AHC: Positive US Military Coup

All you need is for Americans to feel seriously threatened. Many people are more than willing to sacrifice their freedom for a sense of security.

Yes, and how do you sustain that forever without the use of ASBs, how does the United States have a situation resembling pre-Revolution France or Russia?

The Devil's in the details, the United States has never been involved in a war so ravaging that the mainland USA itself was exposed to the risk of famine or widespread devastation.

When you look at periods of authoritarianism/repression in the United States, the overwhelming precedent is that things go back to how they were after the crisis has passed. The USA is not a shaky democracy of the type that you found in 20th century Latin America: it is a venerable, established system in which a rule by military dictatorship is so difficult as to be effectively impossible.
 
Could there be an attempted coup in the us? Sure. It would take some strange circumstances, but yes its possible.

Could such a coup succeed? Now, thats a LOT harder. Maybe, under very very exceptional circumstances.

For this to be positive? !?!?!?!?!? it might, technically, be asb. Maybe. But it sure as heck is close. Im not a us citizen, and i have some strong reservations about some modern politics. But. Come on now.
 

RousseauX

Donor
For All Time had this sort of, with president Jim Jones about to launch a nuclear strike on the USSR, Alexander Haig steps in to remove him...
 
Well, the easiest is to just make it a counter-coup. One group seizes power, gets everyone riled up, and then another group dethrones them, and uses the legitimacy they gain from the act to write the history books.
 
Perhaps some sort of 'A World of Laughter, A World of Tears' type government could come about that is enforced civily, i.e. by law enforcement officers and not the military, until it becomes so blatantly unconstitutional that the military decides to step in. Other than the already suggested nuclear option that's the only way I could see a popular coup occuring.
 
Well, the easiest is to just make it a counter-coup. One group seizes power, gets everyone riled up, and then another group dethrones them, and uses the legitimacy they gain from the act to write the history books.

Thats the only semi plausible thing I see here and even that is bloody difficult. America hasn't really had a radical or batshit insane President that I can think of because the American political system tends to screen them out. You can have unpopular Presidents who make bad or unpopular descisons, but I don't think there are any in the last 100 years or so that you could even come close to being declared even borderline insane.
 
Thats the only semi plausible thing I see here and even that is bloody difficult. America hasn't really had a radical or batshit insane President that I can think of because the American political system tends to screen them out. You can have unpopular Presidents who make bad or unpopular descisons, but I don't think there are any in the last 100 years or so that you could even come close to being declared even borderline insane.

VPs are the key here. If somebody is picked while still an unknown quantity in order to balance a ticket (which does happen - Agnew, Palin and Eagleton are prominent examples), they could turn out to be a nut or dictator if they're suddenly given a position of power. For example, there was a thread recently about "Alfalfa Bill" Murray, an Oklahoma governor who was notoriously authoritarian and later expressed support for fascism, and what would have happened had he become FDR's running mate at a brokered convention and then ascended to the Presidency.
 
Not the most plausible thing, but most scenarios that allow for this are either doomsday stuff, or requiring the better part of a Century to be divergent. (For example I have notes for a timeline where America goes Fascist in the South African sense, and in 1972 when a nightmare President is elected, the Military steps in with alot of popular support, and starts instituting reforms, but that was based on a POD 60 years beforehand and the US was not anything like the IOTL US)

Is this the TL idea you posted in the "List Presidents" thread a few weeks back?
 
There was an episode of Sliders where they were on a world where Hitler never came to power and the holocost never existed and there was a california governor who was running for president who's racial policies (though for some weird reason he was turning them into some sort of "robots" instead of killing them) were similiar to Hitler and it was insinuated that he would/could have become that timeline's Hitler. It's possible had he not been exposed at the end of the episode that he could have been exposed in office, possibly after starting a world war or about to and the military stepped in to deal with him because Congress/the cabinet couldnt fast enough.
 
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