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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   27147 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 20, 2023

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I think you're completely overestimating the extent to which the President would be openly defied. Trump succeeded in firing a lot of people. If he goes and fires the head of the FBI again there might be another investigation, but the head of the FBI is still fired.

Presidents are not all-powerful, but they are very powerful. Trump was an unusually incompetent one, but even so there's plenty he would be able to do. If he had made the decision to nuke North Korea, North Korea would have gotten nuked.

but the head of the FBI is still fired.

Not if the entire FBI says "no he's not" and keeps taking orders from him, while ignoring any "replacement," and whoever at Treasury or wherever prints government paychecks keeps paying him on schedule.

There are over two million civilian Federal employees. If all of those two million plus collectively decide that they are not going to obey, enforce, or even acknowledge any orders or appointments from Trump, what can he do himself, as one mere mortal, to compel them to obey?

If all of those two million plus collectively decide that they are not going to obey, enforce, or even acknowledge any orders or appointments from Trump, what can he do himself, as one mere mortal, to compel them to obey?

If the FBI refuses to take orders from him, he declares the entire FBI fired for insubordination.

If they refuse to leave their physical buildings, he declares them to be trespassing on government property and calls up the DC Police to evict them.

If the DC Police refuse to comply and/or are unable to defeat the FBI (which I admit is quite likely), he declares martial law and sends in the troops to retake the rebel-controlled buildings.

All of this is TTBOMK perfectly within his legal authority as President.

I'm not saying Trump would have an easy time of things, but open defiance won't work (at least not without military buy-in, at which point, well, yes, a coup can override "ink on a page"). It's the cases where things just mysteriously don't happen and there's no clear culprit that are the really-hard ones.

I'm not saying Trump would have an easy time of things, but open defiance won't work

On one hand, I agree that it would take other forms than "nah, we're not doing it", on the other even the first response you list would trigger a wave of international hysteria about the rise of fascism.

Also, you do know that US generals were outright lying to Trump about the number of troops deployed to Syria? Does that count as open defiance?

Also, you do know that US generals were outright lying to Trump about the number of troops deployed to Syria? Does that count as open defiance?

I presume they didn't tell Trump/the public that they were lying to him - at least, not at the time - so that's not "open" defiance. That's more like the sort of thing that I called "really-hard".

Right but that's not going to happen. You're actually crazy if you think that's going to happen.

So at that point you’re talking about a coup?

And if they do that, do you think the military will simply

Yes.

In practice, perhaps, but far enough from the traditional picture that too many people probably wouldn't see it as such. (And even if they did, there wouldn't be anything they could do about it.)

And then the question becomes “what does the military do.”

The U.S. military is, historically, committedly apolitical and stays out of civilian political matters. A "a very long 240-year tradition of an apolitical military that does not get involved in domestic politics," even.

Where there is an in your face coup? What if the president calls up the national guard?

Where there is an in your face coup?

No, a heroic resistance by dedicated civil service to defend Our Democracy against Trump's authoritarian auto-coup via his illegitimate and undemocratic attempt to replace functional government with corrupt, incompetent lickspittles so he can turn America into a Christo-fascist hellscape.

What if the president calls up the national guard?

And then they take a page from Gen. Milley and refuse to assist Orange Man in his attempt to become dictator-for-life of Gilead.

There’s a large national guard deployment at odds with the blue tribe controlled federal government on the Texas-Mexico border right now, it is probably technically illegal, and the federal government doesn’t have the stones to do anything about it.

I am not saying that some kind of American version of the auspicious incident obviously ends with a trump as Caesar. I am saying that the red tribe can make enough of a fight out of it to take the blues down with them at the very least, and it’s an open question whether it works that way in the other direction.

If North Korea nuked the US first then yes, no doubt. If there was strong-seeming evidence that North Korea was about to nuke the US, then probably. But an unprovoked US first strike against North Korea out of the blue? I am not even sure that the military high command would obey an ordinary president who gave such an order, much less Trump.

Ostensibly POTUS has sole discretion in ordering a nuclear strike, but obviously that's not necessarily how things would go in a real situation. I don't know if the nuclear football relays an order directly to a silo or whatever or to the joint chiefs, but in any case someone who isn't trump needs to decide to push the button.

It goes right to the silos, and the people in the silos have been trained and selected specifically so that if they get the order to launch, they'll obey.

There's been several occasions in history where the guy in the silo did not push the button.

I don't believe that's accurate. There have been cases where officers on the ground have identified what they saw as false alarms, and chosen not to act in response. And there are cases where orders to ready nuclear weapons were issued in error and later retracted or aborted. My understanding is that in the latter case, the men in silos almost always obeyed their orders when they believed they were genuine.

POTUS lacks the legal discretion to start a war outside the structure of a previously congressionally approved war. Self defense side steps this, as does defense of Senate approved treaty allies. But he can't just order a nuke lobbed at any country at any time.

The War Powers Act and every war since Korea (if not even sooner) suggest otherwise. This is separate from the constitutionality of this

I don't think there's any reason to think that the president can't order a strike at any moment.

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