ANS -- The American Problem

And here's another one on the same subject, but saying about the opposite.  It's shorter.

From FaceBook, so no link.  

--Kim

Sara Robinson

 and 

Evan Robinson

 shared a post.

David Atkins

tSp9hmlonsoredl

David Atkins One of the peculiar dynamics of the American Problem is that U.S. conservative leaders don't represent or care a...

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One of the peculiar dynamics of the American Problem is that U.S. conservative leaders don't represent or care about cities. They don't care if cities burn or grind to a halt in protest. Big corporations are not clearly aligned behind them. So the pressure levers aren't easy.

You could put millions and millions in the streets, and the rural gerrymandered legislators would laugh. The police don't live in the cities they serve. Wildcat strike? Even if you could, it's not like Apple, Amazon, Starbucks, Yum, Berkshire, etc., are keeping Trump in power. This isn't like 1930s Germany.

Stop paying taxes? These guys are actively letting cities and blue states go bankrupt, and at the federal level they don't care about deficits at all.

You could send tens of millions to Washington DC, and they would all just leave town and wait it out. So if your answer to a Trump coup is "direct action" or whatever, you need to think very carefully about what you mean, what will work and whether they will care.

There are conceivable scenarios in which Republicans could feel enough pressure to step back from the coup, but they generally wouldn't look like the traditional leftist approach to direct action. There is likely no protest, riot or general strike big enough to do it.

But this is also why it's important, when facing a fascist threat, for liberal democracy to have buy-in from a lot of players with power in society, including ones we might not always be comfortable allying with. Stopping the Trump coup may take *all* hands on deck.

P.S. You might recognize the fundamental rural-over-urban totalitarianism problem in another culture/country: Iran. The cities have more population, but are policed by conservative rurals in charge. The young people protest and revolt in numbers, but lack institutional buy-in.