Adam Braus: 0:18

Okay, this is okay. Okay, Okay, I have a solution. Wait, no, I remember. I want to talk about one.

Scot Maupin: 0:22

Okay, you got one. We're here to do that. That's why we got to do that, okay.

Adam Braus: 0:26

Hey everyone, my name is Adam Brouse, I'm Scott Moppen, and we are solutions from the multiverse, also solutions FM, if you're so inclined, you know you will answer to either name and abbreviation Yep, and every, every week we share a unheard of new solution. It also has to be kind of plausible. It's not just like totally insane, it has some plausibility. I mean we could say, oh, I have a solution for this, rub ketchup on it. I mean that wouldn't be right. Right, so we. It's some kind of plausibility. But the idea is that.

Scot Maupin: 1:00

It's totally new. What if the problem is my fries are too dry? Then that's the perfect solution. There you go, there you go You're right, you're right, you're right.

Adam Braus: 1:08

But it's not exactly, but it's not a new solution, so it'd never be on this podcast. You'd have to say like rub I don't know, duck, duck, duck, you know cod liver oil on it. I don't know if I've ever done that. Probably I hope cod liver oil. Throw that on some dry French fries. You get some pretty oily, gross French fries.

Scot Maupin: 1:26

Sounds like a great solution.

Adam Braus: 1:28

Totally great. Okay, I've got. I've got a solution that's not food related. Okay, should I go for it Please?

Scot Maupin: 1:38

What'd you got for a second?

Adam Braus: 1:39

Oh wait, I can't. I was a bad. I was talking about it with my friend and then he was like don't call it that.

Scot Maupin: 1:44

I was like okay, call it no, so we're going to get the revised name.

Adam Braus: 1:49

We're going to use the revised name because I don't think I get canceled for the real name. Now I got to know not because I, not because I'm bad, but because it sounds bad.

Scot Maupin: 1:57

Okay, okay, hey, hey, say the real name and I'll beep it out.

Adam Braus: 2:01

No, we'll do it. You can say the revised name.

Scot Maupin: 2:03

Really, I'm just curious now I can't think of anything else.

Adam Braus: 2:06

Okay, okay, I'll tell you. I'll tell you after, I'll tell you after, I'll tell you after, I'll tell you what it is, and then later I'll tell you what the name is. You can bleep it out.

Scot Maupin: 2:13

Okay, okay, I will.

Adam Braus: 2:14

So basically what I'm saying is we should make. We should make anti coup militias, anti coup militias, yeah Right. So, okay so the second not just the armed forces. No actually armed forces are often involved in coups.

Scot Maupin: 2:36

That's true, military, military yeah they can be.

Adam Braus: 2:39

I mean, usually that's one of the deciding factors is if the dictatorial person can get the military to sort of side with them, and it's usually not very hard, because they're like look, if you don't like go with me, there's gonna be chaos, and militaries hate chaos, right. So they kind of like lock down, so they can usually do it, or they. I mean, if they can, that's the risk. So the only real last line of defense is the people to reject the coup. And so you have to have, so you have to have like a like right now, like do you know of any standing Right, Okay, Like, if you go into a school, you're in any classroom. There's like always a thing on the wall it says, in case of fire, here's how to escape the room, right, but we're in a democracy and last time I checked I've never seen like here's how to like if there's a coup, do that, pull this tab. You know there's nothing.

Scot Maupin: 3:26

Right, yeah, yeah. So we need that. So we need, like, an airplane brochure that tells us how to how to deal with it in case of a coup. We should make that.

Adam Braus: 3:37

It should look just like it dude, that would okay. Solutions merch we got to start a merch store. I learned that a bunch of pots of successful YouTube's and podcast shows they actually they make most of their money from their merch store.

Scot Maupin: 3:48

So we should make this merge.

Adam Braus: 3:50

We should make like a laminate thing, that's like what to do in case of coup and it's like so cool yeah.

Scot Maupin: 3:57

It's got like those little like stick figure drawings of the people doing the and they're all smiling. Safety procedures.

Adam Braus: 4:03

They're smiling with their heads between their legs as they're playing dives into the ocean. The rest of us are all like screaming and grabbing our loved ones the hands like the real. That's what people actually behave.

