Originally this post looked very different; but I failed doing what I wanted as I was unable to figure out what Trump supporters would do if they "couped" the government. The plan was to write an alternate history "look back" at events, written sometime in the early 2040s.
In the timeline where Trump supporters succeeded with their planned coup, the new government would eventually turn on the Trumpists, about 12-16 years in, and return to a more democratic form. The civic identity of America is too strongly associated with democracy to be so easily overturned; and eventually, they would run out of groups to persecute at home, and the standard fears over M.A.D. would restrain foreign adventures. This is why it would take 12-16 years; look at the Soviet Union. It turned Communist in 1917, and fell apart in 1991. Why? In large part because everyone sitting in the legislature, all members of the Communist Party, looked at one another and effectively said "I'm not really a communist, I just ran for office cause I wanted to run for office." The reason this will take less than 70 years in the US is due to the civic identity of the United States.
The timeline where the coup is suppressed such that any protests were small looks an awful lot like returning to politics in 2014 and continuing on the path that the US had been on at that point. The TLDR is that the next president who desires to get rid of precedent, will do so in a much more slick and 'secret' way.
The final timeline is what I expect to happen this coming weekend and in the years after. Starting with the latter, we'll see more people like Trump. The Republican Party itself may risk tearing itself apart. Trump, and his "truth over fact" agenda (with "truth" being in the 'scary' sense of the word) appeals to a great deal of people, and a candidate pushing that who has a more broad appeal among right-wingers could well split the GOP in half. Imagine a Trump with the ideology of Ted Cruz, but without Trump or Cruz's toxic personalities. Beyond this I also can see the US Democrats splitting as well, between folk like Bernie and AOC, and moderates; the latter are already without much power in the party. By 2040 what the US faces is a major change in the party system. "Revolutions" within the parties, similar to the ones we saw within the Democrats and Republicans 100 years ago (when they switched places on the left and right wing)
Importantly however, would be the increased involvement of "the mob". This was to be the main thrust of the post, but, I've decided to spin it off into its own post to be made tomorrow or Thursday, in which I'll also address what I expect to happen next weekend.
The post preview is below:
I may be overly optimistic but I think Option 2 is by far the most likely. There will be so much security both in DC and the state capitals (especially the Democratic held ones) that I don't see anything more than sporadic violence being likely.
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