Many people on my social media are afraid that there will be some kind of civil war or armed revolt to keep him in office. There is no reason to harbor such fears for one simple reason: he’s a narcissist. There is no chance that the Ol’ Pussy Grabber will take that he can’t cheat at. If he can’t cheat to guarantee a win, he won’t do it. That’s why he grabs pussies. It’s cheating. It’s why he’s a rapist. It’s cheating. It’s how he golfs. Think of all the ways he’s cheated in his life. He can’t cheat at civil war or armed rebellion. There’s no guarantee that he’ll win, so he won’t do it.
There are two important points about being a narcissist that we need to appreciate to understand why we’re not facing some kind of armed insurrection:
First, from the prescient post, The Narcissism of Donald J. Trump (22 June 2016), we know that the primary goal of a narcissist is “to maintain their hyper-inflated sense of self and protect their fragile vulnerable selves,” and that “the short-term gain of propping up their bloated egotistical selves and avenging whatever perceived slights no matter how slight to their fragile vulnerable snowflake self is far more important than cultivating relationships or learning something.” We can assume that in addition, they have little time for developing anything remotely resembling a vision of the future or having any kind of skill like leadership.
He may boast that he has mad skills but these are just empty jactations that he spews at us to soothe his insecurity. The truth is that he has no idea what taking the government by force would entail or how to go about doing it. Of his aides who do have some understanding of how to go about it, they won’t tell him. And the ones who will, don’t have a clue, either.
Forget Kushner, you smartie smartie. He’s got enough moxy to see the writing on the wall and is narcissist enough to know when it is better to cut and run. He’s too busy greasing his exit by selling state secrets to be bothered by trying to stay in the hellhole that is the presidency. Each and everyone of the Trumps rues the day that they accidentally won in 2016.
Second, he believes to his soul that victory is right around the corner. Sure, he’s disappointed that his evil super-genius plan of having appointed three justices to the Supreme Court didn’t turn out to be as transactional as he’d hoped it would be. But, he’ll bounce back. You know why?
Narcissists believe that they are so fucking special, that we’ll make exceptions for them. Literally. He literally thinks that before it is all over, we’ll all come to our senses and make an exception to the laws of the country and the Constitution, and give him four more years.
He lives in a fantasy world of his own perfection where he is the ultimate winner and everything goes his way. He doesn’t know how and he doesn’t know why, but he knows that he will be getting four more years because he’s our favorite!
He doesn’t think he has to work for it. He thinks some conquering army will come marching into Washington and handed him the keys to castle. He’s set the stage for it. He’s just waiting for it to happen… by magic.
He’s ginned up the base. They are primed for violence. All they lack is direction. Without it, all we’ll get is sporadic violence committed by the odd Proud Boy or other lunatic MAGAs. Trump thinks it will all happen because he wants it to happen. Don’t believe me? Remember, he is the fellow who lost an aircraft carrier group during his first six months in office because he couldn’t distinguish the chain of command from Twitter.
Armed insurrection takes real leadership, vision, and organization. In case you hadn’t noticed, they are all in short supply at the White House. It will also take real work. When has the Ol’ Pussy Grabber ever worked at anything including grabbing a pussy?
Yes, Trump is making an authoritarian grab for illegitimate power to install himself in office. Yes, the Congressional and some state Repubes are supporting him. Yes, the Proud Boys and MAGAs are making a simpering show of “force” in the streets. But no one is doing the hard work of organizing the “movement” of white grievance into a military force. He has no Ernst Rohm organizing and uniting the militias into anything that could even begin thinking about making a military styled coup to maintain his office.
Don’t waste a lot of time or energy fearing any widespread organized violence or military coup. There is no one capable of or willing to organize such a thing for the Ol’ Pussy Grabber. Do fear and be careful of sporadic random acts of violence by lone wolf type individuals and small groups as we saw at the “march” on Washington the other night. There will be acts of terror done in Trump’s name. They will not overturn the election.
Image Attribution
“Proud Boys at Virginia 2nd Amendment Rally (2020 Jan)” by Anthony Crider is licensed under CC BY 2.0
The Psy of Life 
I think this is very true. The right-wing blogs these days are full of bloodcurdling fantasies of armed insurrection and mass hangings of liberals and whatnot, but they’ve been talking about that kind of stuff since the days of The Turner Diaries. There’s no sign of any actual effort to organize anything, even on a local scale. You can bet the FBI is keeping close tabs on it all and is ready to move in any case where they think it might cross the line into actual violence.
I expect we’ll see isolated violent incidents, perhaps even an assassination or two, but nothing on a scale even approaching what would be needed to have any political effect.
Trump certainly isn’t going to provide leadership. As you point out, he’s a con man and a failed businessman, not a leader. Once he’s out of office he’s going to be in deep shit with the SDNY very quickly and won’t want to start digging any deeper holes for himself.
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Howdy Infidel!
When I realized that Trump doesn’t do anything unless he can cheat to ensure the outcome he wants, I felt much better about the lengths he was willing to go to secure another term. However, it doesn’t mean that he won’t hesitate to get his supporters het up enough to commit the violence we are now witnessing.
