It’s Not a Coup. It’s a Civil War.

Lately, it’s been convenient — and self-serving to some — to call what is going on with the Trump administration a coup. It’s a “soft coup” or a “silent coup” or a wish-it-were-a-coup.

Let’s take a look at what that means. According to all definitions I can find, a coup is a sudden, often violent overthrow of a government. Every time I look up the definition of a coup, I get something like this from Merriam-Webster: “a sudden decisive exercise of force in politics.” But there is nothing sudden about this.

Have you ever thought, “What would a modern civil war look like?” Tanks rolling down the streets of Washington, D.C.? Missiles targeting the Congress? Armed forces storming the White House or Capitol Building? None of these would accomplish anything. So what would a modern-day civil war look like?

At least since the 1960s, a faction of people have been looking for a chance to make our government conform to what they think it should be. This faction has identified itself in many ways, and its members always embrace Marxist ideals with a top-down government run by a few. A “law-based” government, on the other hand, would have a constitution to protect the rights of the minority from the “tyranny” of the majority. That is what the United States of America is: a law-based government founded on the belief that those working in government are employees of the people, and not that the people are subservient to them. And all decisions are to be based on our agreement to form such a government — that is, as spelled out in our Constitution.

When a group, no matter how large or small, decides it wants to step beyond the constitutional means for changing the government and change it to fit their own ideals of government, and superimpose those ideals on everybody else, we have a true conflict. If that conflict cannot be resolved to their satisfaction through the instrumentalities of the provisions to do so, and so they decide to overthrow it and replace it with their own views or ideas, we have a war. We have those circumstances playing out before our eyes (and ears)………….