For those who are my age (and those even older) you may very well have read the book by Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II. I'm sure I read it, maybe in junior high school, or perhaps in 9th or 10th grade. I seem to recall it was quite a compelling read. More will recall the movie, which starred Burt Lancaster as General James Mattoon Scott, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Kirk Douglas as Jiggs Casey, General Scott's adjutant, Frederic March as the President of the United States, Jordan Lyman; and Ava Gardner as General Scott's jilted lover, Eleanor Holbrook.
The story is about a coup attempt in the U.S., a plot schemed by higher ups in the military, in which the plan is for General Scott himself to assume the Presidency once the coup succeeds. General Scott is far more hawkish against the Russians than is President Lyman and with that General Scott has far greater popularity among the public. A recent treaty with Russia, signed by the President, is viewed as a demonstration of his weakness. The public is fearful that the Russians won't keep to their end of the bargain. Jiggs Casey is not one of the conspirators in the plot attempt. He learns about it by decoding the messaging that he receives on behalf of General Scott. He then brings this information to the White House, so the President knows about the conspiracy. The bulk of the story is about how the plot is then thwarted.
It is worthwhile to cast this story within the real events of the time. The book was first published right around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The movie came out a couple of years later. The JFK assassination happened the year in between. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution happened earlier in the same year as when the movie came out. I started junior high school a couple of years after that, when the Vietnam War was beginning to ramp up. It took a while before I became aware of anti-war sentiment and the distrust of the military leadership that sentiment engendered. So, it may be that how you read this book depended on when you read it. But for me it was clear - Jordan Lyman the duly elected President, his advisers and Jiggs Casey as well were the good guys in the story. General Scott, who exceeded his authority in plotting the coup, along with his fellow co-conspirators were the bad guys.
If there were a remake of the story, it would need to be cast in the current moment. And, at least from where I'm sitting, that means the story would have to be reversed in a critical way. The coup plotters would be the good guys. For the good guys to win in the story, the interesting part would then be how to construct a plausible coup attempt that has a chance of succeeding under the current circumstances.
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The above is the view from 64,000 feet. I know from my teaching days that for learners such a view is not sufficient. They need another view closer to the ground, an example that illustrates the more general proposition. For that reason I'm speculating about a possibility, I dare not call it a likelihood, where the coup plotters come from entirely outside the Federal government and then exert their pressure indirectly on those within.
Here is the idea in a nutshell. While a bunch of assassinations of key players would have visceral appeal to many readers (including me) pulling this off seems incredibly unlikely. So a different path is needed. Let's instead consider Impeachment. Both of the previous Trump Impeachment Trials in the Senate were a mockery. If there were to be a third such trial (as well as near simultaneous Impeachment Trials for others in the current Executive Branch) how might it be that guilty verdicts are obtained then? My answer is that ahead of time a sufficient number of Senators would need to be blackmailed in a certain way - namely that donations to their campaigns as well as other largess they have been receiving would be entirely cut off if they voted the wrong way on Impeachment. Who could make credible such blackmail threats? The plutocrats (multi-billionaires) who operate behind the scenes could do this. But why would they do this? They, in turn, must be blackmailed or themselves kidnapped and forced into it. They obviously wouldn't do it willingly, at least not at first.
How do you turn blackmailers and kidnappers into the good guys? Well, part of this should be considered a latter day Robin Hood story. Criminal activity that robs from the rich and gives to the poor casts the criminals as heroes. (Implicitly, there is a backstory of the rich becoming that way on the backs of the poor and then being quite stingy about it. Robin Hood and his Merry Men are undoing this injustice.) So, who gets to play this latter day band of Merry Men?
My candidate is some subset of major research universities. They have the needed expertise in computer science (for hacking into bank accounts), in finance (for knowing how to manipulate funds without arousing attention from the authorities), in providing muscle (via ROTC and possibly other law enforcement preparation programs), and they have the connections with the high rollers who are on their governing boards and comprise their largest donors.
Now a few preliminary questions need to be asked and answered before this candidate can be considered plausible.
- Are these research universities in a good position to cast themselves as Robin Hood? At present, the answer is no, as I argued quite extensively in this post: Repricing - in Higher Education and in the Economy as a Whole. But, apparently higher education is getting clobbered money-wise by the current White House. If it wants to save itself in the eyes of the public it needs to recast itself in a credible way as a critical instrument toward rebuilding a middle-class society. And it needs to recast itself to insiders at the university as well, particularly students and faculty. Toward that end, I suggest a large group reading of Democracy and Education by John Dewey.
- Do the circumstances justify "biting the hand that feeds you" in having these universities turn on their large donors in the way sketched above? I'd respond to this question in two different ways. While the donations are large from the point of the universities' coffers, are they large when considered as a share of the donor's wealth? If not, what else might be done to put that private wealth toward the public good? And can donors be convinced of doing that purely by reasoned argument or is that a pipe dream?
- Universities are supposed to be havens for free speech and open communication. In such an environment, how does one keep word of the conspiracy from leaking out so as not to be thwarted by the current regime? I don't have a good answer for this one. I only know that the question needs a good answer.
- If the conspiracy were otherwise effective, would most liberals nonetheless object to it because the ends don't justify the means?
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In this closing section, I want to get at some of my reasons for writing this post. As with many of my posts, the main goal is to get the reader to think through the issues rather than to provide a blueprint for resolution of these issues. Further, elsewhere I largely am not writing/commenting/publicly reacting to the current political news, this as a way to keep my emotions somewhat in check. But I can't keep myself from doing a "what if" exercise of the type that I'm not getting from the little I do read in the news or from posts by my friends. I spent all these years as an theoretical economist and then an ed tech administrator doing such what if exercises. It's part of my persona.
From seeing posts in Facebook, evidently there is a lot of frustration with the current White House and a lot of the posts are protests of some sort. I do understand the need to vent. I yell at the TV when watching a basketball game and I think the ref made a bad call. But do I really think my yelling at the TV will impact the game situation at all?
So there is a reason to ask what coordinated fighting back looks like rather than individual venting. In between might be coordinated protest, which is legal and ethical. But is it effective, and if so, how long does it take to be? Do we have the time available to allow it to work? It seems to me that under the current circumstances it is reasonable to ask whether there are more expeditious means.
Then, too, I don't think we can rely on the a purely political solution now. The Democrats are too weak and in disarray as to how to address the present crisis. So, shouldn't non-political solutions be contemplated even if they seem improbable at first?
One last point is that I apparently have a bug for Seven Days in May. About a dozen years ago I wrote a post called ECOMCON, after having watched the movie again. The underlying issue at the time was the treaty with Iran about them not developing nukes. So, for me Seven Days in May serves as a good reference point for making argument. But what about for later generations. Would they want to watch the movie? If so, would it entertain them? I wish I knew the answer to those questions.