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Comment by albedoa | Hacker News Reader

That doesn't pass even the simplest examination. What if the thing that the democratically elected president promised to do was a coup?

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It still wouldn't make sense. A democratically elected president conducting a coup is a tautology. He can't suddenly seize power by force because he already has it. You could be worried about him refusing to cede power at the end of his term, and should that occur, with the use of the military, you could describe that as a coup. We are many years away from that word making sense.

So if a presidential promises to execute all of his opposition in the legislature and execute the judges that disagree with him and execute anyone in the bureaucracy that fails to obey his orders, and then he gets elected, and then he does those things, while blatantly breaking any and all previously passed laws that he cares to, is it a coup?

Historically, a lot of coups were made by democratically elected head of states. It's easier to seize full power when you have some of it.

See Napoleon 3, Hitler himself...

Your opinion is revealing, if you already think he has full power, then you agree it's a coup.

Neither Napoleon nor Hitler were ever elected as heads of state. Hitler was eventually appointed Chancellor, but that is the head of government. The head of state is the President. Hitler was able to manoeuvre into that position using his personal army to murder opposition. Napoleon had an old fashioned military coup in 1799, then attempted to legitimise it with a falsified plebiscite in the following year.

In both cases, the issue was the murder, not the democracy. It is important that we not blame democracy for the actions of evil men.

Napoleon 3 was elected president in 1848 and became emperor in 1852, you are mixing up with the first Napoleon.

And then the head of state in the Weimar republic really was the chancellor, that's why Hitler could dismantle the republic.

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