What would an American coup d’état look like?

By Kent R. Kroeger (September 11, 2018)

The following essay is mostly personal opinion, adorned with quotes from anonymous sources, all linked together by wild conjecture and creative license, and peppered throughout with occasional facts whenever possible — in other words, just your average news story today.

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Typically, when we think of a coup d’état, we think of tanks in formation in front of a parliamentary building, jersey barriers surrounding a presidential palace, and armed militia controlling entry and exit at major access points and thoroughfares in a capital city.

But coups can come in many different forms, some ruthless and violent, and others barely noticeable outside of a small cadre of military, political and bureaucratic elites.

For the purposes of this essay, however, a simple dictionary definition of ‘coup d’état’ will suffice:

Coup d’état, also called Coup: the sudden, often violent overthrow of an existing government by a small group whose chief prerequisite is control of all or part of the armed forces, the police, and other military elements. Unlike a revolution, which is usually achieved by large numbers of people working for basic social, economic, and…