A coup for a coup: On the prospect of the military deposition of a Constitution-ignoring tyrant

Comment published on New York Times blog in response to news article by Helen Cooper, “Former Pentagon leaders warn of a dangerous era,” September 6, 2022:

Hypothesis: The United States is supposed to be a representative democracy with a constitutional government, but in fact, it is ruled by a group, or a class, of people who are content to use existing 'democratic' institutions and abide by the Constitution when it suits them. If, from their point of view, the society has ceased to be governable in a satisfactory way, they will seize or wield power in any way they can. That is what was behind both the Jan. 6 events and the Trump presidency as a whole. Indeed, their purpose may have been partly to prepare Americans for the termination of our democracy.

Ironically, the possibility of the military's defection from carrying out the orders of a rogue president who ignores the Constitution suffers from just one problem: It is the prospect of one undemocratic institution of elites effectively seizing power in a state of emergency, in order to stop another such institution or group of persons who have already done just that. If the military alone can save democracy from an authoritarian coup d'étât, it would only be taking over that coup to give it its own preferred character instead. There is only the small comfort that the military officers would be more rational because there would several persons involved and not just one, or because they are professionals and may lack the personal ambitions or individual madness of a would-be dictator tyrant. This is what happens when democracy is already dead.