{"id":173414,"date":"2020-11-23T12:01:16","date_gmt":"2020-11-23T12:01:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=173414"},"modified":"2020-11-22T05:01:13","modified_gmt":"2020-11-22T05:01:13","slug":"i-lived-through-a-stupid-coup-the-usa-is-having-one-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2020\/11\/i-lived-through-a-stupid-coup-the-usa-is-having-one-now\/","title":{"rendered":"I Lived through a Stupid Coup–The USA Is Having One Now"},"content":{"rendered":"

You\u2019ve already lost. This is what North Americans need to understand.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

The minority party took over Parliament and literally started throwing stuff.<\/p><\/div>\n

11 Nov 2020 – <\/em>T<\/span>wo years ago, I lived through a coup in Sri Lanka. It was stupid. The minority party threw chili powder at everyone in Parliament and took over by farce. Math, however, requires a majority and the courts kicked them out. They gave in. We\u2019d been protesting for weeks and yay, we won<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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No.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t know it at the time, but we had already lost. No one knew \u2014 but oh my God, what we lost. The legitimate government came back but it was divided and weak. We<\/em> were divided and weak. We were vulnerable.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

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Four m<\/span>onths later, on Easter Sunday, some assholes attacked multiple churches and hotels, killing 269 of us. My wife and kids were at church, I had to frantically call them back. Our nation was shattered. Mobs began attacking innocent Muslims. It was out of control. The coup broke our government, and four months later, that broke us.<\/p>\n

The coup was a farce at the time but how soon it turned to tragedy. They called it a constitutional crisis, but how soon it became a real one. Right now, the same thing is happening to you<\/strong>. I\u2019m trying to warn you America. It seems stupid now, but the consequences are not.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re being coup\u2019d<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

1 | You\u2019re being couped<\/h3>\n

What is a coup? It\u2019s literally a blow, a strike. Someone hitting your normal processes of government, trying to knock them over. The blow doesn\u2019t have to succeed. It still wounds. In our case it was occupying Parliament without a majority. In yours it\u2019s denying the President-Elect after an election. Whether it fails or not, deep structural damage is done. At the time, however, it just feels dumb.<\/p>\n

Frankly, I expected more epaulets and tanks, but this is all you get. A bunch of dumbasses throwing chili powder. Someone at Four Seasons Total Landscaping, next to a dildo shop. What a fucking stupid century. This is what our coups look like.<\/p>\n

As a recovering coup victim to another, let me tell you this. The first step is simply accepting that you\u2019ve been coup\u2019d. This is hard and your media or Wikipedia may never figure this out (WTF does constitutional crisis mean? Is murder a legal crisis?), but it\u2019s nonetheless true. The US system is weird, but people voted for a change of power. One person is refusing to accept the people\u2019s will. He\u2019s taking power that doesn\u2019t belong to him. That\u2019s a coup.<\/p>\n

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Americans are so caught up with the idea that this can\u2019t be happening to them that they\u2019re missing the very obvious fact that it is.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

What else do you call Donald Trump refusing to leave, consolidating control of the military<\/a>, and spreading lies across the media? That, my friends, is just a coup. You take the power, you take the guns, and you lie about it. American commentators say \u201cwe\u2019re like the third world now\u201d <\/em>as if our very existence is a pejorative<\/a>. Ha ha, you assholes, stop calling us that. You\u2019re no better than us. The third world from the Sun is Earth. You live here too.<\/p>\n

America, in fact, is worse than us. America\u2019s democracy is a lightly modified enslavement system that black people only wrested universal franchise from in 1965. It\u2019s frankly a terrible democracy<\/a>, built on voter suppression<\/a> of 94% of the population, full of racist booby traps<\/a> and prone to absurd randomness. For example, your dumbass founders left enough time to get to Washington by horse. Four months where a loser could hold power, later reduced to two. This is a built-in coup.<\/em><\/p>\n

Think about it. Your system gives the loser all the power and guns for <\/mark>two whole months<\/em><\/mark>. Almost every modern democracy changes power the <\/mark>next day, <\/em><\/mark>to avoid the very situation you\u2019re in.<\/mark><\/p>\n

America constitutionally coups itself every election and it only doesn\u2019t go bad by custom. America is a shitty and immature democracy, saved only by the fact that they didn\u2019t elect equally shitty and immature Presidents. Until now.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s how you would describe the same events happening to us:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

@gathara<\/p><\/div>\n

Coups happen to white people too. As Ashton Kutcher would say:<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve being coup\u2019d<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

