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An American History of Coups: How Military and Police Led Jan 6th Violence
When the events of January 6th unfolded, a hot-take was posted by a Defense One executive editor immediately declaring no coup because:
Coups don’t come without any military, police, secret police, or armed forces of any kind on their side.
As someone who has studied coups for decades, I nearly spit my tea. It seemed so brazenly premature in analysis, not to mention so very easily and likely to be proven wrong, I couldn’t believe my eyes.
Read this definition of a coup from a 2011 article in the Journal of Peace Research.
…illegal and overt attempt by the military or other elites within the state apparatus to unseat the sitting executive…
Elites unseat a sitting executive. It’s “or” military. In fact, these authors specifically cite examples of coups that lacked any military, police, secret police or armed forces of any kind (e.g. 1962 Senegal, Prime Minister Mamadou Dia).
…initial instigation of a coup attempt frequently involves civilian members of the government alone…
To be fair, after the frequent coup attempt from civilian members of government there is a later stage of military involvement. But that’s kind of obvious in any later stage of taking power, and shouldn’t obscure the important point that many times the coup comes first without arms.
Let’s now back up to Defense One posting a very different opinion piece in August 2020
Should you remain silent, you will be complicit in a coup d’état. You were rightly criticized for your prior active complicity in the president’s use of force against peaceful protesters in Lafayette Square. Your passive complicity in an extralegal seizure of political power would be far worse.
Perhaps Defense One’s editor was taking the important step of not remaining silent, a good one, yet the wrong one by trying to falsely predict a lack of police or military involvement.
If not “any military, police, secret police or armed forces of any kind” then who exactly did they predict would be charged instead? He did not say, which itself is kind of strange.
In other words, would there even have been an attempt at coup this time around (which I have argued actually started in 2016, based on a long history of domestic coups in America) if it had not directly involved police and military ranks? Was it not simply a repeat of history?
Fast forward to today and the news has become, as one might have reasonably expected, about the increasing numbers of domestic military and police caught trying to end American democracy.
At least 52 active or retired military, law enforcement, or government service employees are among the over 400 suspects arrested for their alleged actions at the Capitol, according to an ABC News investigation based on military records, court records, interviews, and publicly available news reports. The arrests include over half a dozen ex-police officers and multiple former elected officials — and represent some of the most significant and violent charges brought in connection with the deadly insurrection.
And perhaps the more crucial analysis is that American police and military experience is specifically cited as the “natural path into the world of [anti-American] militias”:
According to a report from Georgetown’s Project on Extremism, military individuals who participated in the attack on the Capitol were about four times more likely to be involved in domestic extremist organizations, such as the Proud Boys or Oath Keepers, which are now being probed by the Justice Department over their alleged role in helping plan and carry out the assault on the Capitol. The Georgetown group identified 43 alleged Capitol rioters as having military backgrounds, and said that more than a third of them were affiliated with violent extremist organizations. Some of those arrested said that their past experience provided a natural path into the world of militias. Laura Steele, an alleged Oath Keeper who’s been charged as part of a sweeping conspiracy case against the paramilitary group, boasted about her previous law enforcement experience in her application to the group, according to court records
People are literally joining the American police and military to be trained to join militias that will fight against the police and military.
This is all so backwards and wrong-minded, as any good historian might tell you by looking into the legacy of soldiers for good:
…your rights are real only if you perform the duty, the obligation you face, and that duty is to protect the minority.
Protect the minority. Now who really defines minority? Or perhaps ask why do white nationalists claim themselves a minority yet attack real minorities?
And on that note, I leave you with this data on just how many in the military today are affiliated with anti-American extremist ideologies.
Did a Robot Just Try to Kill Tiger Woods?
Catchy title, no? But seriously, cars (from the old word carriage) also are called automobiles because they automate mobility, kind of like robots that move people.
I’m calling a car a robot because that’s really what it is.
In the recent case of Tiger Woods, his robot sent him at high speed off the road.
First allow me to set the context on the automobile in question. It has a particular problem that in October 2012 wasn’t discussed enough, and thus was flagged by automobile critics:
Hyundai has been having problems pop up here, and there, and the related news coverage at best has been extremely minimum. […] These incidents have been happening more often than none all over Korea to hapless drivers who don’t know anything about being prepared on handling an out of control car. After the second video I became very interested and wanted to know more about the Hyundai acceleration issue.
