Tuesday, March 19, AD 2024 4:59am

Seven Days in May Was Not a How to Manual

 

 

 

Democrat Congressman Steven Cohen (D.TN) has called for a military coup to topple President Trump:

 

 

 

Life imitating Art.

 

 

What is it with liberals and coups?  Recently, including the obviously deranged Congressman, several liberals, including entertainer? Sarah Silverman, and Obama era Pentagon bureaucrat Sarah Brooks, have  been calling for/predicting a military coup against the Trump administration.  Such fools have no concept of our military where the officers are trained from day one of their careers in the essential fact of civilian control of the military.  If the impossible ever happened and some rogue faction of the military ever did move against Trump, the shots fired in such a coup attempt would merely be the opening shots in Civil War II.  Liberals have often fantasized about a conservative military coup against the government of the United States, perhaps most famously in the novel and film of the Sixties entitled Seven Days in May.  From current calls for a military coup emanating from the portside of our politics, such concerns about a conservative coup apparently were a case of the left projecting upon the right what the left would be tempted to do if confronted by a civilian government they viewed as a menace.

 

Hard to believe that it is more than half a century since the film Seven Days in May (1964) was released.  Directed by John Frankenheimer with a screenplay by Rod Serling based on a novel published in 1962, the movie posits a failed coup attempt in the United States, with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General James Mattoon Scott, played by Burt Lancaster, being the would be coup leader.  Kirk Douglas plays Scott’s aide Marine Corps Colonel Martin Casey who, while agreeing with Scott that President Jordan Lyman’s nuclear disarmament treaty with the Soviets is a disaster, is appalled when he learns of the proposed coup, and discloses it to the President, portrayed by Frederic March.

The film is an example of liberal paranoia in the early sixties and fears on the port side of our politics of a coup by some “right wing” general.  The film is unintentionally hilarious if one has served in our military, since the idea of numerous generals agreeing on a coup and keeping it secret, even from their own aides, is simply ludicrous.  Our military leaks like a sieve, and general officers almost always view each other as competitors for political favor, rather than as co-conspirators.

Ironies abound when the film is compared to reality:

The film is set in the 1970s.  Richard Nixon, the arch bogeyman of liberals, negotiated SALT I with the Soviets in 1972, with not a murmur from the military.

Rather than a war mongering military opposed by a pacifist President, in 1964 LBJ, the great liberal hope, was gearing up the war in Vietnam, in the face of a fair amount of skepticism by admirals and generals.

The film received encouragement from the Kennedy administration, JFK, having read the novel.  When asked by a friend if such a coup as depicted in the novel could happen, Kennedy replied:

“It’s possible. But the conditions would have to be just right. If the country had a young President, and he had a Bay of Pigs, there would be a certain uneasiness. Maybe the military would do a little criticizing behind his back. Then if there were another Bay of Pigs, the reaction of the country would be, ‘Is he too young and inexperienced?’ The military would almost feel that it was their patriotic obligation to stand ready to preserve the integrity of the nation and only God knows just what segment of Democracy they would be defending if they overthrew the elected establishment. Then, if there were a third Bay of Pigs it could happen. It won’t happen on my watch.”

While the film was in production a coup against a civilian government by that country’s military did happen, President Diem of South Vietnam being murdered in the process, and JFK helping to instigate the coup.

The film itself isn’t bad, Lancaster, Douglas and March giving fine performances.  An interesting artifact of Cold War liberal paranoia in an entertaining package.  It should not be regarded by liberals suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome as a how to manual.

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T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Wednesday, July 18, AD 2018 5:40am

Another view of the Helsinki Crisis. “The intel community has assaulted the legitimacy of the voters’ choice.” D. C. McAllister. Ergo, Trump’s thrust is a defense of American voters. It’s the only reason Hillary lost.

Back to the real traitor. Congressmen Cohen should bring to the floor a [GASP} Constitutional war declaration on Russia. And, PATRIOTIC pajama boys/girls should enlist to fight the war to save American democratic socialism from Russian hackers and Putin.

lol

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Wednesday, July 18, AD 2018 5:42am

Another view of the Helsinki Crisis. “The intel community has assaulted the legitimacy of the voters’ choice.” D. C. McAllister. Ergo, Trump’s thrust is a defense of American voters.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Wednesday, July 18, AD 2018 7:02am

If what’s coming over our Facebook wall in in the mixed sites I frequent is representative, street-level Democrats can be sorted into two categories.

1. Those who don’t devote much of their time or viscera to public affairs.

2. Those who are suffering an ongoing meltdown.

Many years ago, the social psychologist Zevedei Barbu offered that students of political life tended to view factions as manifestations of economic interests while giving scant attention to social position and psychological factors. He offered as a particular example the Roumanian Iron Guard, which he said was not a movement made up of any particular class or economic sector, but rather of people who were on the social margins or whose minds worked in particular ways. With the Trump phenomena, I think we’re looking at people who are not on the social margins at all and are accustomed to clearing the decks of anyone who might contend with them and question their personal orthodoxies.

Nate Winchester
Nate Winchester
Wednesday, July 18, AD 2018 7:33am

Ironies abound when the film is compared to reality:

That one thing I’ve noticed in stories.

For the left and liberal penned tales, as time goes on they get sillier and more ridiculous (i.e. Robocop’s running gag about “lousy gas mileage”) while right-leaning or conservative penned tales seem to grow far more prophetic and wiser as time goes.

Hmm….

Mary De Voe
Wednesday, July 18, AD 2018 8:02am

Sen. Cohen has proved President Trump’s fears about not trusting our intelligence and military. Perhaps Sen. Cohen might try reading our Constitution: Article III section 3 to which he swore an oath to uphold. traitor.

Foxfier
Admin
Wednesday, July 18, AD 2018 8:39am

… Does Rep Cohen think that the folks in the military are so incredibly stupid that we haven’t noticed that WE ARE the folks he considers enemies?

Foxfier
Admin
Wednesday, July 18, AD 2018 8:42am

I’d like to point out:
Trump tweets and anything that’s not totally proper is an outrage; he typos and it’s a weeks long circus. (“Covefvef” or whatever the freak.)

Dem pol that’s been in office for years tweets a call for a military revolution based on their framing of a situation, and it’s not even news.

Guy McClung
Admin
Wednesday, July 18, AD 2018 7:26pm

How about a ban on assault politicians – both parties? not a ban on all democrats, “assault” would be legally defined so that it does not include all of them. Law will include background checks, fingerprinting, and DNA swabs.Isn’t this just “common sense”? The constitutional right to assembly is not an individual right. Guy McClung

TomD
TomD
Thursday, July 19, AD 2018 11:27pm

“The constitutional right to assembly is not an individual right.”
It is in one circumstance: http://www.songlyrics.com/platonic/i-hear-voices-in-my-head-lyrics/

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