VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Please Stop The Coup Porn.

In a recent Washington Post op-ed, three retired generals, Paul Eaton, Antonio Taguba, and Steven Anderson, warn of a supposedly impending coup should Donald Trump be elected in 2024.

The column seemed strangely timed to coincide with a storm of recent Democratic talking points that a re-elected Trump, or even a Republican sweep of the 2022 midterms, would spell a virtual end of democracy.

Ironies abound.

From Election Day in 2020 to Inauguration Day 2021, we were told by the Left that democracy was resilient and rightly rid the nation of Trump.

The hard Left, for one of the rare times in U.S. history, was now in complete control of both houses of Congress and the presidency.

Spiking inflation, supply-chain shortages, near-record gas prices, open borders, the flight from Afghanistan, multi-trillion-dollar deficits, and polarizing racial rhetoric all followed.

In response to these events, Joe Biden’s popularity utterly collapsed. His own cognitive challenges multiplied the unpopularity of his failed policies.

In reaction, the Left again pivoted. It suddenly announced that should it lose congressional power in 2022 or the presidency in 2024, democracy was all but doomed.

Apparently, what changed Democrats’ views was that democracy was working all too well in expressing widespread public disgust . . . with the Left.

Even more ironies followed.

The three retired generals shrilly write of the dangers of insurrection and coups. Yet the FBI found no such insurrection or conspiracy in the buffoonish riot on January 6.

The more they talk about a coup, the more likely one becomes. It’s destructive and deeply irresponsible, but then our political class is destructive and deeply irresponsible.

Related thoughts here.

UPDATE: From the comments

The preference cascade happened in record time, and now it’s becoming IMPLAUSIBLE that Democrats can hold onto power. And that’s the key: implausibility.

If they somehow “miraculously” hang onto power, nobody will believe it. At that point, open civil war is justified. And even if it doesn’t go that far, they’ll still lose power which is the only thing they care about. They then might actually be held accountable.

That’s why they’re becoming increasingly unhinged.

Plus:

Impending coup should Donald Trump be elected in 2024
Since when did we start calling an election a coup?

2016. It happened in 2016. Though not so much “we.”