Written by If you woke up tomorrow morning to find that the President of the United States had been arrested, Congress had been disbanded, and you now lived under the rule of a military dictatorship, how would you feel? Elated? Frightened? Angry? Indifferent? Would you rise up and fight? According to a recent poll by YouGov, 29% of Americans could imagine supporting the U.S. military taking over the powers of federal government. That number increased to 43% when they were asked this in the context of the military doing so if “the federal government began to violate the Constitution,” a condition which arguably has existed since the ratification of the document.
Consider this against the election turnout in 2012. Only 57.5% of eligible voters even showed up to vote, and only 51.1% of them voted for Obama. Add to this that many voters feel they are simply voting for the lesser of two evils, and an American coup d’état, might well be more popular than democracy itself.