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This is probably among the scariest things happening right now:

The Wall Street Journal: “The Trump transition team is considering a draft executive order that establishes a “warrior board” of retired senior military personnel with the power to review three- and four-star officers and to recommend removals of any deemed unfit for leadership.

If Donald Trump approves the order, it could fast-track the removal of generals and admirals found to be “lacking in requisite leadership qualities,” according to a draft of the order reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. But it could also create a chilling effect on top military officers, given the president-elect’s past vow to fire “woke generals,” referring to officers seen as promoting diversity in the ranks at the expense of military readiness.”
wsj.com/politics/national-secu

There is still very little talk about it, probably because he threw a whole pile of handgranades this week.
youtu.be/rF5xvO2uqJo?si=6UXUBx

Lol, the title of the video is confident but the video itself is anything but

When people in all seriousness put their faith in military personnel refusing orders… then we’re in a precarious situation.

“This is why Donald Trump is trying to purge the military of good honorable generals”

I have to believe that the state governments are not going to go along with this, that they’re not this nuts. But are we really at the stage where we are tabletop gaming out a civil war?
social.vivaldi.net/@Patricia/1

This isn’t about “woke” anything. This is the draft of a plan to take over the last power structure he does not yet fully control. The same force he has repeatedly said he wants to use against the American civilian population.

“Former generals who have worked for Trump say that the sole military virtue he prizes is obedience. As his presidency drew to a close, and in the years since, he has become more and more interested in the advantages of dictatorship, and the absolute control over the military that he believes it would deliver. “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had,” Trump said in a private conversation in the White House, according to two people who heard him say this. “People who were totally loyal to him, that follow orders.””
theatlantic.com/politics/archi

The Atlantic · Trump: ‘I Need the Kind of Generals That Hitler Had’By Jeffrey Goldberg

“Gen Mark Milley, the top US military leader, resisted Donald Trump’s demands that his forces “crack skulls” and “beat the fuck out” of protesters marching against police brutality and structural racism, according to a much-trailed new book. “Just shoot them,” the president reportedly said.”
theguardian.com/us-news/2021/j

The Guardian · Trump told top US general to ‘just shoot’ racism protesters, book claimsBy Martin Pengelly

This video had a nice graphic, not done watching it yet.
youtu.be/eGhj2XRhWwI?si=0XPAHg

And there you have it. Trump confirms that he will deploy the US military inside the US.
washingtonpost.com/politics/20

So I guess the Democrats are just going to hand over the country to a despot because that’s what you do when you play by the rules? Good luck with that. Good luck with history recording you as the Good Guys that handed over the nation to a fascist dictator.

He should’ve been in jail years ago, and here you are.

You want to be scared? Watch Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Ressa talk about how fast institutions were dismantled in the Philippines, after pointing out that they had modeled their constitution and democracy on America.
youtu.be/RtSTBoPloqI?si=fEzzaN

Patricia Aas

As wild as it sounds, I’m starting to root for variation on Costa Rica’s “Civil War” : arrest Trump and call a new election.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Costa_Ri

en.wikipedia.orgCosta Rican Civil War - Wikipedia

The US running all over the world saying they’re fighting for their country, but will just hand it over to a dictator because he managed to game their system.

@Patricia I root for the much less deadly, and somewhat more probable:
Trump's suggestions for top positions have gone too far, even for craven GOP senators, slowing down Trump the way pure incompetence did in his first term.
The US federal system doesn't completely collapse from the infighting and outright assault by the president.
After a blue wave in 2026, due to lack of enthusiasm from GOP voters, Trump and Vance are both impeached.

@btuftin there is zero evidence that they will stop him. Literally zero. They could’ve raised their hand at one point and he’d be in jail.

@Patricia Evidence 1. They held actual hearings on Trump nominees in his first term and 87 were rejected or withdrew. 2. Trump's favored Senate leader, who promised to let him skip hearings, was defeated.

I'm not saying it's a foregone conclusion, but it's at least plausible. Any sort of revolution is not. From what Wiki tells me the Costa Rica revolution was a private army defeating an already unpopular and weak army to topple a long ruling government. What's your version of that for the US?

@btuftin Biden is still president. He is literally Commander in Chief right now. Whose army? The US army. I feel like I’m being punked.

@Patricia @btuftin if they don't have a legal path to do this, i don't see how biden could do it without being accused of seeking dictatorship himself.

And the most compelling part of the democratic ticket was adherence to and respect for law & democracy. Those of us who voted democrat did so largely because we wanted to preserve democracy (and all the protections that come with it, at least in principle). If the democratic president doesn't uphold democracy now, what's the value of our word?

@Patricia Who do you think would run in the next presidential election? And do you genuinely think one candidate wouldn't be a rabid, Trumpian, populist liar who'd win in a landslide?
Large portions of the US electorate are deluded and delusional, and most US money is on the side of the liars. Trump and his cheerleaders lie constantly, and his first term was a shit show, and yet he won a second term. Violently overthrowing him is a recipe for those lies to become "truer"!

@btuftin there aren’t many trumps, that’s why the Republicans put up with him in the first place

@Patricia Ron DeSantis, Greg Abbott, Matt Gaetz puppeteered by Elon Musk. Perhaps e.g. DeSantis would be marginally saner had he been elected in 2020, though his policies in Florida are right up there, but post a US mini-revolution the GOP gets worse.

And people wouldn't _vote_ for Harris to stop Trump, where are they getting the motivation for a revolution from?

@btuftin @Patricia we would need support from republican senators & representatives, and at this point, following trump's popular-vote victory, i suspect every republican congressperson would fear assassination if they were to move for impeachment followed by removal.

@btuftin @Patricia though, i don't know if there is a legal mechanism for impeaching a president before he's sworn in, which is what you would need.

even sending him to jail by itself might not change the outcome: i don't think there's a law that says the president cannot perform the duties of the office from prison...?

@btuftin @Patricia
so you would need congress to impeach-and-remove. And that means republican congresspeople would need to display integrity & backbone. But those qualities would have mostly disqualified them from getting elected in the first place, so...

@Patricia Unfortunately, there's no armed force outside the current US government capable of organizing something like this. And the history of coups *by* the military in Latin America is... extensive and not encouraging.

@rst Biden is president, he can literally have Trump arrested today.

@rst Shit, according to the US Supreme Court he could have him killed and still be immune

@Patricia The partisan judges on the Supreme Court gave the Presidency that power because *this* President would never use it -- Democrats see themselves as stewards of process, to a degree that makes them its slaves. (e.g., dithering four full years after January 6th without bringing Trump to trial.)

They also anticipated the next President.

If Biden was going to do anything like that, he would have done it before the election, with ample reason.

So, it'd have to be someone else. But who?

@rst what? He is still president. I really don’t understand any of this. “He cheated at UNO, so now I need to give him my house”? I feel like I’m in a bad movie.

@Patricia No, you're watching one. Us in the States, we're in it.

(The logic seems to go something like "The problem is he'd be breaking the rules. But if I break the rules, I'm just as bad as he is. So I won't do that." Pure self-indulgence, masquerading as virtue -- but it's the entire Democratic leadership, not just Biden.)

@rst yeah, if I arrest a man who should’ve been in jail already that’s pretty much the same as enabling a man who is going to steal our whole country and most likely perform a genocide. Basically the same.