Coup

The First is One Too Many

I first witnessed a coup attempt in the Philippines on the morning of August 28, 1987, a couple of months after I arrived in Manila to work for the democracy-promoting, San Francisco-based Asia Foundation. On that day, a well-armed group of military dissidents nearly toppled the duly elected government of President Corazon Aquino. As tanks and armed personnel carriers rumbled by our office, my colleagues and I had no idea whose side they were on.

Just weeks earlier, a Filipino co-worker had proudly told me about joining the massive “People Power” demonstration that helped depose the country’s dictator in February of 1986. Now he and his fellow Filipinos began to look broken. How had so much turned so bad so fast for their democracy?

By that night, it became clear that the putsch had failed. My boss constructively saw it as a heart attack for the country, something that might force it to change its political diet and lifestyle, driving it to address the corruption and irresolution that had characterized the Aquino Administration. That never quite happened. The next few years witnessed more such heart attacks, though none proved fatal to the government.

One of Our Own

I’m witnessing another country going through a coup attempt right now, right here at home. Here’s a summary of what Trump is trying, adapted from my earlier post on how he could seek to steal the election:

• He persuades at least three state’s Republican-controlled legislatures to substitute their pro-Trump electoral college slates for the pro-Biden groups of electors selected by their states’ voters.

• When the Democratic governors of such states instead insist on the pro-Biden electors, the contending slates are reviewed by Congress, which cannot reach agreement when it meets on Jan. 6 to consider the matter, due to the Republicans controlling the Senate and the Democrats the House.

• The dispute then is handled solely by the House, which rules in Trump’s favor because its vote is not based on the (Democratic) majority of the members, but the Republican-controlled majority of state delegations.

• In the event that any such election-related matters end up on the current conservative Supreme Court’s docket, it might rule for the Republican state legislatures and Trump in what a leading constitutional scholar has called a “post-election coup.”

A Coup or a Con?

Before I go any further, I’ll return to my prediction from that earlier post: This most likely won’t work for political reasons, because the Republican legislatures, the Supreme Court, key Republican Party leaders or all of these institutions won’t go along out of self-interest. In fact, dual defeats for Trump yesterday in Michigan and Georgia seem to bear that out. They could be crucial if not final nails in the coffin of his attempted coup.

A couple of current New Yorker articles also take that reassuring tack, even as their titles sum up the situation: “Trump’s Clown Coup Crisis” and “The Coup Stage of Donald Trump’s Presidency.” Their authors doubt that he’ll get away with it.

Both authors are ambivalent about whether what Trump is up to is a coup or instead just a con to serve his own disruptive, selfish, base-retaining interests short of seriously seeking to retain power. That con includes persuading his supporters that he really won. He’s succeeded: A Monmouth University poll indicates that 77 percent “of Trump backers say Biden’s win was due to fraud.”

So, a coup or a con? The “Coup Stage” author and expert on autocracies, Masha Gessen, posits:

Con versus coup” might be a false dichotomy. A coup is a power claim made illegitimately, often but not always with the use of force, sometimes illegally but sometimes within the bounds of a constitution. A con is a mushy term: it can be a criminal act or simply an unethical one, perhaps just wily and manipulative. A con, in other words, is an illegitimate act of persuasion. A coup always begins as a con. If the con is successful—if the power claim is persuasive—then a coup has occurred.

Gessen’s ambivalence aside, I vote for coup in characterizing what Trump is trying to do. He’s illegitimately seeking to seize power, however clownish or clumsy his efforts might be.

A Cancer, But Not a Death Sentence

In contrast with the Philippines’ heart attack from decades ago, I’d analogize Trump’s coup attempt to a cancer. He’s maliciously and malignantly eating away at our body politic, regardless of whether this dubious last-ditch effort somehow succeeds. The fact that it will likely fail makes it no less dangerous for our democracy’s long-term health. He or someone like him could be back.

Gessen ends her piece with this: “Trump’s bad con continues to show how easy it would be to stage a good one. Then we would call it a coup.”

But I won’t end this piece there.

Sadly, the Philippines today languishes under a thuggish albeit democratically elected president, Rodrigo Duterte. He’s compiled a horrendous human rights record and, together with Trump, constitutes an autocrats’ mutual admiration club.

But many fine people and groups fight on there to protect their freedoms until the country’s 2022 presidential election possibly brings positive change or until they can otherwise bring about better days. They’ve done it before. They can do it again.

Two examples of such courage are award-winning journalist Maria Ressa, unjustly convicted of libel, and her Rappler news organization. If they and so many other Filipinos can battle on despite deadlier and tougher obstacles than what we face here, then so can we.

Cancers can grow, but they can also be curbed or even cured. We’ve been warned about what plagues us. Determining the severity of the illness is the first step in the struggle to excise it.