  2. I don't know if it would turn into civil war, which implies two sides with their own separate elites, usually divided by region ethnicity etc.

    That would be like the West Coast vs. the Midwest.

    If the elites removed Trump, that would trigger more of a popular revolt against the elites, maybe a full-blown revolution (no one can predict how far a fat-tail event will go).

    Disgruntled commoners would see their peaceful means of trying to influence the government blocked by the unfair Establishment, and a zealous minority of them would just start picking off the Establishment members. "You take out ours, we take out yours."

    Pelosi, Schumer, Ryan, McConnell -- bing, bing, bing, bing.

    If the Pentagon brass played a role, fragging would return big-league.

    Media HQs would get firebombed.

    Again, it's not as though the average American would take part in any of that. But removing Trump on bogus charges would trigger a zealous minority into settling the score, and they would not care if they got taken out themselves after getting even.

    There's too much economic misery and inequality, too much righteous anger if an election were canceled, too many guns lying around, and too much of a "nothing left to lose" mindset if the elites removed the People's President.

    The sheltered elites still think they can just grind the little people under their boot and not face any real backlash. So I don't think they're thinking through the contingencies at all, making them even more dangerous. They have no skin in the game -- in their minds, they're safe forever.

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  3. Another major factor in popular revolts / state breakdown is how youthful the population is, and we've got the echo boom represented by the Millennials making the population a lot younger than it used to be recently.

    Some 20 year-old guy on /pol who just went on the rollercoaster of his lifetime with the Trump movement, who sees his hero get removed unceremoniously on bogus charges -- there's too many of those hotheaded young guys for none of them to martyr themselves by taking out one of the conspirators.

    Jesus, look at how much less they do that for -- the virgin avenger types.

    Right now, they're just doing cosplay rioting against Antifa. If the election were canceled, at least some of them would go hardcore for real. Street fighting if they're the Chad type, easy-to-use guns if they're the video-game junkie physique type.

    Peter Turchin's data shows another wave of collective political violence or political instability around 2020, going in 50-year periods (last peak around 1970, then around 1920, Civil War / Reconstruction around 1870).

    The elites are data-hungry technocrats -- maybe a presentation on Turchin's cycles would scare them straight.

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  4. It seems like a full on revolt or revolution is about the only thing that would even deal a blow to the neo Praetorian Guard that is the Deep State. The problem is that I don't see any sort of metaphorical Milvian Bridge to finish them off completely.

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  5. I think one thing you predicted (I think it was you) has come to pass. A while back you suggested Trump could control congress by using the same methods others have used: blackmail.

    While congress is largely still out of control, one guy that looks like he's been brought to heel is Lindsey Graham. Now, we all know what blackmail on Miss Lindsey is likely to be.

    Its just a guess, but he's certainly a guy to watch. A switch seems to have flipped some time in the past month or so.

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  6. Might be worth noting that the psychological profile of a spree killer and a suicide bomber are just about identical. It wouldn't take many to get the ball rolling.

    There's a fuzzy line between revolution and civil war, but I could see either one happening in the wake of a Trump impeachment, or one followed by the other. There's probably more people calling themselves "alt-right" in America today than there were Bolsheviks in pre-World War I Russia. How long until we see an act of terrorism committed in the name of Kek?

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  7. https://status451.com/2017/01/20/days-of-rage/

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  8. IMHO the military won't rally around Trump. Because they obey the Permanent Government, that is whoever writes their checks not the Commander in Chief, after all, more of an honorary title than anything.
    If I were Trump, I'd stage a counter-coup against the Judicial Power. Impeach them, or force those judges opposing his executive orders to obey or resign. Surely, he's got some dirt on them than he can use against them.

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  9. The rank-and-file absolutely would rally around Trump, but not all of the brass -- perhaps not even a majority of them. And it only takes a determined zealous minority to stage a coup.

    But if Trump had rallied open and explicit support for his side beforehand among the rank-and-file, that would make the conspirators think twice about how much resistance and preparation Trump's side would already have.

    The judiciary is irrelevant because they have little leverage. They depend on an armed group to enforce their decisions and opinions. And the weight of those decisions relies on the people perceiving them as legitimate. Meanwhile their credibility has been totally shot by the BS against the Muslim ban, and decades of frivolous outcomes and judicial activism.

    The Judicial Watch folks have been saying the best way to neuter the activist judges is to simply clarify that district-level judges don't have jurisdiction over national policies, so they can't even hear cases to begin with if they're about immigration, war, etc.

    That would severely dry up the pool of traitors to recruit from by the judge-shoppers.

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