Can Trump really stage a coup?

We usually tend to avoid modern contentious politics here at ArcanaWiki, but… well… this is an unusual time, and this article addresses a number of issues and developments that are very gameable if transplanted outside this moment.

Summary

November 10, 2020: Article discusses the possibility that United States President Donald Trump, might try to subvert the system and retain control of the White House. Trump lost the last week's election by about 4 million votes but currently refuses to concede the election. He has challenged the election process in several jurisdictions, and thus far, his efforts have been dismissed by judges as lacking evidence and/or legal standing.

Obviously, this is a highly politicized topic, so I'm putting most of the summary under a collapsible field so it's easier to skip the more incendiary statements.

+ Click only if you want to see political doom and gloom

I put this in a collapsible for the sake of keeping Arcana-Wiki mostly apolitical. This is a summary of the article, and thus the situation in the US currently. I considered leaving it out, so folks who wanted to learn more can just click the article link in the sources below. But I know from other news links from arcanawiki that yahoo news articles only stay active for a finite time.

Caveat: I am a decidely left-leaning bleeding-heart liberal, and that no doubt colors my interpretation. Anyway, here's roughly what the article says is going on:

Despite the courts repeatedly finding against him, the President continues to claim publicly that voter fraud has happened on a scale never seen before in America. Thus far, not a single one of Trump's legal cases has brought any evidence of the large-scale voter fraud he keeps alleging.

(Curiously, he also made the same claims 4 years ago, when he lost the popular vote but won the electoral college. Despite he and his party controlling the Executive Branch, the Department of Justice, the Senate, and a narrow conservative majority on the Supreme Court, he failed to bring evidence of those claims to the courts in his entire 4-year term as President.)

As a result, we are at a point in America where fairly reputable sources are having to ask if we are currently in the middle of a slow-rolling coup by an Executive who refuses to leave office.

Even if he does eventually concede and step down, how much damage is this entire situation doing to the American people's faith in democracy.

The article discusses how most actual coups and government collapses are preceded by a similar erosion of faith. So even if Trump eventually accepts the vote counts and steps down, he may leave a significant portion of the country feeling like they were cheated. Regardless of the fact that election officials, nonpartisan watchdogs, mainstream media, and the courts all agree no widescale voting shenanigans transpired, this could lead to dissatisfaction with the political system, and set the stage for an actual coup, civil war, or revolution years down the road.

The article concludes that the USA's institutions will continue to operate as they should and will survive this immediate crisis, but is less rosy about the future beyond the current moment unless the President publicly acknowledges that he actually lost the election fairly. The article even uses the term "Death Spiral for Democracy", which one hopes will eventually prove to be only hyperbole.

The "good news", such as it is, is that the government's enforcement arms are currently pretty strong. The factors that tend to lead to civil war situations tend to be a combination of: high poverty or percieved injustice, coupled with an inability of the State's police or military to keep the peace and make people feel safe. That said, there have been a lot of protests that turned into riots in the US in the past few years. So again, it's not inconceivable that as faith and trust in those institutions erode for other reasons (police brutality, political corruption, or just seeing their ineffectiveness during riots, etc), it could get worse.

Source

Bibliography

1. Original Article at Yahoo

Game and Story Use

• I've put a detailed summary in the collapsible field above, so click on it if you want more information. (I am trying to keep the non-optional parts of the page relatively apolitical.)
• The current American scenario is pretty tense, so GMs should probably avoid it unless you know for certain that you're entire playgroup is on the same side of the political aisle. Even then, when things are this stressful in the real world, your players might want escapism rather than a game that reflects their fears.
• It does, however, bring to clarity the political processes that can lead to government collapse. So you could easily apply the lessons in the article as a bit of worldbuilding or backstory for any dystopia / banana republic military regime / After The End scenario in your setting.
  • Situations that used to make audiences/players in the US ask "how does that even happen?" are now far easier to grok (and are even more so after reading that article).
  • If sanity and clarity prevail, years from now this won't be such an uncomfortable topic, and you'll be able to mine the situation for plot threads and character motivations.