2 | You\u2019ve already lost<\/h3>\n

It\u2019s absurd, because the whole thing seems like a clown show. Coups are supposed to be orderly, authoritarian, not this dumb shit. It honestly seems like a grift to bilk supporters out of more money<\/a>. You can just roll it back, right? Right?<\/p>\n

No. No no no. Oh God no.<\/p>\n

The tragic thing which you do not understand \u2014 which you cannot understand<\/em> \u2014 is that you\u2019ve already lost. You cannot know exactly what \u2014 that\u2019s the nature of chaos \u2014 but know this. You will lose more than you can bear<\/em>.<\/p>\n

We lost our children, playing at church. We lost our friends, sitting down to brunch. Muslims lost their dignity and rights. Your Republicans have set forces into play they cannot possibly understand and certainly cannot control. And they don\u2019t even want to. To them, chaos is a ladder.<\/p>\n

This is the point. You have taken an orderly system balancing a whole lot of chaos and fucked with it<\/em>. I don\u2019t know how it\u2019s going to explode, but I can promise you this. It\u2019s going to explode.<\/p>\n

This is precisely why<\/em> we have elections, and why both sides accept the results. To keep the chaos at bay. The whole point is that you have a regular, ritual fight rather than fighting all the time. Once one side breaks ritual then you\u2019re on the way to civil war. Once you break the rules then chaos ensues. What exactly happens? I don\u2019t know. It\u2019s chaos.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

One side has stopped believing in elections. This is very bad. Via Mediaite<\/p><\/div>\n

This year America had fascism on the ballot and nonwhite people mercifully said no<\/a>. The fascists, however, are now saying fuck ballots<\/em>. And enough of the population is like fuck yeah!<\/em><\/p>\n

This is a major problem, and it won\u2019t just go away on a technicality. I\u2019m telling you, as someone that\u2019s been there, you\u2019ve already lost<\/em>. It doesn\u2019t matter if you get Trump out. He and the Republican Party are destroying trust in elections in general. <\/em>This is catastrophic. You have no idea.<\/p>\n

Your media are covering this like a high school dance, but it\u2019s not funny. See this headline in the NYTimes. It\u2019s wildly irresponsible. All your local coverage is.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

No you fools, they\u2019re supporting a coup.<\/p><\/div>\n

Ha ha ha, they lede, who\u2019s going to tell him?<\/em> Bitch, who\u2019s going to tell you? An illegitimate leader has got all the guns and 40% of your population is down to use them. And y\u2019all got jokes.<\/p>\n

What I can tell you \u2014 what anyone who\u2019s experienced this can tell you \u2014 is that it\u2019s going to be bad<\/strong>. I didn\u2019t know that churches and hotels would blow up on Easter Sunday, but I know now. I\u2019m trying to tell you in advance. You\u2019ve opened up a Pandora\u2019s box of instability. All kinds of demons come out.<\/p>\n

I have lived through a coup. It felt like what you\u2019re feeling now. Like watching something stupid and just waiting for it to go away. But it doesn\u2019t go away. You can forget about it, but it doesn\u2019t go away.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a ticking bomb at the heart of your democracy now. Your government, the very idea of governance<\/em> is fatally wounded. Chaos has been planted at its heart. I don\u2019t know what this chaos will grow into, but I can promise you this. It won\u2019t be good.<\/p>\n

Please understand.<\/p>\n

My wife and children were at church that day. Our regular church (where they hadn\u2019t gone) had bombs on either side. I couldn\u2019t understand the news when I first got it and you cannot understand the fear until they were safely home. I do not want you to understand but I fear one day you must. You have fucked with chaos and soon chaos will fuck with you.<\/strong> To quote Yeats,<\/p>\n

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The falcon cannot hear the falconer;<\/em>
\nThings fall apart; the centre cannot hold;<\/em>
\nMere anarchy is loosed upon the world,<\/em>
\nThe blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere<\/em>
\nThe ceremony of innocence is drowned;<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I\u2019ll close with the one thing that kept my own family safe.<\/p>\n

Good luck.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

__________________________________________<\/div>\n
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\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Indi Samarajiva is a writer living in Colombo, Sri Lanka. indi@indi.ca<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original – medium.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

11 Nov 2020 – What else do you call Donald Trump refusing to leave, consolidating control of the military, and spreading lies across the media? That, my friends, is just a coup. You take the power, you take the guns, and you lie about it. American commentators say \u201cwe\u2019re like the third world now\u201d as if our very existence is a pejorative. You\u2019re no better than us. The third world from the Sun is Earth. You live here too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":173416,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[867,2197,393,276,392,249,70],"class_list":["post-173414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anglo-america","tag-anglo-america","tag-biden","tag-coup","tag-democracy","tag-elections","tag-trump","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173414\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}