This Is Not a Coup

Posted inUncategorized

cross-posted from Afflict the Comfortable

The Treachery of (Words and) Images

Wednesday’s events were horrible, dangerous, infuriating, and predictable.  People with weapons easily breached the Capitol, gallows were hung (perhaps performative, perhaps not), and people were attacked and some died.  The country was stunned, and both establishment and social media have been deeming this Trump’s “coup” or an “insurrection” from the first.  It’s hard to talk about this. Trump is horrid, detestable, and dangerous, and any time you try to reel the rhetoric back, you can be accused of being an apologist for a cruel, racist, inhuman bigot who happens to be president—which all makes sense. But doing awful things doesn’t mean we have fascism, and vandals and thugs breaking into a sacred public building doesn’t mean we’ve had a coup. There’s no saving grace to any of this, but it needs to be viewed clearheaded and coldblooded.

As Trump’s Attempts to Undo Election Fail, Fears of “Coup” Prove Unfounded

Posted inUncategorized

MEDIA ADVISORY

As Trump’s Attempts to Undo Election Fail, Fears of “Coup” Prove Unfounded

(Erin Schaff/The New York Times)

“Georgia and Michigan Deliver Blows to Trump’s Efforts to Undo the Election”

“Business and World Leaders Move On As Trump Fights to Reverse Election”

–New York Times online headline, 20 November 2020

******

Donald Trump’s plans to overturn the 2020 election results hit a huge barrier today as legislators in Georgia and Michigan affirmed that they would designate Joe Biden’s electors as the official representatives to the Electoral College.

On Green and Red Podcast and elsewhere, Scott Parkin and Bob Buzzanco have been discussing this issue frequently over the past two months and, contrary to most media analyses, have made it clear that Trump was not going to stage a “coup” or otherwise remain in office.

Hysteria about Fascism and Coups Hurt the Left

Posted inUncategorized

cross-posted from Afflict the Comfortable

by Prof. Robert Buzzanco

Since 1/20/2017 huge numbers of people, liberals and on the Left alike, have been adamant, and often apoplectic, that Trump was guiding the U.S. toward fascism, that he was the new American Hitler, and that his followers were Nazis.  More recently, we’ve been inundated with increasingly-panicked warnings that a coup was imminent because he was unlikely to win the election fairly or he’d refuse to leave office if he lost.

And we’re not just being told that Trump is a fascist. Some people on the Left have gone further and insisted that nobody should even question that perspective, that fact–as they see it. The most extreme, unhinged example of attacking coup skeptics was probably Counterpoint’s feature write Paul Street, who shrieked that “any asshole ‘radical left’ douchebag who goes around posting and publishing denialist bullshit based on the absence of full on parallels with the Third Reich disgraces themselves and pollutes the discourse with ahistorical drivel.” I guess then I’ll cop to being a disgraceful polluter.

Ruling Class 101 and the Coup That Wasn’t

Posted inUncategorized

We’re not ones to subscribe to popular world views, even those held on  the left. So, in our latest episode, Green and Red dive deep into the  history and politics of the American Ruling Class, coups at other points  in history,  and the great coup of 2020 (that wasn’t).

Listen here: https://bit.ly/RulingClassGandR

We start off with a conversation about what is a coup and not a coup. We  talk about coups in places like Indonesia in 1965, Chile in 1973, and  in other points of history; and how the end of the Trump regime has yet to constitute what is considered “coup.”    

Is Your Outrage Pure?

Posted inUncategorized

cross-posted from Afflict the Comfortable

by Prof. Bob Buzzanco

Planned Election Protests Shouldn’t Have Been Postponed

First, there’s not going to be a “coup” or any other type of stolen election.  The hysterics surrounding this issue have frankly become embarrassing on the Left.  No reason to go into the particulars here (though I did in a lengthy piece a few weeks ago), but it’s not going to happen.  Trump won’t be president after January 20th, 2021.

But coup-or-no-coup is a pretty weak line on gauging political success. The standard for Pass/Fail shouldn’t be the worst possible outcome—the actual theft of government power.  The way some people are sizing this up, anything short of tanks rolling down Pennsylvania Avenue flying Confederate flags with the Proud Boys and Q him- or her-self leading the attack with Kid Rock providing the marching music would be a victory.

Is Trump a Fascist? Will there be a Coup?

Posted inUncategorized

cross-Posted from Afflict the Comfortable

by Prof. Bob Buzzanco

Does it matter what we call Trump? Does the Left need to to chill out?

Some years ago, Randy Newman sang “the end of an empire . . . is messy at best,” and American society is now in a mess that Winston Wolfe couldn’t clean up.  No one has to ignore the long sordid corporate liberal record of Joe Biden or the Wall Street/Prosecutor career of Kamala Harris to understand that Donald Trump has to be deposed by whatever means necessary and if the tactic of voting does that, there’s no reason to knock it.

But it’s also a time for thinking rationally and coldly, not being hysterical and panicking, and there’s a lot of that on the Left these days.

Trump’s scary and dangerous, absolutely.  Though he’s not as abnormal as a lot of Leftists and especially Liberals insist  (think of Nixon and Reagan and Bush, not to mention Clinton and Obama), he’s openly, crudely, vulgarly, maniacally, and virulently presenting a challenge at home of a greater magnitude than we’ve seen probably since the 1960s.  While logically building on the neo-liberal and inhumane programs of his predecessors, he’s topped them off with a dismissal of a public health crisis that’s killed over 200,000 and is openly inciting white supremacist violence from Portland to Michigan.