"We are no strangers to dangerous ideas here."
Disgraced, convicted then pardoned, Donald Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn told right-wing crazies at a QAnon-themed conference in Texas that he supported a military coup in the United States, presumably to oust President Joe Biden and to reinstall his former boss, who lost the election.
This endorsement came after a member of the audience, “a simple Marine,” asked him “why what happened in Myanmar (mispronounced as ‘Mynamar’) can’t happen here”—referring to the February coup that ousted the duly elected government in that Southeast Asian country then launched a bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protesters that left more than 800 civilians dead.
After the audience cheered the idea. Flynn responded that there was “no reason” such a thing couldn’t happen in the United States.
“I mean, it should happen here,” he said, then added: “No reason.”
But faced with withering criticism back in the real world and away from his QAnon bubble, Flynn quickly backtracked and did what most politicians do these days—he blamed the media.
“For all the fake news ‘journalists’: Let me be VERY CLEAR—There is NO reason whatsoever for any coup in America, and I do not and have not at any time called for any action of that sort,” Flynn claimed on social media. He added: “I am no stranger to media manipulating my words and therefore let me repeat my response to a question asked at the conference: There is no reason it (a coup) should happen here (in America).”
But his remarks at the conference were on video—and it was painfully apparent that he did not reject the idea of a coup but in fact endorsed it, much to the delight of the cheering idiots at the conference, who had no idea of the catastrophe such an idea would visit upon their country.
Of course, we are no strangers to dangerous ideas in the Philippines. We have experienced the excesses of martial law and have survived many a coup attempt. One coup plotter even plans to run for president next year.
But a more recent, dangerous idea comes, not from wild-eyed conspiracy theorists, but from cynical politicians who are eager to hang on to the coattails of an aging leader who is constitutionally barred from seeking the presidency again. Their solution is not a coup, but a contemptuous sidestep of the Constitution. Simply get the old President to run for vice president, and have him nominate his own daughter as his running mate for president.
The ruling party, the PDP-Laban, has endorsed this idea, exposing its members as intellectually and morally bankrupt sycophants who cannot move beyond the cult of personality that dominates their circle. What a national tragedy this would be, if they were granted their wish. Certainly, in a country of more than 100 million people, we can find more suitable leaders.