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FINE I'll explain the Business Plot to you guys.
In 1933 or thereabouts, a bunch of wealthy businessmen who were afraid the Democratic Party was going to introduce socialist policies that would hurt their bottom line, decided to stage a coup.
In 1933 or thereabouts, a bunch of wealthy businessmen who were afraid the Democratic Party was going to introduce socialist policies that would hurt their bottom line, decided to stage a coup.
The idea was to assemble an army of aggrieved veterans to surround the White House in a show of force that would appear to be populist but would actually be underwritten by rich and influential people, including Prescott Bush, father of George HW Bush and grandfather of W.
These Republicans hoped to get Smedley Butler, a man who was truly a badass (possibly to compensate for being named "Smedley") to lead this unofficial army. Butler had supported groups like that in the past when advocating for better treatment of veterans from President Hoover.
The idea was that FDR would be allowed to remain in office as a figurehead, but that he would appoint someone like Butler to be his "co-President," to take on some of the duties of the Presidency because FDR was so old and sickly.
From there, the GOP would be able to pull the strings behind the scenes while leaving the popular liberal in office, so that on paper nobody was overthrown.
Butler's political views had shifted a lot over the years, however. Author of "War is a Racket," Butler now felt that the wars he fought were often just him being the hired goons of capitalism, and he didn't wanna play along.
He reported it and testified to Congress.
He reported it and testified to Congress.
His claims were largely dismissed as being overblown, investigations didn't go too far, and the people involved were treated unseriously, since there was "no way they could pull it off," regardless of their intention.
But what if Congress had taken the rot in the Republican party seriously? What if they'd investigated hard, and proven that Prescott Bush was a disgrace trying to overthrow democracy?
Would his son have still become President?
Would his grandson?
Would his son have still become President?
Would his grandson?
If the GOP had been revealed as a bunch of wannabe fascists back then, would a bunch of my high school classmates have been sent to fight in Iraq in Afghanistan 80 years later?
This is, of course, the repeated musical motif of American history. The conservatives trying to overthrow democracy are forgiven, forgotten, rehabilitated, and years later are allowed to come back, grip hold of the levers of power for a while, and do exactly the same shit again.
Iraq, Afghanistan, 9/11 - it's not just the echoes of the Business Plot that popped up in those years. Many older savvy individuals pointed out rightly that a lot of Bush's inner circle were just Nixon's cronies coming back home.
The people who pop up on Fox News as "experts" today are often people who were indicted for crimes against the American people ten, twenty years ago, outside the edges of a lot of people's capacity for remembrance.
And if George HW Bush can run for President without people remembering his father was a traitor, if W can appoint Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney without anyone remembering who THEY worked for, of course Trump can re-enact the Business Plot from 90 years ago.
Someone, I forget who, probably a wannabe strongman conservative, said "forgive your enemies but remember their names," and a lot of people in this country do the former and forget the latter.
People hailed the addition of Bill Barr as Attorney General as Trump finally taking the job seriously, appointing a guy who "believed in institutions."
Left-leaning folks over the age of 40 could easily remember the last time they hated Bill Barr.
Left-leaning folks over the age of 40 could easily remember the last time they hated Bill Barr.
Plenty of people approaching 30 in this country don't really remember why those of us over the age of 30 don't like Mitt Romney, don't remember why we're so furious at John McCain for unleashing Sarah Palin and all the stupidity that followed.
People who have been voting in this country for 10 years don't remember the anti-tax yokels wearing tricorner hats covered in dangling tea bags.
25-year-olds with jobs and cars and houses don't remember that the delay in transition between the Clinton and Bush administrations was cited as a key reason the 9/11 attacks were able to happen.
And you've seen it this week, as pundits aplenty popped up to say "Who could have forseen such a thing could happen in this country," while millions of people, women and minorities especially, were able to raise their hands and say "Um, us? And you told us we were overreacting?"
One of the things privilege does in this country is, apparently, it gives you the memory and attention span of a goldfish. It allows you to forget all of that horror and tell your children a sanitized version of history they take to heart as the truth.
And it allows you to get surprised, over and over again, by the exact same shit perpetrated by the exact same people, and you keep consoling yourself with the idea that you couldn't possibly have known it was going to happen.
The trick, of course, is that Conservatism walks on two legs and is therefore allowed to continue. The Tea Party moved forward ten years ago, advancing a bunch of whackjob candidates that the earlier, "sensible" conservatives of the HW Bush era decried as outliers.
Now, with Trump's people shitting the bed on cable news every day, the Tea Party conservatives, like former Speaker of the House John Boehner, are decrying their activities as "un-American." Thus lining themselves up for nice gigs in a later administration as serious statesmen.
People are only going to remember as far back as the last couple of things Mitt Romney said. They *certainly* don't remember that ObamaCare was largely based on shit Romney came up with himself as a conservative alternative to M4A, and that he then acted like it was criminal.
Give it a few more years and people are going to remember only that Mitch McConnell called for a peaceful transition of power and that his wife resigned in anger from the Trump admin, not that he enabled it for years and that she only resigned with a week to go.
Anyway, as a great man (Jim Carrey) once said, "Somebody stop me!"
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