Scot Maupin: 4:13

Okay, so these would be just random, regular people who are also like secretly or not secretly members of the no, publicly publicly, because you want to Anti-coup militia?

Adam Braus: 4:24

Yeah, Cause you want to threaten the, the potential coup. People should be like scared of doing a coup because they should know that there's going to be this like swift and deliberate reaction by the people. That's like decentralized but like very forceful, and that would that would deter a coup more because they would know that the coup, the coupers, the coup day.

Scot Maupin: 4:48

That's right. No, that's correct. Coors, coors.

Adam Braus: 4:50

Yeah, the coupists, yeah they. They would be like oh shoot we. You know, we should be careful about doing this coup because we'll get in trouble. So no, it should be public. And well, let me put it this way, the second amendment is considered to be the right to bear arms, is it not? The yes, but I would say that the second amendment is actually the right to form a militia.

Scot Maupin: 5:17

Right, yeah, that's how it's phrased. Yeah.

Adam Braus: 5:20

It says a well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. So I would say that it's almost like the founding fathers are telling us what really matters for freedom is a militia, and I agree with that. But I would add to that the the research there's. I would add to that, you know, to have a coup response. Now people may be listening, are like, oh, we should get armed to the teeth for our coup response, but actually it turns out that an a nonviolent coup response would probably be the best one in America To do well, that's.

Scot Maupin: 5:58

That's exactly where I was gonna go first is like how do you expect normal citizenry to Deal with the firepower of them, like in the event that the military decides to do a coup? They've got all the guns and the best and biggest, and knowledge of how to use it right, and what is it?

Adam Braus: 6:16

on violent coup what does that look like? How well, I can't even imagine. Well, the coup might be violent, but I'm talking about the anti-coup militia.

Scot Maupin: 6:23

Oh sorry, yeah, what is an anti? A nonviolent anti coup militia?

Adam Braus: 6:27

the anti coup militias. So I, I, I let me tell you a story. Okay so, and In college I was in a club that no one else wanted to be a part of. It was kind of like that. It was called the Adam club, exactly it was started.

Scot Maupin: 6:43

I was, the president and, surprisingly, nobody wanted to join it was gonna like that.

Adam Braus: 6:48

I wouldn't want to be a part of a club that accepted me as a member is like I said, hey, everybody want to join the Adam club and nobody said yes weird. So I literally started a club and it was all about in learning about nonviolence, nonviolent action, you know, using peaceful means to to Manipulate power.

Scot Maupin: 7:07

Essentially, did someone walk by and heckle you. They're like you can't be violent if there's no one else there to get into a fight with yeah. Sitting by yourself, you're fine.

Adam Braus: 7:16

You're all by yourself.

Scot Maupin: 7:17

You're totally not violent bro.

Adam Braus: 7:19

No fight coming your way, um exactly. Thank you for making me relive the trauma of my oh no loneliness? No, I'm just kidding.

Scot Maupin: 7:27

It was probably, I imagine I wasn't lonely. Yeah, yeah.

Adam Braus: 7:30

Yeah, it was very like a deep emotional trauma. No, I was actually. I was actually had a lot of fun in college and a lot of good friends, but in this one case I was just like often no man's land and no one else was interested. But I was very interested and I learned everything about nonviolence like way too much. I read like every word Gandhi put to paper. I read, not like Nelson Mandela's like thousand page Sell autobiography, which by the everyone like when he gets to Robin Island in prison you can just skip until he leaves because he didn't know what was happening. So that here there's about 400 pages in this thousand page book where he's just like and then I heard some news but I couldn't confirm what had happened and so we kept Moving the rocks. You know, in the prison I was like, oh my god, who let him put all 400 pages of this and then thing this would be like a cool.

Scot Maupin: 8:20

Yeah, there must have been a new cook at the, at the Galley, because suddenly the food was markedly improved.

Adam Braus: 8:28

Exactly. And then it's like I, they gave me a new pair of pants and it's like Jesus Mandiba, just come on, cut to the chase here. Anyways, really good book, the long, long, long walk to freedom. But yeah, so I read all these things and I found because this was like a Not pre-internet bent and not pre-google, but you know, I was googling and I was using the library resources really heavily to find the right stuff and I found this guy named Gene Sharp and this guy, gene Sharp, who was alive, he had this thing called the Albert Einstein Institute in Boston and I was like, I was like a complete devotee, the devotee of this guy, and I read all his books and I like learned all about the Einstein Institute, because Albert Einstein was famously like a pacifist or not necessarily pacifist, but yeah, he was anti-war and you know, especially after he helped create the atomic bomb.

