January 20, 2010

BAT SCAT CRAZY:

A Very American Coup: Coming soon to a hometown near you. (William Astore, Jan. 20, 2010, MotherJones)

The wars in distant lands were always going to come home, but not this way.

It's September 2016, year 15 of America's "Long War [3]" against terror. As weary troops return to the homeland, a bitter reality assails them: despite their sacrifices, America is losing.

Iraq is increasingly hostile to remaining occupation forces. Afghanistan is a riddle that remains unsolved: its army and police forces are untrustworthy [4], its government corrupt, and its tribal leaders unsympathetic to the vagaries of US intervention. Since the Obama surge of 2010, a trillion more dollars have been devoted to Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and other countries in the vast shatter zone [5] that is central Asia, without measurable returns; nothing, that is, except the prolongation of America's Great Recession, now entering its tenth year without a sustained recovery in sight.

Disillusioned veterans are unable to find decent jobs in a crumbling economy. Scarred by the physical and psychological violence of war, fed up with the happy talk of duplicitous politicians who only speak of shared sacrifices, they begin to organize. Their motto: take America back.

Meanwhile, a lame duck presidency, choking on foreign policy failures, finds itself attacked even for its putative successes. Health-care reform is now seen to have combined the inefficiency and inconsistency of government with the naked greed and exploitative talents of corporations. Medical rationing is a fact of life confronting anyone on the high side of 50. Presidential rhetoric that offered hope and change has lost all resonance. Mainstream media outlets are discredited and disintegrating, resulting in new levels of information anarchy.

Protest, whether electronic or in the streets, has become more common—and the protestors in those streets increasingly carry guns, though as yet armed violence is minimal. A panicked administration responds with overlapping executive orders and legislation that is widely perceived as an attack on basic freedoms.

[6]Tapping the frustration of protesters—including a renascent and mainstreamed "tea bag" movement—the former captains and sergeants, the ex-CIA operatives and out-of-work private mercenaries of the War on Terror take action. Conflict and confrontation they seek; laws and orders they increasingly ignore. As riot police are deployed in the streets, they face a grim choice: where to point their guns? Not at veterans, they decide, not at America's erstwhile heroes.

A dwindling middle-class, still waving the flag and determined to keep its sliver-sized portion of the American dream, throws its support to the agitators. Wages shrinking, savings exhausted, bills rising, the sober middle can no longer hold. It vents its fear and rage by calling for a decisive leader and the overthrow of a can't-do Congress.

Savvy members of traditional Washington elites are only too happy to oblige. They too crave order and can-do decisiveness—on their terms. Where better to find that than in the ranks of America's most respected institution: the military?

A retired senior officer who led America's heroes in central Asia is anointed. His creed: end public disorder, fight the War on Terror to a victorious finish, put America back on top. The United States, he says, is the land of winners, and winners accept no substitute for victory. Nominated on September 11, 2016, Patriot Day, he marches to an overwhelming victory that November, embraced in the streets by an American version of the post-World War I German [7] Freikorps and the police who refuse to suppress them. A concerned minority is left to wonder (and tremble) at the de facto military coup that occurred so quickly, and yet so silently, in their midst.


One of the main reasons that it's so hard top tell the Left and far Right apart is their shared contempt for and distrust of the American people and all the institutions of the Republic. A year ago it was our wackos whingeing about the socialist menace. Now we're back to fascism. Meanwhile, Barack Obama has done so close to nothing with even the power that he has that we barely have an executive branch. And his successor will be a thoroughly decent and moderate conservative governor, just like W or Reagan.

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 20, 2010 11:46 AM
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