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Trump's military takeover and History 101 [1]
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Date: 2025-09-01
The first day of my freshman college history course, Fall 1969, the professor asked a simple question: Where is the ultimate power in any state? We tried out answers: the President or Prime Minister or ahead of state? No. The representative assembly in Congress or Parliament? No. The highest court in the land? No. The people? No, he said, smiling. The ultimate power is in the hands of the people who control the organized weapons. The military, the police.
Our study of history proved that he was dead right. It doesn't matter who makes the laws if they don’t control who enforces them. It doesn’t matter who interprets the laws in the courts if they cannot enforce them. It doesn’t even matter if the people take to the streets en masse. They can be mowed down. The ultimate power in any state is organized force, control of violence. There is nothing more persuasive than a gun to the head. (My religion class had a different answer, but that’s for another post.)
Clearly, the second Trump administration understands this simple truth. And that is why they are systematically firing anyone who has control of the guns if they aren’t completely loyal to Trump. Anyone who has an ounce of professionalism or integrity is being removed from control of the guns. History 101. Control the organized use of violence and you control everyone and everything.
The Trump administration is giving us a master class in this (and, to pun a bit, becoming a master class). They have purged the top brass at the Pentagon. Wise. Numerous dictators have been overthrown by a mutiny of military officers who staged an armed coup, sometimes, surprisingly, even restoring democracy.
They have purged the leadership of the Department of Justice to install loyalists who are happy to erase the line between politics and law enforcement. The phrase “weaponized the Justice Department” is a metaphor, but the DOJ has literal weapons, many of them, and thousands of agents trained to use them. Wise. A revolt led by the police has toppled other dictators, so they are heading that off.
The courts do not have weapons, of course (“ the Supreme Court has no army ” in the famous phrase). Courts must depend for enforcing their rulings on the Chief Executive. The President is really the “chief law enforcement officer,” not the Attorney General, because the POTUS can fire the AG (and Trump has done so). In any case, the SCOTUS has already been so corrupted that they’ve given POTUS a blanket pardon (almost) and bowed to (or deferred on) every request he’s made so far. A less compliant court can check a dictator, as recently in Poland. But not this Court.
That leaves “the People.” It is true that mass resistance and massive street demonstrations have toppled dictators, though it’s been very spotty and, where it has happened, very messy, sometimes bloody. We had on the No Kings Day protest June 14 about five million people in the streets, peacefully calling for Trump’s overthrow. Trump seemed to ignore or dismiss that (it distracted from his birthday military show of force). But I think he realized the danger to his regime.
He created a plan to occupy cities. Wise. He had explored this tentatively in Los Angeles a few days before No Kings Day with ICE agents. When his occupation plans were complete, he moved en masse on Washington, DC, the nation’s capitol and—not coincidentally— his residence. ICE and National Guard units from five states (at last count), all armed, are there ostensibly to “fight crime,” but really to quell any resistance (or quell violence they provoke or even initiate).
It’s worth remembering that in Trump’s first term, when he was bothered by peaceful protesters in Lafayette Park outside the White House, he asked former Defense Secretary Mark Esper, “Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?” Esper reported. Esper refused. But at the confirmation hearing for the current defense secretary, Hegseth refused to rule out shooting protesters.
Now Trump and Hegseth’s DoD have announced their plans to expand this armed occupation to other cities, all governed by Democrats in Democratic states—not coincidentally. And it’s worth remembering that lesson we learned in History 101 back in 1969, just a few months before National Guard troops fired on protesting students at Kent State, killing four and wounding nine:
The ultimate power in any state is in the hands of the people who control the organized weapons.
Trump knows this and is acting on it daily. We forget it at our peril. Mortal peril.
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