tbyfield on Mon, 16 Nov 2020 04:07:48 +0100 (CET)


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Re: <nettime> why is it so quiet (in the US)

"Words have meanings" is one of those sayings that needs to go away. It sounds so sure, so blunt, but it obscures so very much. Yes, words have meanings: they have lots of meanings, many of them ambiguous or contrary, and those meanings change to keep pace with historical circumstances.
This thread is trying to describe the murky area between things working normally and things breaking hopelessly. More specifically, we're at a moment when the president of the US is spewing torrents of claims that are upside-down and backwards. And he's supported in large part by widespread silence across his party and rabid supporters who've completely lost their grip. What we're seeing is a profound breakdown in the language we use to describe our world.
The definitions of a word like "coup" in a US or UK dictionary evolved in a world where it was assumed (as they say) it can't happen here — so *of course* those definition will all but insist that the leaders wear aviator shades, ridiculous regalia, and all the rest.
The US is breaking down, so it's not at all surprising that some of its language for describing the world would as well.
If you think that consulting dictionaries and insisting on definitions is the best way to make sense of this, go for it. Myself, I think that kind of prescriptive tendency is part of the problem. Think about all the inane, endless debates we've seen about whether Trump is "really" a fascist: what exactly did they accomplish, except discouraging people from seeing what was in front of their face?
As for the "nuclear codes," that's a standard lefty fetish. The US nuclear command-and-control decision tree includes entire branches for scenarios in which civilian authority is uncertain: nonexistent, unreachable, contested, unverifiable, and/or incompetent. Little or nothing is publicly known about the criteria and procedures involved in switching to one of those branches. I think there's a good chance that a president firing the Secretary of Defense, purging the DOD, raving about imagined conspiracies, contesting the election, and threatening to never leave would meet those criteria. If it didn't, it will within four years. 

Cheers,
Ted

On 15 Nov 2020, at 16:51, Kurtz, Steven wrote:
Interesting perspective Ted, but I can’t call the examples you cite a coup. The use of political power to reorganize institutions to better solidify a person’s or party’s advantage or even to gain a political monopoly is most of what politics is. Machine politics or the attempt to build a machine is not a coup. And Trump attempting to reorganize institutions to his advantage in an obvious and half-baked way doesn’t make a coup. If that is what a coup is then a coup is ongoing everywhere, all the time from the local to the international. Words have meanings. This word refers to an illegal, unconstitutional, removal of a party or individual from power through the use of force. That is not what has happened or is presently happening no matter how much Trump might wish it so.
The only event I can think of that could potentially resemble a (bloodless) coup will be when the military gives Biden the nuclear codes on January 20th, without a care for what legislatures or courts might think about it. It will even better resemble a coup if they give them to Trump (which is very unlikely). If the shenanigans get too wild the military could decide who is president, and the mark of that decision and its enforcement will be who gets the codes. 

I do agree that Emmet Sullivan is a court room hero.

________________________________________
From: tbyfield <tbyfield@panix.com>
Sent: Sunday, November 15, 2020 12:47 PM
To: nettime-l
Cc: Kurtz, Steven
Subject: Re: <nettime> why is it so quiet (in the US)
If there will be no coup, Steven, that's because there already was one. 
But let me explain.

Debates about a "coup" in the US are useless, because they're bogged
down in endless anticipatory "post hoc ergo propter hoc" arguments
("after this therefore because of this," just before *this* happens) and 
coupsplaining ("it's not *really* a coup* because" yadda yadda).

If our litmus test for a coup is tanks in the streets, you're right,
there wasn't and won't be one. But that's mostly Hollywood stuff anyway: 
in times and places where coups have undeniably taken place, there
weren't enough tanks or troops to occupy all those countless streets.
The vast majority of those streets were empty, not an obvious sign of
force anywhere, and yet coups happened. How? Because a coup is less the 
show of force than the doubt, helplessness, capitulation, and
adaptation. In the US, we've spent the last 3–4 years doing that. If
tanks magically appeared tomorrow, few would be surprised, lots of
people would mutter about "2020" and "the new normal," and everyone
would know how to walk / ride / drive past with their jaws clenched
tight and their eyes averted. That part is done.