An out of control Hyundai? Accelerating suddenly without warning? That sounds familiar.
Second, let’s define sudden Unintended Acceleration (UA) by referencing the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) explanation:
Unintended, unexpected, high power accelerations from a… low initial speed accompanied by an apparent loss of braking effectiveness.
Third, there was a well documented case of Toyota covering up its SUA, exposed by a whistleblower (Besty Benjaminson, as cited by Chase law) who also exposed the NHTSA as rather shallow in its investigations.
Through the Senator’s whistleblower program, I gave hundreds of documents to his Judiciary Committee staffers. I sorted the documents to show that many electronics issues related to UA were known inside Toyota but not even touched upon by NHTSA and NASA in their studies of Toyota electronics and UA. I also organized the documents to show that it seemed the executives were misrepresenting facts in their sworn testimony before three Congressional committees. Senator Grassley was thus concerned about whether NHTSA had done a proper job, especially with the NASA study it had commissioned, and sent a public letter of inquiry to NHTSA administrator David Strickland. NHTSA’s response to Senator Grassley was cleverly worded and noncommittal.
Which now brings us back to the recent news of Tiger Woods in a 2021 [Hyundai] Genesis GV80 experiencing UA.
Woods’ SUV was traveling between 84 and 87 miles per hour just prior to impact, investigators learned. There was no indication that he hit the brakes. It’s possible that he hit the accelerator pedal by accident. “It is speculated and believed that Tiger Woods inadvertently hit the accelerator instead of the brake pedal,” LASD Capt. James Powers told reporters.
Old problem new car?
At least he wasn’t driving a Tesla.
True/False? “NHTSA reports an average of one accident per 484,000 miles”
I keep reading the following sentence in safety reports about Tesla, but only about Tesla:
NHTSA reports an average of one accident per 484,000 miles.
Do you see the NHTSA reporting that anywhere? I do not. And I do not see any other car manufacturer quoting this number either.
I see only a sentence Tesla put on their website to claim they aspire “to be” the safest car on the road. And then they wrote that sentence without any source or qualifications.
In other words the 484,000 miles reference is found nowhere but the Tesla site, which claims it found it somewhere else without telling us exactly where.
This December 2020 NHTSA report (DOT HS 813 060) is perhaps the closest thing: “Overview of Motor Vehicle Crashes in 2019”
Wow, as a percentage of total fatalities since 1995 more and more people outside cars are being killed!
Speaking of charts, here’s a real one based on the data that Tesla itself publishes.
I am not kidding when I illustrate their own data showing the precipitous decline in safety over recent quarters, while their NHTSA number is showing almost no change. These are the real numbers they publish themselves. Bizarre.
So can someone find the magic 484,000 number anywhere in NHTSA reports? I have questions even if you can:
- Why didn’t Tesla put in a simple NHTSA reference to their claim? Don’t they want us to connect directly to the NHTSA and read that report if true?
- Why do people keep repeating this without any direct NHTSA reference? People say Tesla says that the NHTSA says a number. What? Nobody just says please show us this report? Can anybody find an actual NHTSA report that says this number?
- Does anyone understand what NHTSA might actually be talking about when they are cited improperly in this Tesla quote?
Until I see this report where NHTSA says the exact magic 484,000 number, I continue to believe something is very wrong with media channels repeating it as though it’s true.
Take this report that uses the number for example:
Stock in the electric-vehicle pioneer Tesla is wobbling after a Tesla vehicle crashed and police said no one appears to have been at the wheel.
Here’s another one that uses the number:
Tesla Q1 Safety Report Shows Rise In Autopilot Accidents
Why is that 484,000 data point being sourced from Tesla in these articles about Tesla safety failures, and NOT some statement or report directly from the actual NHTSA?
Perhaps Tesla is engaging in disinformation such that safety news is always controlled by them and them alone to poison a safety narrative?
Here are some guesses why Tesla doesn’t want someone to find or read a NHTSA report, even though Tesla wants us to believe they base their safety engineering on it:
- NHTSA averages are for all vehicles in all conditions everywhere
- Tesla averages are for a tiny subset of vehicles and conditions
- Tesla doesn’t define methods or terms such as miles, crash, accident
- Tesla crashes have been increasing, worsening not improving
- Other car manufacturers are reporting their safest records in history during rise in Tesla fatalities and injuries
Saying Autopilot in a Tesla is safer than a 1995 rust-bucket on a dirt road where Autopilot can’t even function is a completely bogus comparison.