It also doesn’t mean that he doesn’t believe that he will “win” the election. That really is the saving grace. He won’t do anything like resign or commit suicide or stage a military coup because he can’t conceive of an exception not being made for him and being returned to office. Not even because he wants to do the job, but because it will help him avoid prosecution and continue grifting money.
Everyone worrying about the political force he’ll be after leaving office are forgetting that there is an aggressive NY Attorney General that is coming for him. She and Cy Vance are going to keep him and his children plenty busy. And, a hands-off President Biden and an attorney general who won’t interfere with case, SDNY and DC just may be prosecuting him, too. Also, he’s got a huge debt to repay. His notoriety will embolden his creditors. He won’t have time to do much more than grift money by indulging his grievances. Even now, he’s raising money off of Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue but isn’t giving them any of the money.
Huzzah!
Jack
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Reblogged this on cabbagesandkings524 and commented:
Calico Jack on the unlikelihood of government overthrow
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The closest Trump comes to anything resembling tactics or strategy at any scale beyond the interpersonal level is bullying intimidation or flattery. Add to that the high probability that the “leaders” of each of the disparate groups which would supply the troops to support and fight in a overthrow attempt (Proud Boyz, etc.) are also narcissists, not retired generals. They are only Big Fish because their ponds are small. Anybody trying to operationally unify and coordinate those groups would quickly be dealing with competing Prima Donas and the ideological differences (where there really are any coherent ideologies beyond lists of grievances) between them. Clearly, Donald Trump is not equipped to heard those cats, and anybody who could be is most likely too smart to try.
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Howdy Bob!
The only violence that is going to come out of this is by those who are predisposed to homicide. Open carry folks are everyday sadists. They enjoy watching people become uncomfortable as they appear with their guns. Give them a cause, an enemy to harass, and those sadistic instincts turn into causing real harm. Most will stop short of causing physical injuries, but there are the murderous who are looking for an excuse to pull the trigger kinda like Kyle Rittenhouse. The good news is that those type seem far and few between.
Militia membership in and of itself is an anti-social behavior. These guys have all self-selected into anti-authority groups. They are not going to be told what to do except by those they trust and maybe not even then. The Germans spent well over a decade developing the Brownshirts into a force that they then abandoned when they took power, by the way. No one has spent any time developing these guys into anything other than bullies that they are.
Huzzah!
Jack
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I suspect that you hit there on the difference between Open Carry folk and Concealed Carry people. The former find that the discomfort of others makes them feel powerful. The latter type are actually afraid that the BAD Guys are everywhere, or have actual more-or-less legitimate concerns for their safety due to profession or known threats.
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Howdy Bob!
My mom was a concealed carry person. She was a crack shot, too. I always thought shooting a burglar was on her bucket list. She was one of those folks who participated in the community watch. She would spend part of her weekend sitting on the roof of the mall watching the parking lot and calling in car theft reports. She went on police ride alongs. She was convinced that bad guys were every where.
We lived in a bad neighborhood that most of my childhood friends’ families eventually moved out of. She never did. So, bad guys were everywhere, at least, where she lived.
We stopped talking politics back when Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton were in office. I don’t know how she felt about Trump or MAGAs. I’m thankful that I don’t and will never know since she passed a couple of years ago. I would be even more disappointed in her to find that she was a MAGA given where she started from in her life.
Huzzah!
Jack
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My parents were both dyed in the wool New Deal Democrats who cast their first vote for FDR and never voted for a Republican for anything to their last days. They would have been hugely troubled by where the country has gotten to.
Even the gang kids in bad neighborhoods are very clear on why they think they need guns, because other people shoot at them. It is clear that Robert Heinlein was wrong when he said that an armed society is a polite society. That can only hold true if everybody has their head screwed on straight and have very clear and narrow Rules Of Engagement.
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Howdy Bob!
I’m reminded of something I believe I heard Konrad Lorenz say on the Johnny Carson show one night. He made the point that evolution is slow, so whatever offensive “weapons” a predator develops, the prey evolves a counter. The problem with guns is that they are too fast. They developed too quickly to allow us to evolve an effective counter. They bullets move too quickly for our current equipment, dodging and running, to be effective. They are too easily used. You don’t have to be as angry or emotionally engaged to shoot someone as you do with other weapons. On the police TV shows, when someone is stabbed to death, especially with multiple stab wounds, the killer must’ve been very angry. Stabbing someone takes real work as does bludgeoning someone, but shooting them barely takes anything at all.
That’s why every where that weak gun regulations and a large number of guns has a high gun violence rate. People get mad and end up shooting each other when if you don’t have easy access to guns, you don’t. An armed society is not a polite society, it is a fearful society, which is what you get when those open carry bozos show up anywhere.
Huzzah!
Jack
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Not only are our built in defenses too slow against guns, on the other side of the interaction, our fight-or-flight reactions are too fast. So many times in shootings, notably by police, but also others, it is one movement or gesture that the shooter responds to. It is not the per-frontal cortex that pulls the trigger (which was already on the trigger), it is that more ancient system that twitches in startle. Then, the higher cognitive system has to explain and justify. And, that is amplified in a fearful population.
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