They say, “It’s good to be the King.”[i] I don’t have royal genes, but I’ve thought about being a dictator or an autocrat, whichever is in fashion when I get around to it.
America hasn’t had a king in a long time, or an autocrat or dictator for that matter. I’m not sure how to become one. Besides, I have a history of people not doing what I tell them to do. If they changed that behavior, I’m sure I would be confused and it would take some getting used to.
But I’m working on it. I study the news every day, I watch TV news, and I read books about autocrats doing away with democracy. I’m getting the hang of it. Every day I see new techniques for taking a democracy and turning it into something else.
Being an autocrat isn’t easy. You tell people what to do and the courts say you can’t do that. But never mind, bugger on. If you tell the folks to do lots of new things each day they won’t be able to keep up with you. That’s what I’ll do. Confound them, hourly, twenty-four-seven. That’s what I’ll do.
Some people will say I’m saving the country; some will say I’m leading a coup. The former are correct and the latter righter. I’m going to coup. This is important stuff, no sense in taking small steps. First, I’ll get rid of the silent “p.” If you don’t say it, why write it. Cou it is.
Here is how you cou.
Make a lot of money. Hang out with those who make more. Promise them that you will make their bankroll larger. Tell them they can help you get rid of all those annoying regulations and taxes, especially the taxes. You get those rich people to give you a lot of money. The more they give the more you promise them. The more they give the more they ask for more. The money machine goes round and round, with more money and more promises.
Then you tell people how bad their lives are and how you can fix them, even if you have to lie a bit. If the economy is good, tell them it’s terrible. If you lost a reelection, tell them it was rigged. Blame all the problems of the world on people who went to college or live near the coast. Tell the folks how horrible the elites have treated them and that their only salvation is to rely on an alternative group of elites, like oligarchs. Tell them that insurrectionists are patriots and that you will forgive them.
If your rich friends really want influence they can bankroll part of the campaign in return for naming one of their former employees the candidate for vice president.
If your friends are really rich they can finance the campaign with half of a trillion dollars. That gets them a promise that they can take over the workings of the government with impunity. They can send young computer engineers in their white tee shirts and blazer uniforms into every corner of the government and decide who works and who gets fired. If they donate enough money to the cause they will let you bust open the national government’s payment system, the checkbook. They might be able to attempt to shut down agencies they don’t like, take over their computer systems, and release national security information on their new systems which can then be hacked by anyone who wants to know our country’s secrets. (DOGE.gov)
Now you can decide who gets paid and who doesn’t receive their social security check. You can install your own server onto the system so that you can compare your government contract payments to that of your competitors. But hey, it’s only money.
If you are really good at this cou stuff, you sic your baseline supporters on any member of Congress who doesn’t vote the way you want them to vote. That way you can fill your government with highly incompetent department and agency heads who will do your bidding. You can even get Congress to approve a non-medical person to head up the government’s public health system, or a friend of our biggest enemy to head up national security, or a sex offender TV commentator to run the military, or … it just goes on and on.
If you really want to do first-class cou’ing, you make the Department of Justice your personal law firm. You make sure that they only prosecute your enemies, and that they stop prosecuting your friends. The worst that could happen is that a bunch of first-class legal beagles will resign in protest, which most people will forget about in a few days or weeks. Don’t remind them of the Midnight Massacre at the DOJ back in 1973,
A really good cou’er will want to nullify the idea of a free press. The networks and cable channels that are a bit too even-handed in their reporting or who have a leftward bias should be made to believe they will be shut down, their licenses revoked, removed from the White House press pool, hoisted on their own petard, so to speak.
One successful universal strategy is to demonize folks who don’t look like you or your base supporters. Putting a lot of the blame for anyone’s ails on the immigrant population works every time. A well-run expulsion plan to rid the nation of refugees and people of color always works. Folks won’t notice that basic work isn’t getting done; houses are being built, food isn’t being harvested, manufacturing has slowed, and more people are homeless.
To be really effective, you go after the schools. That makes you a great autocrat. Mao showed us how to do it: Get the kids to report on teachers who taught other than the Party line, limit the history that can be taught, encourage blind patriotism, and destroy government agencies related to education.
The nice thing about the cou thing is that it doesn’t take long if it is well thought out in advance. If you can put a hundred of your strong supporters on a project to write the game plan for your cou then you can plan out every day’s activities; call it Project 2025.
[i]
Mel Brooks, History of the World, Part 1, 1981
