The event after which dozens of governments were destabilized and incumbents were ousted from power all over the world… convinced you that radical change is easy…?
The United States was a couple feet from an actual coup dude.
The United States was a couple feet from an actual coup dude.
Would that not have been different? I certainly haven't heard of a suspected coup by disgruntled democrats and/or minorities.
I suspect the coup you allude to would have amounted to a coup of the people in power to stay in power. Not a popular, armed uprising. So I don't see how it's relevant to the point you are trying to make.
The point is that the radical change that was "so easy" during COVID was 1) forced by an emergency, and 2) triggered a stream of emergencies that we're still dealing with today across the entire world.
If GP meant "radical change is easy so long as you can accept a stream of emergencies with uncertain outcomes for an indefinite amount of time into the future," then sure... radical change is easy!
The pandemic was easy for me to live through because I'm just like that; and it was easy for the disease to evolve in a wet market*…
… but that whole "flatten the curve" thing was because it came within a hair's breadth of overwhelming national healthcare systems and this was obviously a risk to be mitigated before the event.
* this happened in wet markets many times, not just COVID; and this will happen again if steps aren't taken to mitigate that, no matter what you may think about lab leaks which do also happen sometimes because humans are fallible and do make mistakes on occasion.
In any event, over here in the UK there's a real wind-power push (with the surrounding water being so shallow that off-shore wind-farms are very possible), but even in these extended latitudes, solar power is viable and the government currently make them VAT-free for installs, with no planning requirements because they fall under 'permitted development'. Renewable energy was at ~56% Q2 2026.
The UK government set up 'Great British Energy' with £8.3B of funding for coinvestment with private firms in various clean energy generation. I think the UK is definitely doing its part.
How does this square with the oft-repeated line that the Second Amendment is useless when the government has tanks, bombs, and aircraft carriers? January 6th was a bunch of unarmed boomers. If you really think the government was >this< close to being overthrown by them, then you might as well pack it up. The US wouldn't stand a chance if a couple thousand armed Russian or Chinese nationals decided to show up to the Capitol.
At that point it would require the top generals to stage a coup of their own. Which they probably would have. But I'm glad we didn't find out.
The military is extremely strong and would easily show off foreign invaders. But the Constitution didn't foresee an elected but corrupt executive overthrowing the government. That is a blind spot they reasonably didn't anticipate.