> We have several recent real-world examples of that not working out for the military.

Only when the military is not serious since they are not fighting for their own lands and the civilians are backed by another country. When the military is fighting civilians in its own homeland the civilians stand no chance unless they get massive help from foreign powers.

> Besides, I've always hated this argument, because why fight the military when they can just target the politicians directly.

Even if you do that its still the military that gets to decide the next leader, killing their leader does not lead to democracy. Nazism didn't end with Hitlers death, it ended with the country being taken over. Oppressive Communisms didn't end with Stalins death etc. There are always enough likeminded people that you can't end a horrible reign just by killing the leader.

You cut off the supplies, and wait 2 weeks. Modern civilization collapses, gangs take over, people ask the army on their knees to return.

Let's see... military drones; satellite surveillance; comms surveillance; giant network of flock cameras vacuuming up facial, descriptive vehicular, and license plate movement data; small-scale tactical nuclear weapons; a huge fleet of hypersonic aircraft and extremely maneuverable helicopters; decades of urban combat experience; militarized law enforcement; the largest military in the world by orders of magnitude fighting on its own turf; complete control of utilities infrastructure, centralized resource creation for food, fuel and weapons; large stockpiles of modern chemical weapons that they wouldn't hesitate to use for a second if it was an existential threat... the world is a very very different place than it was in the 40s, and the modern US military is very very very very very different than any military was back then. Even if you can argue that our power has grown linearly with more access to guns or whatever, the US military's power has grown at a much much faster rate.

He already sent active duty marines to Los Angeles, and it was ruled illegal by a judge (after the fact) but it doesn't matter because no one with any real power cares what laws or judges say: https://time.com/7313929/trump-national-guard-la-los-angeles...

What do you mean? That is exactly what they are trained for, you just do the same thing but even more aggressively. US cops are already pretty aggressive but you can dial that up a lot, they are already trained for this.

Tell the cops that they can shoot anyone looking aggressive and not get questioned and they will happily go out and quell any resistance, don't you think? Tell them they can put people in prison without lawyers getting in their way, that they can torture people to speak without anyone stopping them etc.

US police is very close to a fascist police already so very little has to change. Remember that the US police culture roots came from policing slaves.

Hard to say. "About six-in-ten registered voters who say they have served in the U.S. military or military reserves (61%) support former President Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election, while 37% back Vice President Kamala Harris, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in early September." from https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/09/30/military-...

The military is not composed of constitutional lawyers and the danger is that they might persuade themselves that the best way to protect the country is to support whoever has at least a façade of legitimacy, particularly if it aligns with their political preferences.

Ask your conservative friends what they think of Mark Milley and his successor.

That’s what makes this scarier. If a political party can drum up this much social unrest when the world was largely prospering, then that shows just how much people have forgotten about the real hardships our parents and grandparents suffered, and how quickly we could end up back there through greed.

This. If you read Reddit, a whole lot of comments go from Nazi parallels (which is partly justified, but as another comment points out there are also a lot of parallels with Orban's Hungary, Erdogan's Turkey, Putin's Russia, etc.) to 'Luigi'.

There are so many non-violent approaches that would be effective. First, there is the 3.5% rule [1]. Second, if 10%-20% of the general population would go on a general strike, pretty much all of society would come to a standstill and it would send a heck of a powerful message. One of the issues though in the US is healthcare tied to employment, combined with fire at will. It reduces preparedness of people to protest until it's possibly too late. So, it's simultaneously important to build/strengthen unions, etc.

Aside from that, and this is true for Europe as well, we need to heal as a society. People have divided themselves in stupid 'teams', fueled by politicians, foreign interference, algorithms, etc. Not woke enough? You are cancelled. Left-wing? You are cancelled (employer contacted and fired). We have to do a little less social media and go outside and talk to other people. Even if I disagree with people politically, there often a lot of common ground (we all want food, health, to be safe, etc.), we all like to talk about some sports match, and whatnot. We don't have to agree with each other, but we can at least try to understand and care for each other. Break the stupid tribe wars.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3.5%25_rule

If the oligarchs saw Trump unable to break a general strike and it was destroying the economy, maybe they would let an opposition take hold.

Thanks for the downvotes

Have you seen social media's reaction to that murderer Mangione?

Surely the Venn diagram needs not be a circle for you to draw parallels, nor does the existence of a more direct comparison make other comparisons moot.

Surely the fact that the current ruling party has an influential faction who explicitly reference Nazi Germany as an ideal worth striving for is relevant to setting the current moment in historical context. Yes we're not LITERALLY Nazi Germany for a variety of reasons but that doesn't mean it doesn't paint a picture of what they want to do, regardless of how successful they will be or what that will look like in practice.

Personally I think the most apt historical comparison is the Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople, but since we don't LITERALLY live in the Middle Ages and have ethnic divisions between Greeks and Latins one might say that's not a relevant comparison either.

