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Donald Trump and Steve Bannon's coup in the making
By Ruth Ben-Ghiat
Updated 11:47 AM ET, Wed February 1, 2017
"Strike at the enemy at a time and place or in a manner for which he is unprepared," reads one US Air Force formulation of the old military doctrine of surprise. Trump has long been an advocate of this tactic and complained various times during the campaign that our armed forces were far too transparent about their planned operations.
Yet Bannon is the mastermind of this takeover strategy as it's been adapted to the domestic realm. Well-versed in military tactics and the history of the radical left and right, Bannon has repeatedly talked about "destroying the state" in the name of securing power for "an insurgent, center-right populist movement that is virulently anti-establishment."
Besieging your targets until nothing makes any sense -- giving them no time to absorb or recover from attacks -- is a time-tested strategy in the history of war and authoritarian takeovers. One might cite what's gone on in Turkey under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
...
This strategy requires a two-pronged approach. First, the creation of a small group of loyal insiders, who take orders directly from the leader's inner circle and are tasked with creating chains of authority that bypass those of the existing federal government and party bureaucracies. I was disturbed, but not surprised, when Conway said two days after the inauguration that "it's really time for (Trump) to put in his own security and intelligence community."
Second is the unleashing of the political purges that authoritarians so love. Some purges are punitive (say the firing of acting Attorney General Sally Yates because she defied Trump's immigration order) and some pre-emptive (the expulsion of senior State Department staff) but the effect is to cleanse the government of troublemakers and leave a power vacuum to be filled with loyalists -- or not filled at all, for added disruption of the state bureaucracy.
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http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/01/opinions/bannon-trump-coup-opinion-ben-ghiat/
WheelWalker
(8,954 posts)global1
(25,219 posts)Percy Cholmondeley
(74 posts)disregarding public opinion. They make it plain, by their actions, they don't care what the public wants. It's looked, for some time, like they know they won't have to face voters in a real election. And on Tuesday, the 7th of February, the House Admin. committee confirmed this when they voted out a bill eliminating the Election Assistance Commission, the nation's election watchdog. I thought there'd be an explosion over this confirmation of their treachery, but on the media, it was still all super bowel all the time. So, you can march and email and call all you want, it's a waste of time and effort. Extended general strikes may work, though.
orangecrush
(19,384 posts)But there is a counterstrategy.
Prepare for the long game.
Choose battles we can win, no matter how small, and start chipping away at the stone.
Most of all, don't allow ourselves to become demoralized.
bucolic_frolic
(43,027 posts)might be disinformation and plausible deniability
Confuse them
barbtries
(28,755 posts)will there be a republican in congress who will recognize and join the resistance to keep the united states a democratic republic? or are they all okay with this plan and its consequent certain catastrophe?
because the people will not stand for it. i for one, will not. i will resist to the end, and i know i am not alone.
justhanginon
(3,289 posts)what you do something else immediately pops up. Maybe we need to play it with a sledge hammer.
yallerdawg
(16,104 posts)talking-liberally
(43 posts)In the mean time the resistance needs to keep chipping away. Support Budweiser, Nordstrom and any other company who defies them. Boycotts seems to be the most effective right now.
Nitram
(22,755 posts)I interpret that to mean that he believes that his beliefs are central to reality, that he is in a privileged position with special knowledge that puts his ideology right in the center of the conservative universe. Incidentally, his "two-pronged strategy" comes straight from Lenin.