Thinking the unthinkable about fighting the good fight against autocracy. By Hal M. Brown

Could it come to the military saving our democracy?

I wrote a comment in Sabrina Haake’s “Haake Take” Substack today and then decided to expand on it in my own Substack. Sabrina Haake is a 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1^st and 14^th Amendment defense. Her columns are published in Alternet, Chicago Tribune, MSN, Out South Florida, Raw Story, Salon, Smart News and Windy City Times. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free. Her law practice is in Chicago. This is what she wrote:

Sabrina writes:

For the first time in my life, I am considering leaving the US permanently, not because I dread the door-knock in the middle of the night, but because I can no longer relate to a country that would trash its values and abandon its allies. Relinquishing my American citizenship is not a light consideration- I’ve spent my life in the law, adjacent to politics; I even ran for Congress not long ago. But wow, as the saying goes, change happens slowly, then all at once. This is not the same country it was when I ran for office in 2020, and, judging my own wariness in reading the news, I am not the same person either.

Even though she has a much higher profile as an anti-Trumper than I do it would still take a long time for her to get that knock on the door, though it could come. She’s just not famous enough for her to be among the very first.

She’s assuming that there would even be the courtesy of a knock on the door.

The badge and gun carrying Trump/Patel gestapo would simply break down the door. The arrests of high profile journalists would be televised. They’d be cuffed and perp-walked so the national TV audience could see what happens to those who dare to cross the Trumpist regime.

Who would be among the first few journalists to get the gestapo treatment? It could be the most recent person to offend Trump, or it could be Maggie Haberman or Peter Baker who have bugged Trump for a long time.

Some time ago I made this illustration to depict how Maggie Haberman, the White House New York Times correspondent, lives rent free in Trump’s brain:

Since most people don’t know what they look like Trump may want a more well known critic to be arrested. Would he dare target Rachel Maddow?

Is it out of the realm of possiblity that he’d order Joe Biden arrested? After all, he thinks that Biden was behind his own arrest and him having the humiliation of, for the first time in his life, having to spend time somewhere he did not want to be. It was a hot courtroom where he was sketched looking like this:

If it gets as bad as it did in Nazi Germany, and I believed they could come for me, it has even crossed my mind that it might be preferable to go out fighting back knowing I’d be killed in the process. I'm 81 and feel I’ve lived a good life. I would know that if I was targeted to be dragged away to a horrible fate, I’d at least know I had an impact in fighting back in a way that would end my life.

Back to Sabrina’s article:

I first put this simple comment there when it was published yesterday in RawStory+:

Many of us tried to confront the evil before it got this bad, but were accused of being hyperbolic. We suffered from a fake psychiatric disorder, Trump Derangement Syndrome. Now, while Trumpism is consuming the country like aggressive cancer, we - dare I call us the true patriots - are still doing our damn best to confront it.

We feel an array of negative emotions from frustration to desperation. There is a legitimate psychiatric disorder that produces severe symptoms. It is called an adjustment disorder. It can result in debilitating anxiety and/or depression.

Some people cling to small signs of hope, a victory in court here or an utterly stupid failure of DOGE there. This is human nature. It is just too hard for some people to accept that the country has gone full speed down the road of a Trump version of Nazism.

We have to realize that we are fighting with words and in some cases we are putting our bodies out there by going to protests and town meetings. Our lawyers are filing suits to try to challenge the takeover and push the issue to the Supreme Court. It will eventually have to decide whether they want to throw out the Constitution and turn us into a monarchy or dictatorship.

I see our only hope being for the military to decide to intervene to save our democracy. This could come if Trump declared a national emergency and martial law to put down protests using violence if protesters refused orders to disperse. It should not be open to debate that Amercians have the right to peacefully protest, that pesky First Amendment, but it would be easy to rationalize a lethal attack against civilians. We could easily have another Kent State Massacre.

I see two ways the military could save us. One I call effecting a soft coup. This would involve barring Hegseth and whoever he’s elevated to power from entering the Pentagon. The patriotic generals would announce that they would no longer obey illegal and unconstitutional orders. The other alternative would be a hard coup. It would begin with tanks around the White House and soldiers removing its occupants. A general would take over as acting president. It would be announced that free elections would be held once the country was stabilized. By then I want to believe the majority of voters would decide they wanted the country to be a democracy and not a dictatorship.

If the worst happened and they voted Trump or one of his minions back in, that would be when Ann and I would seriously look at ways we could move our family out of the country. We live in the Portland, Oregon suburbs. Trump hates Portland. We could be the second Battle of Fort Sumter that marks the start of the Second American Civil War.

I want to thank all of my readers and my Substack subscribers. You can read all of my Substack posts here.

If you subscribe you will recieve an email every time I post. Respectful comments are always welcome even if you disagree with me. I generally reply to comments.

I post on BlueSky though the day, You can read my posts here.