Tesla seems to be willfully misleading with its claims about crash data.
As an example of more meaningful comparison here is an actual NHTSA report on factors in crashes in the United States:
From this table we see 1995-2011 cars are clocking 1,030,624 severe injuries.
Meanwhile, 2012-2018 cars have only 199,480. So is the 2021 Tesla safety marketing campaign comparing itself to a 1995 car on purpose?
Also the NHTSA issues a warning about their own numbers:
…while the present analysis shows that the newer vehicle model year groups were inversely associated with occupant injury severity outcome, this study does not identify which aspects of the model year group with particular vehicular designs are responsible for the reduction in the risk of severe injury to vehicle occupants.
That’s literally the opposite of Tesla marketing, which repeatedly says their particular vehicle is responsible for reduction of crashes… despite no actual evidence to support such claims.
Tesla put its first cars on the road in 2013, right? So you can see it’s patently unfair to compare a 2013 or later model with anything prior unless making a completely different point about car safety (e.g. buy any new car, not an old car, because data shows generic new cars safer than all old ones).
Do you see a problem with Tesla comparing its particular cars to all crashes ever for all cars on the road instead of doing a true comparison with proper analysis?
What if we just run the numbers of Teslas crashing versus Teslas delivered. What percentage of Teslas crash, and how soon after being delivered?
Remember that table at the start of this post?
After putting only a few thousand cars on the road, and a CEO publicly stating his cars are the safest of all cars on the road, Tesla had to report two deaths from a car that “veers into opposite lane”.
Is there another car manufacturer that has as many deaths per cars delivered?
If you went out to buy a car today, Tesla continues to claim misleadingly you should see them as safer than ALL cars ever made, even when you are only in the market for NEW cars.
And when you’re in the market for new cars, Tesla may in fact be significantly less safe than other options (Volvo, Honda, etc). Here’s some proper analysis:
The fundamental problem here is that Tesla does a poor job of driver monitoring. Unlike several other automakers, Tesla only uses a torque sensor in the steering wheel to try to detect when the driver is moving the wheel. This is a cheap but very imprecise method.
A brand new Tesla uses “cheap but very imprecise” engineering for its safety.
Why would Tesla hide the reference to the NHTSA and make it hard to see the actual math? Seems cheap and imprecise of them.
Again, here’s some proper analysis.
General Motors’ similar Super Cruise feature, which is advertised as hands-free, uses facial recognition technology to ensure that a driver is watching the road while it is in operation and recently ranked higher than Autopilot in a Consumer Reports test
I don’t like “hands-free” marketing either, but you have to recognize that Tesla was ranked lower than other brands in safety using independent analysis
If nothing else, you should know Tesla clearly doesn’t want the NHTSA to speak for itself because it never seems to say to anyone “here’s the NHTSA” or “go read the NHTSA”.
Until I see people start to use original source NHTSA documentation when talking about NHTSA reports, I am extremely skeptical of the NHTSA being fairly referenced by Tesla.
If Tesla builds cars like they build their arguments to drive their cars, you shouldn’t buy their cars.
Here’s some poetry that might help explain:
Electric cars were the future in 1981.
Reagan shut it all down.
Electric cars were the future in 2001.
Bush shut it all down.
Electric cars were the future in 2021.
Tesla is a dumpster fire.
If you want to know why people are sticking with fossil fuels, it’s pretty clear who is keeping them alive. Yes, that’s silly. Let’s get rid of the combustion engine and get in our electric cars.
Just don’t get into a Tesla unless you’re prepared to be misled by funny numbers straight into a tree and die in a fire.
Why put people into an electric clown car? That does not help bring electric cars to market faster, as it destroys trust in new cars and their manufacturers.
Perhaps the best take in the news so far has been the Chaser:
“When we say we want a fully driverless future, we mean it” said Tesla CEO, Elon Musk at a press conference on Monday. Musk harked back to his childhood days as the heir of a Zambian blood-diamond empire “this tactical disdain for human life is crucial for any entrepreneur looking to really embrace change”.
For my take on broader disinformation issues in Tesla marketing, see my earlier post on their CEO tactics.