{"id":1362,"date":"2017-02-01T13:51:32","date_gmt":"2017-02-01T13:51:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.andrewjohnson.me.uk\/?p=1362"},"modified":"2017-02-01T13:51:32","modified_gmt":"2017-02-01T13:51:32","slug":"an-editorial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/andyjohnson.uk\/blog\/2017\/02\/01\/an-editorial\/","title":{"rendered":"An Editorial"},"content":{"rendered":"

[A couple of evenings\u00a0ago I read\u00a0Yonatan Zunger’s blog post “Trial Balloon for a Coup? Analyzing the news of the past 24 hours<\/a>“. The next morning\u00a0<\/em>I woke at 2:47 am from a strange dream. The following is fiction.]<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Editorial<\/p>\n

[draft \/ evening\u00a0eds. mtg.]<\/p>\n

A little over a day has now passed since the\u00a0Trump administration’s announcement of the suspension of the US constitution. A day of nervous waiting. \u00a0The announcement by Mr Trump \u2014 surely few\u00a0now refer to him as President<\/em> \u2014 of the uncovering of a “secret liberal plot” to “frustrate the will of the American voter” has been watched and re-watched and dissected. But the uncomfortable truth is that, apart from the brief statement of “watchful neutrality” issued by the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, we know little more than we did yesterday.<\/p>\n

And so we go about our lives. Thinking perhaps of loved ones in the US, who are no doubt thinking of us. We glance\u00a0over our shoulders; skittish.\u00a0Many who lived through the Cuban missile crisis remember this feeling well, and never thought\u00a0they would experience it again.<\/p>\n

For the time being the world’s conversation is stilled. Twitter is suspended, despite the efforts of its engineers in Toronto and London to take control of its servers. Facebook is blocked in North America, and unreliable across the rest of the world. Their main offices and data centres are reported to be guarded by the same men in unmarked uniforms who were\u00a0earlier observed surrounding the headquarters of the US State and Justice departments. Web connections time-out\u00a0and telephone calls fail to connect. Perhaps surprisingly, email and text messages continue to leak out of the country, but the fragmented stories\u00a0that they bring \u2014 street protests met\u00a0by force, panic buying of food, disappearances, and convoys of unmarked vehicles arriving at sports stadiums in major cities \u2014 provide no reassurance. Only anguish.<\/p>\n

Global financial markets remain closed. The skies over the US are clear of aircraft for the first time since September 2001, and tens of thousands of passengers find themselves unexpectedly\u00a0deposited in Canada and Mexico. The governments of those countries remain tight-lipped: perhaps nervous of a repeat of yesterday’s\u00a0lethal events at Niagara Falls. And the irony of US borders that are finally impassible to\u00a0migrants is unlikely to be lost on anyone.<\/p>\n

Since it seems clear that the US federal government has been largely suborned, and the its\u00a0military will not intervene, all now depends on the response of the individual states. With the exception of Hawaii, Virginia and Texas, we do not know how the state governors have reacted, or whether Trump’s unprecedented nationwide federalisation of national guard units has been obeyed. The widely publicised eyewitness statements of the\u00a0Queen Mary 2<\/em> passengers and crew demonstrate\u00a0that the plans of Trump and his backers were well executed, at least in major cities such as New York. On the other hand,\u00a0 the film\u00a0of open battles at Shreveport and Oklahoma City, and the rumoured siege at Portland, suggest that not all is going their way.<\/p>\n

It is clear that the US has experienced a coup d’etat<\/em>. It may even be that, after two hundred and forty years, the great American Experiment has failed. What is certain is that in these dark days the\u00a0world needs cool leadership and more than a little good fortune.<\/p>\n

[ends]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[A couple of evenings\u00a0ago I read\u00a0Yonatan Zunger’s blog post “Trial Balloon for a Coup? Analyzing the news of the past 24 hours“. The next morning\u00a0I woke at 2:47 am from a strange dream. The following is fiction.]   Editorial [draft \/ evening\u00a0eds. mtg.] A little over a day has now passed since the\u00a0Trump administration’s announcement … Continue reading “An Editorial”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/andyjohnson.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/andyjohnson.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/andyjohnson.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andyjohnson.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andyjohnson.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/andyjohnson.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1362\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/andyjohnson.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andyjohnson.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andyjohnson.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}