Trump Hysteria - Is There a Point to It?

When you see the extent of the anti-Trump hysteria in the United States you have to ask yourself – what is the point? Trump won the election fair and square and there isn’t going to be another presidential election for another four years so surely the only rational thing for the Trump-haters to do is to wait four years and then try to come up with a better candidate than Hillary Clinton.

But they’re not doing that. The Trump-haters, and especially the ones in the media and academia, are behaving as if they really can get the election result overturned.

Of course this could just be evidence of the basic irrationality of the Trump-haters, or their inability to comprehend the fact that so many ordinary Americans hate them.

Or could it be something more? Is the US media preparing the ground for a coup?

A year ago I would have dismissed talk of a coup as the rantings of the Tin-Foil Hat Brigade. Coups were something the United States organised in other countries, but the idea of a coup against the US government itself seemed unthinkable, paranoid and delusional. Now I’m not quite so sure.

The fact is that the behaviour of the American media does look like the kind of destabilisation that usually precedes US-organised coups in other countries. More worrying is that it isn’t just the media. The judiciary also seems intent on destabilising the Administration.

Could such a coup succeed? Trump has widespread public support but that would count for nothing. What matters is power. And in the centres of power Trump has virtually no support at all. The media is united against him. The judiciary is against him. He cannot rely on the support of Republicans in Congress – they’d be delighted to see him replaced by Mike Pence. The bureaucracy is against him. The intelligence agencies are against him. The police hierarchies are against him. The only thing in doubt is the attitude of the military. Given the politicisation and corruption of the US military Trump would be unwise to rely on help from that quarter. He may have quite a bit of support among enlisted personnel but the senior officers are unlikely to back him.

The first step in staging a successful coup is to create the impression that the government you’re trying to overthrow has no legitimacy. Overthrowing an illegitimate government is not only permissible – it’s virtuous. It’s striking a blow for freedom. The process of painting the Trump Administration as an illegal and illegitimate government is already well advanced.

The second step is to start floating the suggestion that perhaps the government really should be overthrown. Some of the more hysterical anti-Trump voices in the media have already floated this suggestion, albeit in an indirect sort of way.

I’ve always been hyper-suspicious of conspiracy theories so it’s important to note that there is an alternative explanation for all this. It may be simply an attempt to intimidate Trump. The objective may not be to remove Trump but to persuade him to become a good little establishment Republican who can be relied on to follow orders. Or the objective may be to isolate him by frightening any potential supporters he may have in Congress or in the bureaucracy, or frightening members of his Administration into abandoning him. Either of these possibilities would effectively reduce the Trump Administration to powerlessness, and for the globalists that might be more desirable than facing the risks of an actual coup. 

The one thing we can be certain of is that Trump’s enemies have no intention of allowing him to put into practice any of the policies which won him the election.