Was it an "attempted coup" ??

[bucolic_frolic]

44. In my opinion it was a decades long planned shakedown

by radical laissez-faire capitalists, foreign and domestic, small and large, and probably more than a few hiding in government bureaucracies everywhere, including ours. John Birch thinkers. All they worry about is their pensions and portfolios.

Look at the moving pieces and the component parts. Ask, who got what? Deregulation? Check. The right to pollute is worth billions to owners of big capital. Cheap or free federal lands same thing. Squeeze workers? Check. Reduced benefits and bargaining power, higher prices at the store, borrow all you want and work harder to pay for it. Lax enforcement? Check. Tax breaks and cuts? Check. IRS kneecapped? Check. You're more likely to be audited as an hourly worker making $20k than as a $784k business owner. Cow civil rights? Check. Don't want freedom and independent thinking for the masses. Masses need dependence so they can be controlled and exploited.

It was all a push for growth. The equivalent of speeding up the assembly line. Henry Ford had nothing on these guys.

Coup? The coup was a friendly coup, because this is Friendly Fascism, the title of a not-much-read 1980 book by political scientist Bertram Gross. The coup is a scrim, a veneer, to confuse and cover for the plain sight bandits. Because whereever you look, somebody got something. Capital is free, oligarchs own everything, and the people toil. That's the legacy of the coup era.

I might add the idea of the USSR and USA swapping roles, which as I recall was first floated in a foreign policy publication about the time of Nixon's Detente, early 1970s. And America, which is to say democracy, has enemies in the world. We defeated Royal and fascist powers in two world wars. During the Florida recount, December 2000, there was an audio clip played on a news service from some important European legislative member - something to the effect of 'so much for your vaunted American democracy!' So yes, democracy is not popular amongst the control freak crowd.