[ExI] Whitewash

[Darin Sunley]

Of course you're right. I misspoke myself on the 2024 date.

Suleimani, to name an example, had the levels of popular and military
support to overthrow the Iranian regime and make it stick, had he so chosen.

Trump, otoh, may be a force at a boardroom table or even at the head of an
election rally, but he's just not in the same league. He talks a big game,
and that's enough to at least not completely drown in Washington DC, but
he's not a dangerous man.

To use V for Vendetta as an example, think Suttledge, not Creedy.

When Trump starts surrounding himself with genuinely dangerous people,
thats the time, not to panic, but at least to worry.

We're not there yet, and haven't been for quite some time.

On Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 5:01 PM Darin Sunley <dsunley at gmail.com> wrote:

> If we want to seriously discuss the possibility of a sitting President
> successfully enacting a coup d'etat in the United States [as opposed to
> mindless partisan posturing], I would submit that an absolutely necessary
> precondition would be cult-of-personality levels of popularity amongst the
> military, including prominent senior leadership.
>
> In the last 40 years, only Reagan and Bush II have been even close. Trump
> isn't even in the same zipcode, let alone the ballpark.
>
> On Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 4:50 PM Dylan Distasio via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>> +1.  I will also offer this bet to any takers.
>>
>> On Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 6:23 PM Darin Sunley via extropy-chat <
>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>
>>> I will bet anyone who wants to take it $100 USD that President Trump
>>> will obey the results of the elections of both 2020 and, if applicable,
>>> 2024.
>>>
>>> I have been hearing this ridiculous horse puckey my entire life - that
>>> [insert President here] will declare themselves Caesar and
>>> President-for-Life.
>>>
>>> It was implausible nonsense about Obama.
>>> It was implausible nonsense about Bush II.
>>> It was implausible nonsense about Clinton.
>>> It was implausible nonsense about Bush I.
>>> It was implausible nonsense about Reagan.
>>>
>>> It makes the otherwise reasonable, intelligent people who spout it, on
>>> bith sides of the aisle, sound like paranoid loons.
>>>
>>> There are many plausible failure modes of a complete breakdown of
>>> federal politics.
>>>
>>> Caesars are not one of them.
>>>
>>> I may have ti make this offer every election year - like your psychic
>>> research wager.
>>>
>>> Just stop this. It's silly.
>>>
>>> [Of the presidents in that list the most worrying was actually Bush I.
>>> Word-to-the-wise: don't elect former heads of the CIA to high office. They
>>> know where entirely too many bodies are buried, from direct involvement in
>>> the burial.
>>>
>>> Until we see a President normalizing wearing a high ranking service
>>> uniform and supplementing the Secret Service with mainline military units
>>> and/or private security forces, we're a long way from El Presidente.]
>>>
>>>
>>> On Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 3:45 PM John Clark via extropy-chat <
>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> The grand whitewash has now been successfully completed. The US Senate,
>>>> the so called "greatest deliberative body in the world" has cowardly made
>>>> it clear that it doesn't want to know the truth and will do everything in
>>>> its power to prevent you or any of the American people from knowing it. And
>>>> so only one more step is needed for the march toward dictatorship to be
>>>> complete, staying in power after January 20 2021 regardless of the November
>>>> election results.
>>>>
>>>> John K Clark
>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
>>>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
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>
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