The Final Stage: Completing the Coup d'Etat of 2000

Many people on the political fringe (including me) believe that the first stages of the take-over of the United States government occurred in Florida during the 2000 Presidential election. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of George W. Bush by disallowing a recount that would have elected Al Gore had it been allowed to continue. A conservative Supreme Court installed the younger Bush into office in a bureaucratic coup d'etat.

Amidst sagging poll numbers for his first year in office, young Bush was bailed out by the orchestrated 9/11 disaster - an event which 40% of Americans believe the U.S. Government was complicit in some manner. Using 9/11 as the excuse, an event chillingly foreshadowed by the neoconservative think tank Project for a New American Century who wrote that what America needed was a "New Pearl Harbor," the Bush administration has launched wars, clamped down on civil liberties and paved the way for a complete takeover of the U.S. government.

Here is how I think it will play out:

Within the next year there will be another "attack" on US soil and it will be blamed on Iran. It may be a dirty bomb or worse. However it happens, it will cause sufficient damage, death and panic that the Bush administration will suspend the 2008 Presidential elections and put the country into a permanent State of Emergency. Internet access will be severely limited, thereby locking down the one communication channel dissenters on the left and right have come to rely on to organize and communicate. Private security forces such as Blackwater will be brought in to quell the initial outrage of the population.

In the first few days after the State of Emergency declaration there would be a lot of outcry and unrest, but I don't think much would be done. Certainly there would be large protests at first -- perhaps even a large-scale march on Washington. But without the internet, these actions would be hard to coordinate. There will likely be a few high profile shootings of innocent demonstrators, just to keep those on the political fence in their homes. Slowly, over time, as the shock wore off, most people would get back to the daily grind of their lives. Americans would go back to work. Perhaps the most vocal critics would be quietly removed from society and locked in FEMA concentration camps.

On the other hand, perhaps 40% of the population would welcome the psychological safety of a military state. Certainly Big Business wouldn't mind one bit. Corporations are essentially fascist structures and would prosper in the new authoritarian United States. If the threat of more terrorist attacks were used to keep people in a constant state of fear, the State of Emergency could continue indefinitely. Dissenters would be labeled unpatriotic and weeded out as threats to the peaceful order.

After only a few years of this, people would begin to forget that democracy ever existed in the first place, particularly if access to the filtered mainstream media and popular consumer products continued unabated. Likely the illusion of democracy would be maintained via rigged electronic voting. A kinder, gentler fascism will have taken hold in the United States with the Texas-Military-Oil Crime Syndicate as the permanent heads of state.