It’s been a long few days on dKos, hasn’t it? Last night, a diarist penned an open letter "To All the Kos-Kool-Aid Drinkers Out There", purporting to take to task yesterday afternoon’s recommended diary asking "Will Bush walk away in 2009?". While the later-in-time diarist (the "Kos-Kool-Aid Kop"?) garnered 150+ comments, a rather impressive achievement for a diarist who rejected repeated pleas to edit the diary to correct em’s egregious misspelling of "coup de tat," going so far as to proudly announce "hier stehe ich; ich kann nicht anders" "I ain’t usin the shift key over and over fo' a bunch of conspiracy nuts...you'll have to correct the spelling of this post too and get over it I guess..." and later went on to bemoan as "[k]inda sad really" that "[t]he conspiracy diary got several hundred comments made the recommended list" while "[t]his one did not."
Follow me, if you must...
Now as I posted my (typically for me) windbaggy comment way downthread and well after the diary had scrolled off the recent diaries (and since it, kinda sadly, didn’t make the rec list), I fear that it will simply disappear into the ether without being read. And since I made a couple of decent points, I’ve turned it into a diary and henceforth repost it below:
I have neither an interest in nor an inclination to defend the rec'ed diary you refer to, but I do take exception to a central premise of your diary and a couple of subsidiary points (aside from your mangling of the French loanword "coup d'etat," which has already been commented upon at length (you do know it's possible to edit a diary after you've posted it, right?)) --
First (and let preface this by stressing that I don't believe GWB will still be occupying the White House when I wake up on the morning of January 21, 2009 (hopefully -- knock on wood -- with a massive hangover from a celebratory January 20th evening)), one of your central premises seems to be that Americans are just too gol-durn freedom'-lovin' to sit still for an extraconstitutional coup.
(Let me add here that I tend to agree with the gist of your other central premise -- namely, that powerful economic interests who would presumably be the ostensible primary beneficiaries of such an action would, in fact, stand to lose a lot more than they would gain (largely because they already get most of what they want anyway from the present system without any need for an overt coup); and absent their support there would not be any powerful elite consitutuency actively supporting the coup.)
Now perhaps you're specifically focused on debunking the rec'ed diary, which perhaps (let's assume for the sake of argument) envisions something along the lines of a comic-book-villain-esque declaration by President Bush, in January, 2009, along the lines of "I hereby declare MARTIAL LAW and I hereby SUSPEND THE CONSTITUTION and I hereby establish FASCISM as our new government, under my leadership as DICTATOR-FOR-LIFE, and there's nothing ANYONE can do to stop me, even Superman, because I've lined the walls of the White House (which shall henceforth be known as the "Green House") with GREEN KRYPTONITE! Now ALL shall FEAR ME and DESPAIR! Bwaaaa-haaaaa-haaaaa!!!"
But of course in reality (and let me reiterate, I neither expect the following nor think it more than a rather remote likelihood), under any plausible scenario, a suspension of the scheduled transfer of power on January 20, 2009, wouldn't take the form of Bush saying, in essence, "I'm throwing away the constitution to seize dictatorial power; f*ck freedom and motherhood and apple pie" --
rather, it would take the form -- as virtually every dictator everywhere who has ever come to power -- of Bush (or whomever) expressly invoking (not rejecting) the core concepts of American mythology, saying that he's regretfully forced to, say, suspend elections in order to defend American freedom and liberty from the extraordinary external threat it faces, until such time as the emergency has passed, at which time all will go back to normal, and God Bless America in this our darket hour, yada yada yada...
(Or, as Huey Long -- who knew whereof he spoke -- much more succinctly said, "When fascism comes to America, it will come in the guise of anti-fascism.")
And I for one don't share your optimism that heretofore lethargic Americans would suddenly overcome their inertia and discover the true meaning of patriotism to storm Washington, sidearms at the ready. Quite to the contrary, I think there'd be an awful lot of "well, after all, the constitution is not a suicide pact"- and "the most important thing right now is for everyone to remain calm"-style rationalization belching forth from our television sets, and once everybody realized that just because Bush isn't stepping down doesn't mean they can't still get their $5.00 lattes and sub-$5.00 gasoline and the next season of American Idol, people would wonder what all the fuss was about.
Because, as much as I'd love to visit the America you live in, where a strong silent majority of the population truly believes in so-called bedrock American principles like the rule of law, freedom of expression, and democratic representation, and is truly both capable of recognizing when they are threatened and willing to risk physical harm to defend them, it sure doesn't look anything like the America I live in -- where the President now has the legal authority, under domestic U.S. law, to detain by fiat at least any foreigner (and arguably any citizen as well) until they die without recourse to any court simply by decreeing them an "unlawful enemy combatant," where a retired General can publicly remark that if terrorists obtain and use weapons of mass destruction, "... the Western world, the free world, loses what it cherishes most, and that is freedom and liberty we’ve seen for a couple of hundred years in this grand experiment that we call democracy," without anyone flinching or even questioning his premise...
in my America, I seriously doubt that a sufficiently motivated and reasonably competent thug, with elite support and the ability to mount a credible appeal to the necessity of his actions in defense of "American liberty," would have the slightest bit of trouble carrying out a successful -- and virtually bloodless -- coup. In my America, I think we'd lap it up and ask for more.
And if that makes me a tin-foil-hat wearing kool-aid drinker, so be it.
A couple of additional thoughts since I posted this: now we all have different pet peeves – the Kos-Kool-Aid Kop was annoyed by what he viewed as a tinfoil-hat conspiracy diary making its way onto the rec list. That’s certainly em’s prerogative. As for me, I find myself more annoyed by the growing tendency on the part of some (even, or perhaps especially, on the part of more "established" regular diarists and commenters) to immediately denigrate anyone who voices an opinion that might push the envelope a little and challenge the comfortable view of America and our political system as basically a good place which just needs a little tune-up. I’m not talking about 9/11 conspiracy-mongering (which in any case I view as a "nonpartisan" phenomenon which is a far better indicator of nutjobbery than it is of any particular position on the left-right axis):
Worried that we’re going to attack Iran before the end of the Bush Administration? STFU dumb*ss, don’t you know that Sy Hersh is a hack with no credibility?
Concerned about the suppression of African-American votes? STFU you stupid troll, if we want to be taken seriously by the Democrats we have to accept that we lost fair and square and accept the consequences.
And no, afraid of what happens to American representative democracy if there’s a major terrorist incident on American soil before November, 2008? STFU: you sound like a bunch of Freepers. And anyway, everybody knows if they try something like that, the American People will rise up in revolt – and I’ll be helping to lead the charge. Lemme at em, lemme at em!
It’s a strange phenomenon, which for lack of a better term we might call "Respectability Trollery" – motivated as it is (I guess) by some kind of absurd fantasy that if only we succeed in driving out the "crazies," then Kossacks will be accorded the seat at the table we so richly deserve, and Nancy will start asking US how to act rather than inside-the-beltway political consultants and lobbyists.