This essay could have been entitled “I am old enough to remember when the Hollywood left thought military dictatorships were a bad thing.” After all, some of the greatest villains of the 20th Century were generals who seized power in their countries and ran them roughshod. Franco in Spain and Pinochet in Chile come to mind. In any case, Chelsea Handler, the comedian, TV talk show host, and vodka aficionado has decided that a junta would be a great alternative to the freely elected President Donald Trump. She has tweeted, “To all the generals surrounding our idiot-in-chief...the longer U wait to remove him, the longer UR name will appear negatively in history.”
How a coup against Trump would work
The author Kurt Schlichter wrote a two part story for Townhall recently about what an attempted military coup against Trump would look like.
The gentle reader should give the story a look, but to put it succinctly, things do not turn out how the plotters plan. The point that Schlichter is that coups backfire more often than not. The recent attempt to overthrow the president of Turkey serves as a case in point. Coups just as often wind up with a bunch of generals being executed for high treason as it does with a junta taking power and starting to round up dissidents.
Coups do not usually Institute left wing regimes
Handler does not seem to grasp the idea that military coups, as a rule, are not mounted to institute left wing rule. The 82nd Airborne Division is not going to attack the White House, drag out President Trump, and install Hillary Clinton.
By and large, the generals revolt when a leftwing government is causing rack and ruin to the country. Oddly, a coup was never mounted to overthrow Obama.
In fact, the generals kind of like Trump. The White House Chief of Staff is a former general. So are the secretary of defense and the national security advisor. In a way, the generals are already running the government.
Trump, unlike his predecessor, gives broad policy goals, such as “destroy ISIS” or “get ready to turn North Korea into dust” and then let his military commanders set about the best way to do these things. Obama used to interfere with military operations, even though he was no great shakes as a strategist. Why would a general want to change that happy state of affairs?
Besides, if a real live, Latin American-style junta were ever to take over the United States, Chelsea Handler would be the first to be disappeared. One suspects that she has not thought about that unhappy prospect.