But I'm not arguing that a coup is just a state of mind or some other
irrefutable bullshit, though. I'm saying bluntly that, objectively,
there already has been a coup.

No serious person doubts that Trump would stage a coup if he could, or
that the GOP would go along with it if they could. No serious person
doubts that he's taken concrete steps on a dozen fronts to pull it off, 
or that he continues to try. And no serious person doubts that it was
unclear how federal court would resolve election-related cases. Yet a
huge number of the very same people would also argue that what's
happened isn't a coup because it was badly conceived, poorly executed,
and failing. But if that's our standard for acknowledging the reality of 
something, then Trump wasn't president and didn't have policies. What
he's done very definitely was a coup: a stupid, flawed, failed coup, but 
a coup nonetheless.

But, ultimately, denials that what's happened isn't a coup become
clearest in one area in particular. Trump's attacks on the USPS came
very close to winning him the election. If it weren't for sustained
public and political pressure, huge numbers of mail-in ballots wouldn't 
have been delivered on time and wouldn't have been counted — and
there's a few key states would have ended up in Trump's column. And, in 
a softer but equally decisive way, I think, the post–Election Day
narrative would have been *very* different: it wasn't just the final
tabulation, it was the erosion, dat after day, of Trump's supposed leads 
that killed his claims. We owe an immense debt to all the people and
forces who mounted those challenges, and Emmet G. Sullivan, the DC
Circuit Court judge who issues the decisive ruling and imposed deadlines 
down to the *hour* on the USPS leadership, is a legit national hero.

So: there was a couple *and also* the victory of more or less normal,
continuous operations of government over Trump's attempt means there
wasn't one. Resolving that by saying, "well, there was one but it
failed" isn't very satisfying to my ear. The solution is to set aside
silly cinematic assumptions that a coup is necessarily a clearly defined 
thing, that it does or doesn't exist, that did or didn't happen.

Cheers,
Ted

On 13 Nov 2020, at 16:52, Kurtz, Steven wrote:


From my perspective there is very little to worry about regarding the
election. There will be no coup, and the electoral college vote will
not be stolen. All the generals who can speak out (because they are
retired) have done so, and do not support Trump, nor do they see him
as the election winner. Trump has not replaced anyone yet with
operational command.

The electorate sent to congress has to reflect the popular vote. Each
state has a law that enforces this. Police, judges (at all levels),
electorate members, a majority of congress, and state legislators
would all have to agree to break these laws to make this theft
possible. Perhaps either of these theft strategies are possible, but
they are adjacent to impossible.
When understanding Trump, the best way is to go directly to the lowest 
common denominator. Trump is not a complex, reflective man. What does
he like to do?
1. Loot and grift. If he were to concede the tap of funds flowing into 
legally challenge the election would stop. He has no intention of
cutting this revenue source, since half goes to lawyers and half to
his campaign.
2. Display his power. His favorite way of doing this is to make other 
powerful people say things in public that they know are not true. An
Orwellian autocratic favorite to be sure. He also likes to remind his
party that his base will follow every order.  This is how he plans to
stay a power player in the Republican party. I think a line will drawn 
at coup time. Thus far no post-election acts of violence from either
side have been reported.
3. Take revenge. That is part of the reason for the recent firings. He will put the knife to as many people as he can before leaving. He will 
also give pardons to people that he believes will make his enemies
upset. (On the small up side, this may include a pardon for Snowden to 
get back at his “deep state” enemies. Trump has said this out
loud.) He will also collect as much dirt as he can to release against
his enemies (another reason for the recent firings).
4. Undermine democratic institutions. His favorite is elections. He 
cried voter fraud even when he won in 2016 and has pursued this lie
ever since, so its no surprise he is doing it when he has lost. He
also does it by putting unqualified hacks into office and removing the competent. The former is another nother reason for the recent firings. This tendency is in part residue of Bannon’s accelerationist agenda.
Will we see Trump run again in 2024? Yes, if he is not in jail. He has 
to escape prosecutors in NY state and in Manhattan first. Then, for
four years he will have to resist selling state secrets. A series of
actions that could make him the richest man in the world. I don’t
know if he can resist that, and I am sure he is not smart enough to
get away with it.

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