The Coup is in its final stages and it is unlikely that the votes cast in November will decide our future.
If despite the millions of suppressed votes by GOP operatives, Americans vote by a popular and electoral majority to excise Trump's cabal from power -- which virtually all polls report will be the case -- Trump will do what he has always done: put personal self-interest over country, over democracy, over the American Republic, itself. This is sadly not speculative: he has told us this himself many times.
Plans are apparently already in place to challenge the legitimacy of his electoral defeat. He has told us that ballots will not be counted without legal challenges. His actions, including a psychopathic devastation of USPS services putting the lives and well-being of millions at risk, and his ongoing rhetoric of hate and division, have laid the ground for these challenges. But if those mail-in ballots are somehow delivered and counted, Trump almost surely plans to contest them.
We already know the beginning of that process, as the nation was nearly crippled by Bush v Gore, in which a SCOTUS of arguably better character chose to allow the stoppage of vote counts in Florida, upon which the election hinged. What followed was a multi-trillion dollar devastation of the American economy, an illegal invasion, hundreds of thousands of lives lost unnecessarily in an agonizing and prolonged conflict, and a depreciation of American leadership on the world stage.
That said, this time there is actually much more at stake. The American Republic itself is on the chopping block.
One of the remarkable pathologies of the American psyche is that our self-referential insularity and astonishingly hubristic and unjustified regard for ourselves means we are ignorant of the fall of many civilized, established nations and Republics throughout history; ignorant of how vulnerable democratic institutions are; ignorant of the way of the world: that psychopaths in power can reduce your society and way of life to rubble in a few short years.
Hundreds of times in human history people aspiring to universal dignity and democracy have tried and failed. A few in the classical era, dozens in the middle ages, hundreds of free imperial city-states alone. It may be fair to say that most Republics have failed within a few years of their founding, but even long-lived Republics have failed against the powerful and ever-present reactionary forces, usually marshalled by cabals seeking exploitive wealth and power. Four hundred years of the Roman Republic vanished once Caesar crossed the Rubicon, and five hundred years of dictatorship (Empire) followed. Hitler took power in a democracy. Mussolini, like Hitler, like Trump (and Barr for him, with the help of George W. Bush's OLC), declared for themselves the powers of the unitary executive -- the euphemism for dictatorship in the modern era. All in democracies.
We are woefully naïve about the chances that it can and will happen here. It's happening. Now.
Next steps in the base case scenario:
1) Ongoing suppression of voting -- in back rooms where registrations are canceled, by mail, at the polls -- where American brown shirts will seek to frighten voters with threats of violence, and where many if not most polls in minority communities will be closed.
2) Ongoing propaganda challenging the legitimacy of the election, of mail-in ballots. Lies about voter fraud -- from those committing fraud -- will be increasing in number and hysteria.
3) Early election results may favor Trump as mail-in ballots will be Biden-intensive, so Trump may declare an early, election-eve victory, to add to the fire that when all the votes are counted, his presidency was stolen.
4) When the votes not suppressed by the GOP are ultimately counted, they are likely to favor Biden, and they will be challenged in the Courts. The plan is surely to take it to the SCOTUS, which has been scandalized by the failure to hold a hearing and vote on Merrick Garland, the unseemly installation of Brett Kavanaugh, and now the hypocritical violation of the GOP's stated principle in 2016, with the possible installation of a gravely compromised candidate, likely to be a Christo-Fascist so as to fuel the fires of the blood mob.
5) If the Roberts Court "determines" that election "violations" are so severe as to render the vote count illegitimate, the election is thrown to the House. Trump has already said it may end up in the House, so this has been explained to him.
6) In the House, each STATE gets one vote. So it is an ugly truth that the founding fathers wanted this to appear to be democratic, but this process might as well be asking the far-less democratic Senate to vote. Rural America will have many more votes than urban, minority America. As now configured, the GOP controls the majority of House delegations.
7) The House delegations, if they vote along party lines, thus "legally" elect Donald Trump. Despite dozens if not hundreds of electoral and other crimes, the Coup will have a "legal" basis. Note that the Russian Constitution only allows a president to serve for two, six-year terms. Putin has been in power for five terms. Yet he arranged a puppet to serve for a term to obfuscate what was going on. His coup was thus justified, too. Once the American Coup is secured in 2020, the need for a legal basis for it in the future will wane with the increased power and suppression of dissent that is likely to follow. The vote count in 2024 will likely look Russian, with Trump winning 76% of the reported vote. Or perhaps his sycophants will fear his displeasure, and count 98% for him, as is the case when insanely narcissistic dictators fully indulge themselves. The announced count won't really matter, of course; no ballots will be counted.
So the American Republic's Thermopylae may be the SCOTUS, as the House delegations show no signs of defending the integrity of the Republic if the Coup is in their hands. We know that Roberts does not want to be the Chief Justice who presides over the burning of the Constitution, but will he have what it takes to exhort his fellow justices to do the right thing and honor the voices of the American people, crying out to have their voices heard, their sacred votes counted?
I am not expert at Robert's frame of mind, his courage, and his relationship with Gorsuch and Thomas. I suspect Kavanaugh, Thomas, Alito and the illicit upcoming fascist appointee all vote for dictatorship -- but of course I could be wrong. I have hope that Roberts chooses to and convinces Gorsuch to join Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan to let us live another day.