> I think the US has been spiraling toward authoritarianism since 9/11 personally. This did not start yesterday or with the most recent election, nor is it exclusively the result of the right or the Republican Party. A lot of people to the left have also abandoned liberalism and ideas like free speech. There’s been a broad based shift away from liberalism and individualism and toward collectivism, which always leads toward totalitarianism.

On small example: The president openly ordering targeted killings started under Bush and was broadened to include US citizens under Obama.

Of course the dangerous concentration of power in the executive branch has been something the US has contended with on and off over the years. If you read The Federalist Papers, it seems clear to me that the architects of our government did not envision congress steadily abrogating its power; the expectation was rather that it would be jealously guarded by those it was granted to.

> Why did everyone across the entire political spectrum abandon individualism in the 20-teens?”

You mean in the aftermath of the great recession where most people were struggling economically and saw that the rules are only for little people? The 20-teens were the time of Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party - I don't see how it can be

I think individualism increased, after the teens, in a "don't trust the experts, do your own 'research'" way. Regardless of one's politics, its hard not to be a conspiracy theorist when you see a conspiracy play out in front of your eyes, at your expense. You could draw a straight line between the GFC and the growth of the "burn it all down" contingents on the left and right - indeed, a lot of "Bernie bros" became Trumpers whole remaining true to that ethos.

I would recommend 'Adapt! On a New Political Imperative' by Barbara Stiegler. The movement away from classical liberalism has been going on for far longer and was by design. It is very important to explicitly separate traditional or classical liberalism from neoliberalism when discussing these things. And just to be pedantic the term liberal should also absolutely be avoided when discussing anything involve impacts from the "new left" movement.

>Why did everyone across the entire political spectrum abandon individualism in the 20-teens

IMO they didn't - at least not explicitly. Individualism has been somewhat illusionary since the progressive era it is just finally coming home to roost. What happened is that the internet finally out ran the ability of the traditional media consensus methods at the national level as the internet generation aged in. So we are sort of in unknown territory where it is not clear any "expert" can play the designated role to drive the consensus required in the neoliberal system.

Where to go from there is an open question but her thesis is that the neoliberal system needs to be adapted in someway. Anyway that is largely the picture of the problem she paints. I'm not doing it justice but it is worth a read to at least place a lot of the problems people are observing in a mental and historical framework.

I think a good step is moving towards federating into smaller communities. The best of those ideas will get adopted by other communities. Basically the fediverse model applied to society. People already have this feeling intuitively and it is playing out with the push back against globalization.

Individualism started dying when it became clear the problems we face are now too large for any one individual to overcome. Massive institutions crush the individual. You can’t chase individualist dreams as easily as you once could. It requires a lot of money and luck, and luck has run out.

Social media also made it easier for you to be a group thinker and reap the benefits of that. Being an individual gives you no clout.

I would also remind the short of memory that during covid, the states with the most draconian restrictions were mostly left-leaning, and many were loathe to give up that control.

Control of the people comes from all sides. The end result is the same, but the methods are different, intended to make people happy to be controlled.

As much as I lament the quality of leadership at the moment (and not just in the US) I am not sure that we can equate Afghanistan with Germany.

It is one thing to denazify a "modern western country" that shares most of your values, culture and religion, and that has had institutions for some time. It is another thing altogether to pull off the deal in a country that has never had a working civil society, civil institions, education, etc. Especially if you do not share it's culture or religion, and there is a part of the country that is still actively engaged in a military campaign to obstruct you.

Not saying that it couldn't be done, or that mistakes weren't made. Just that you can't compare the two like that.

> Unfortunately, those people appear to all be dead. Now we have whatever Afghanistan and Iraq was meant to be.

Both Japan and Germany had some semblance of democratic institutions, but they were taken over by authoritarians, often using violence:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incidents_in_interwar_Japan

Iraq had some history, pre-Sadam, and that seems to be returning:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Iraqi_parliamentary_elect...

Afghanistan has had little of it in the last few decades (since at least the Soviets rolled in), and much less in the more rural regions.

There's a difference between rebuilding institutions and creating (perhaps from scratch) a civil society.

Afg/Iraq became places to funnel money to friends in security contracting.

> East Germany definitly never was. And even West Germany was considerably behind the UK in per capita GDP in US$ after WW2.[1]

Germany was behind the UK even before WW2. Just the UK outproduced Germany in (e.g.) aircraft production, and that was even before the US got involved.

Adam Tooze wrote an entire book on the subject:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wages_of_Destruction

> they just wasted it on things like trying to maintain the Empire.

they just wasted it on things like nationalizing the coal, gas, electricity, rail, air transport and steel industries.

Apart from the Suez crisis and the Rhodesian embargo was there any serious British attempt to maintain the empire after the second World War?

I suppose it's easier to achieve "growth" in percentage terms when you're starting from a low baseline (because your entire country got flattened by invading armies.)

It turns out that the British were one of the allies and about 380,000 of them died fighting the Nazis, so they have a good claim to having defeated Germany, with help from their friends.

From June 4, 1940 to June 22, 1941 Britain faced Hitler alone.

That's not even remotely what happened