Someone should show John Hawkins a history textbook:
So, "Truth or Fiction? It's Hard to Tell?" Really? The idea that some sort of super militia backed by the Pentagon could take over the United States? You remember that old Jeff Foxworthy routine, "You might be a redneck if...." Well, you might be a conspiracy kook if you think it's plausible that the United States could be taken over in a coup. This isn't some Third World craphole, it's the United States, the world's oldest surviving democracy. We don't do coups in this country.
Coup d'etat: a sudden and decisive action in politics, esp. one resulting in a change of government illegally or by force.
You mean like when Abraham Lincoln sent the Army to shutdown the Maryland legislature so it couldn't even vote on whether or not to stay in the Union? Sounds like a dictionary definition of a coup d'etat to me.
While the odds are low that we will face a bonafide coup, we face a gradual crossing of the Rubicon. I suspect that like Rome we'll remain a republic on paper, but at heart an empire. And all along, people will get confused by the trappings of the old republic a lot like a cat with a shiny toy or ball of yarn.
It's terrifying seeing such historically constipated ignorance. The Roman Empire was thrown into chaos by coups on more than one occasion, & no historian would describe it as a "third-world craphole" of its time.
It's even worse than that. The Roman Empire itself was not an empire in the sense that it is popularly thought to be. I did not realize this until I did some casual reading about Rome on Wikipedia that it was always a Republic in name, but an empire in practice for a long time. The "emperor" was never a monarch in the sense that most people think, but rather carried the title "princeps civitatis" which means "first among the citizens." The emperor was more like "Der Fuhrer" or "Il Duce" than anything else.
I could easily imagine America going down a similar path.
"We don't do Coups"
Ahem... I can think of a few historical parties that might take exception to that,
Hawaii,
Iran,
Native American Nations,
Mexico,
Mormons,
Chile,
Sicily (almost)
and many others that escape my mind.
Historical ignorance or useful idiocy of people is becoming more alarming by the day.
People really need to stop getting their civics lessons from network television episodes. People talk about "democracy" as if its the arc of the covenant, with the power to vaporize non-believers who dare defile its holy edicts.