You are familiar with the term "quiet coup."  We've seen the phrase a lot lately, and for good reason.  Presently, there seem to be several going on, all at the same time.  And these coups have been burbling in back rooms for awhile, stirring up all manner of strange and undemocratic sediments lurking in the deepest reaches of the financial-military-industrial complex.

Quiet coups have a been a feature of the American political landscape for decades now, if previously infrequent; the behind the scenes GOP scuttle of the Paris Peace talks, subverting the LBJ agenda to the end the war in the run up to the 1968 elections, and the behind the scenes GOP scuttle of hostages negotiations with Iran, subverting Carter's own negotiations in the run up to the US presidential elections in 1980, serving example.  Though not particularly quiet, at least in the public sphere, presidential assassinations have figured prominently, while other, attempted coups either failed or wound up stillborn: Prescott Bush and other prominent American industrialists and their attempt to take down Roosevelt.

The coup was aimed at toppling President Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most famous families in America, (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell Hse & George Bush’s Grandfather, Prescott) believed that their country should adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great depression.

Given this dark undercurrent in American politics, the quiet coups continue, winding their sinuous, dirty path through the current political epoch.  One, though, in particular has escape mainstream notice, mostly because mentioning Christian fundamentalists doing anything is simply not noteworthy.

We've got the quiet coup of Wall Street, and especially Goldman Sachs, taking over Treasury and attendant regulatory bodies; "regulatory capture."  This, while Republican-connected voting machine companies conduct supposed "free and transparent" elections, but do so secretly.  Weird, inexplicable results ensue.  We are currently watching, not just regulatory capture, but congressional capture, as the current health care reform bill clearly demonstrates.  We know this to be an open wound, this congressional-corporate handshake, and yet it only gets worse.  Now, the bribery is conducted in plain sight.

And this is great, but something we have been watching and reading about for awhile: The Pentagon is taking over civilian government.  Yes, we know.

From the other end, well, Cheney was taking over … everything, but the executive branch then, as now (with continuity gusto) was, and is, extending its own power over the courts, congress, and the American public.  The Bush regime turned the Department of Justice into a de facto and dangerous armature of the Republican party, and a slough for Cheney's fetid mind.  Though Obama may deign to cover up Cheney's foul mess, nonetheless, the DoJ appears to be a still quasi pointy stick for the GOP. (I consider corrupt judges and political or geesuz hack prosecutors to be somewhat less pointy than guns and SWAT teams, though violence has been delivered, as in the Don Siegelman case vis-á-vis Dana Jill Simpson.)

But seething beneath the surface of a few of these quiet coups, Christian fundamentalists writhe, performing all manner of dastardly imagining and incantation, who root the major voting machine companies, Diebold and Es&S, probably the others at some level, and pushes (or putsches, if you prefer) into the US military, and the Bush-era Department of Justice, which became, not only a political hammer for the GOP, but an inquisitional tool of Christian zealotry. (Do we know if all the Patrick Henry goof-balls have been booted?  From Obama's performance on the DoJ front, not likely.)

This three-front fundy assault is ultimately geared toward turning  the United States into a land ruled by God's law, with control of the world's most potent military.  At the low level, some of these people appear to justify election theft in order to "save the babies."  They are not the ones imaging unleashing nuclear armageddon so that maybe Jesus will hurry along.*


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* Or who knows?  Maybe they are, too.  I confess, I have no idea how such people even think, if they do at all.  Imagine Dobson, or one of the other bloated Jesus toads, standing in front of adoring, near- rapturous throngs.  He bellows into the mic: "If the weak-kneed politicians are too afraid to do it, we, my sisters and brothers, WE must unleash hell on earth so that Jesus may come and bless the saved and sweep us away from the blighted land.  Blighted, mind you, in fulfilling the prophesies of God's Word."

And then the throngs, at first uncertain, until a few well placed agents provocateurs  start chanting, "nuke 'em for Jesus! nuke 'em for Jesus!"  tentatively join in praise of nuking … someone.  And soon it's all git up and Yeeha!  "Nuke 'em for Jesus!" becomes the latest populist battle cry of an ever more unhinged Christian fundamentalist population.

And, really,, who wouldn't love to see that?  Indeed, a full monty slide of the Republican party into a behemoth Westboro Baptist church ensemble would be sight to behold.  This speaks nothing to what this would do to the putative American democracy, but it would be fascinating to watch, in and of itself.