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this post was submitted on 18 Nov 2024
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They don't necessarily need to be competent. They only need to be loyally fascist and willing to deliver criminal orders. Firepower "trumps" competency in a whole lot of short-term scenarios. Beyond that, they only need a sufficient number of servicepeople to execute those orders. Even if most servicepeople refuse to obey, the US military is such a massive organization that there will be more than enough who do.
A best case scenario is one where one part of the US military stands up with force against the other part, and the fascists lose, followed by a military coup.
Incompetence means they won't be able to get anything done at all. Which leads to the rise of SS or other loyalist police groups (in the case of Putin: KGB/FSB).
You're ignoring a huge part of what makes fascism actually work. The ability for orders to be carried out at all.
Secondly, its not military powers that allowed SS to help Hitler or KGB/FSB to help Putin. Its police powers that let them do that. And Donald Trump has royally fucked his reputation with the FBI, the closest thing to a proper police agency.
I'd keep an eye to see if Trump can successfully take over FBI, because that's where the worst-case scenario lies. But FBI lost their headquarters back in 2016 because Trump fucked them over, and Trump still hates them because of Jack Smith's most recent investigation. So I'm betting on incompetence here.
Force means jack shit. Police powers are the powers to launch investigators and build intelligence. Knowing who and how and why to arrest people is the power of the Police. And a corrupt police is the most dangerous.
Military? They can shoot but they don't know what to do after that. There are Military Police units, but they're too small for any real action. Its FBI and other police agencies that have the real power that you're talking about.
It's not an on/off switch. Of course the military will be less efficient and more error-prone; that doesn't mean they wouldn't be able to do anything.
Need to put down a big protest in St Louis? Send in troops with live rounds, none of that less lethal bullshit. Maybe it takes a couple days longer to get them there, maybe there aren't quite as many boots on the ground as you wanted, maybe they get deployed in kind of dumb ways.
They're still far better armed, far more cohesive, and far more replenishable than the protesters they seek to trample. The military would still win, they don't have to be perfect, they just have to be better enough than their opponent.
Now imagine if the opponent isn't "protesters," but "these brown people we've conditioned you to feel animosity towards, and they're iLlEgAlS!" Those brown people aren't even loosely organized into a protest, and as long as the troops aren't popping "my" people (yet), the public pushback is going to be weak as fuck.
This is so fucking stupid I'm wondering if you're beginning to troll me.
So what happens to St. Louis police in this scenario? You're saying that the Police will give up their authority to the Federal level? That's severely anti-Republican on all fronts.
There's political forces at play here that you're seemingly completely ignorant about. Do you think the local chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police would allow military action to take place in their jurisdiction? Do you think that soldiers would be treated more (or less) specially than the local police? Do you not see how this causes distrust in the two groups?
Do you think Trump is effective at recruiting and merging organizations so that such political actions proceed smoothly? (IE: Do you think St. Louis Police would deputize the US Military, or vice versa, to share authority in a way that both sides agree upon?)
And that ignores the long-standing US Military tradition of staying the fuck out of local issues. The military command knows they're a bunch of killers. They don't want to deploy locally.
What are they going to do to stop it?
Refuse to hand over their jurisdiction to the military. Declare the military to be an unlawful invasion and a break of 10th Amendment rights. Etc. etc.
At that point, you're turning the local police over to the Protester's side. And the Police hold strong sway over the local judges and politicians. FOP in particular is powerful lobbying group because they hold the blessings of the Police.
What is Trump going to do? Order the military to fire upon the Police? Lulz. That's not how any of this works, and its not how coups work either. Over control of fucking St. Louis? Its not even worth the hassle.
"Refuse." "Declare." "Unconstitutional."
Yeah, those "saying things" tactics have worked so well to ensure that criminal acts are swiftly and appropriately addressed in the face of the new paradigm of "do whatever I want and dare anyone to stop me."