These military/intelligence purges are worrying Feels like people are way too complacent and keep-calm-and-carry-on mode
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The BLM protests over the summer provided a nice dry run for a whole class of unraveling excuses. Throw in a few false flags and the situation gets much more programmable than people think.
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Note that a peaceful legitimate transfer of power is *already* no longer an option. They’ve already undermined faith in the process with a third of the population, for a lifetime. Legitimacy isn’t an objective feature of a set of institutions but a high-inertia perception.
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We still talk of Florida 2000, and FDR’s shenanigans in the 30s. The living system is not even the nerdy, poorly play-tested tabletop game of 1787. It’s that plus a history of sketchy hacks and patches and service packs. We’re at Windows 95 stage of evolution, headed to Vista.pic.twitter.com/lgZmaNCFdy
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The highest likelihood outcome is still just a bumpy and frayed but otherwise non-crisis transition. Which people will jump to see as validation that the system just “works” and all thus agonizing was needless worry. Exactly the wrong conclusion to draw.
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When near misses increase in frequency gradually, fragility is increasing. The adjacent possible is turning into a dangerous abyss. Just because you walked a tightrope successfully doesn’t mean it’s the same as an ordinary path.
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Also don’t forget: near misses aren’t harmless. They just hurt people and things at the margins. If you’re one of the sanguine, secure ones, you won’t be hurt.
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Murder is impossible because it is illegal The United States cannot unravel or slide into autocracy because the constitution forbids it
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End of conversation
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Yeah I wanna emphasize this isn't an optimistic view, it's that all the "they/we would never do that-" fails because people wait for a fork in the road and there isn't ever one. All the prepping is for a dramatic climactic decision but authoritarianism doesn't ask you for that 1/
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it just asks you to put up with a little bit more today than yesterday. You have to make the active decision, unprompted, to say "Well no, this is too much." over what seems like just another small thing, and Americans are really, REALLY bad at doing that as a society. 2/2
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It's not 1970. Military has a LOT more skepticism about enforcing a grifter who's insulted them 1M times, most recently when he didn't want to count their votes in GA (going bad for him). They kinda wish they get to stop a national coup. It's the Show. Nat'l oath, etc.
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