when i was in high school in ap history, i had a teacher who asked everyone to go home and devise a plan to take over the united states government. most of the kids came up with "get elected as president and use the national guard or military to hold congress at gun point"
but with the current events happening, here is my question:
can terrorism be used as a political tool to twist democracy in the united states into a dictatorship realistically? thoughts?

Thats a sweet history class you got there. I want to do that.(both in the class and real life, jk)

Terrorism promotes the violation of privacy for security. If you want you could stage terrorst attacks, in something say... regarding hotels, motels, and cause a legitamate need for security in that sector. Now, you need a program that can bypass warrants/courts, but also is fail proof and give you acess to spy on people, say the opposing party.

A dictorship however, is much diferent then a strong presidency or in this case what people think George Bush's presidency is like. In a dictorship, they just kill the opposing party, a manipulative presidency they can only spy, and even that has only been done once.

For you to gain dictorship, you need to real power, that power is derived from Congress who makes the laws and is incharge of the military's spending. Here's what you do, make a law declaring you, or the person that's holding the same office as you currently or not that in the event of a catastrophical attack on Congress, and with also assasinations (as even in Union Addresses certain people are exempt for security reasons).

Then once the law pass, you make sure your in that office or position and make the attack in the next event that gathers congress around. You do this and now you have the powers of congress, but its not that simple.

Why? Congress knows this so a law would be like this:
The said person(s) would have to nominate/elect certain person(s) to fill in the seats of congress, and until the next election/ possible election. That said you would have to either be in influence with the said person(s) or bribe them. Or be in cooperative concession with, ransom is good enough.

You also have to pass a law that contradicts the old law passed, making that elections are no longer required and that you have no longer have to be elected. This doesn't violate the constitution since you are no longer Congress, you are merely ruling on their behalf.

There is also 3 more problems that you face, the president, the military, and the people. The President, a problem thats easy to control, control the party that the President is in and control him directly. The military is harder, if they find out about your plan or agendas, you might as well commit suicide. Controling them requires you control the President, and also have a facade .
The same goes for the facade, you require a facade, a public appearance, a mandate for your actions as they will be portrayed in the media. Thus this requires, one more thing:

An enemy. We need an enemy that we can use as a puppet, to control the people's aggression, and legitamize our actions. That enemy could be a terrorist network, as a country would not last to long. The military would be fixated on them and not you and the people would look at your actions while weighing another attack from the enemy.

It is a very delicate plan, but a plan that surmises coercion of a coupe or a coupe de ta. With this plan you truely control the people without risk of backlash or a revolution or another coupe which I predict would be promenent in the US which has always spured freedom and such. The delicacy is that your plan and your ploys must be kept secret. It is crucial that people/military didn't know you either provoked or let terrorist attack your country, and Congress. They must believe your actions had alway been benevolent or they won't let you attain power.
There is a decision though: Should you control the terrorist network yourself or just provoke one already in the works?
1. The latter is more reliable, goes away when you want it to. However if a link from you to this network does show, your as good as dead.
2. The former is less reliable and does not go away, but no definite proof can link you to them. You can control them through security leaks, intel leaks, and through giving them what they want when your done with them.

Dictators in other countries have organizations they can trust, and their inner circle that they work together with and all of whom have the same interests and benefits of. In the US you must start this inner circle of a sizable amount of people. People that could implement parts of your plan make it seem like your not involved. You want your entire makeshift congress to be under your thumb, you want the majority of old congress to be under your influence, enough to pass the bill, and people to lobby for it, the president to sign it, and generals to oversee it.

A military background is a must if you want to gain trust from the military, and serves as a backdrop to getting that office or position.

Remember, that the only real power comes from weapons, not pieces of parchment, forget that and you'll find yourself in control of a White House but surround by your enemies.
If you want to know more about this technique, look up Napolean's rise to power. He went from a simple soldier to an Emperor of an empire.

Bonus Advice: You could turn the people against Congress and/or government through a simple coupe that has gained mandate amongst the majority of people, but that requires a despotical government. Something you could help mold into through terrorism and so on.

Excellent post, Blue...

Just had to tell you that, because I'm not even sure what I could add that you didn't already cover.

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A scared nation...is a vunerable one.

ok, there is already contraversy over 9/11 and who really did it. terrorist or cia??? but question: now that the u.s. has moved this much closer, especially with the shady elections, domestic spying, and the "patriot" act, do u thing maybe the current administration has something special planned before the next election of 2008??? is that even possible? can it happen here out of all places?

[QUOTE=rubix;269134]ok, there is already contraversy over 9/11 and who really did it. QUOTE]

Only a controversy umongst the uneducated.

[QUOTE=sbergum;269291][QUOTE=rubix;269134]ok, there is already contraversy over 9/11 and who really did it. QUOTE]

Only a controversy umongst the uneducated. [/QUOTE]

uneducated? i suggest u look up who's talking about it. it's engineers and college professors of physics! doesn't everyone know that by now? ok, look, forget everything u'v ever assumed about the main stream media. look into alternative media sources. it's all over the web. try youtube and alex jones

u know,i'm sorry, i may have misread what u said. i assumed uneducated was referring to me, if this was not so, and was referring to others, please disregard the above notice. damn, i'm starting to sound like a bill collector!!! never thought that would happen!

[QUOTE=rubix;269311][QUOTE=sbergum;269291]

uneducated? i suggest u look up who's talking about it. it's engineers and college professors of physics! doesn't everyone know that by now? ok, look, forget everything u'v ever assumed about the main stream media. look into alternative media sources. it's all over the web. try youtube and alex jones[/QUOTE]

Neither of those examples could be called reliable news sources.