Scot Maupin: 9:16

Yeah, I was gonna say he should not have done that, that part probably. Well.

Adam Braus: 9:19

Maybe, maybe not. Some you might say atomic bombs have secured, almost warped world peace for the last hundred years.

Scot Maupin: 9:25

So you might say. You might say they killed hundreds of thousands of people.

Adam Braus: 9:29

Well, they killed a thousand people, but yeah, but anyways, there hasn't been a major war against to between two major powers since they were invented. So that's pretty cool, but um very you know it is super cool, terrifying, but cool.

Adam Braus: 9:42

But yeah, complicated issue obviously, but I just want you know. I feel like that's not given enough credit credence sometimes, but. But but the thing is is this this Albert Einstein Institute and Gene Sharp was so cool. I went to New York to visit my aunt and to kind of hang out in New York for just like a week, maybe like a spring break or something or like in the summer for a week, and I was like this and this, this Albert Einstein Institute is in Boston, so I get on the Chinatown bus because I had no money. I get on the Chinatown bus in New York, in Chinatown, and it takes you to Chinatown Boston if you're ridden this bus.

Scot Maupin: 10:13

I've not been to New York or Boston no there are chickens on the bus, at least.

Adam Braus: 10:18

I mean, it's literally like, it's like people who are afraid to fight you. They're just like challenge that Lily livered yellow, yellow belly.

Scot Maupin: 10:26

What Lily livered, but good thing I was Boston, what's up.

Adam Braus: 10:29

I was using non-violence to fight them. So that's right, they were just crushed under my, I'm just calling them chickens.

Scot Maupin: 10:35

Yeah, they're like I will fight you?

Adam Braus: 10:37

You're like no you won't.

Scot Maupin: 10:38

I'm not violent, you chicken.

Adam Braus: 10:40

They just punched her in the face.

Scot Maupin: 10:43

Okay, so this guy chickens on a bus.

Adam Braus: 10:45

Yeah, I mean, it was like Chinatown, it was like these, it was like a really cool bus is $10 to go from New York to Boston, chinatown to Chinatown. Okay, I get, I get off the bus in China, in Boston. I have only one reason to be in Boston and that's so to go meet Jean Sharp. This guy doesn't know that I'm coming. I just go to his office in the middle of the day and I knock on the door. It's just this like totally like modest, like it's. This is like you know One room office that he holds that it says Albert Einstein Institute, on you know the little card and I'm like, and, with my backpack and like my socks pulled all the way up, and I'm like, oh, my god, I'm gonna meet, you know, jean Sharp. And now I got the door and I'm like, I'm like, oh, my name's Adam and I'm I go to college and I like your book, sir.

Scot Maupin: 11:30

I brought my entire club with me.

Adam Braus: 11:32

Yeah, and here's my whole club.

Scot Maupin: 11:34

We've arrived on your doorstep together right now.

Adam Braus: 11:37

Yeah, and he's like oh, he's this old guy. And he's like oh.

Adam Braus: 11:41

Yes, come in. You know, can I offer you some tepid water? You know, he's just this, like old man, it's like nice and friendly and and and he's just. You know, they say like never meet your heroes, you know, and he was good, you know he's a cool guy, but I mean he was just like doing his day and like I just got, I was just there all of a sudden and he hadn't like prepared anything or anything, so he was just like oh yeah, well, what are you studying?

Adam Braus: 12:03

Oh yeah oh and then I was like I tried to like ask him like a profound question to see if I could like get Like some profound answer, and he just was like oh, it's all in this book, you know. And then I asked another question and be like, well, it's all, and you kind of look through and be like it's all in this book, you know, he'd written like 16 books. So like every question I had, he just was like read this another book.

Scot Maupin: 12:22

You know, you basically showed up on his door, knock, knock, and you were like hey, could you smart for me, please? Could, yeah, like, please, smart for me?

Adam Braus: 12:30

Yeah it was still. It was still a very meaningful thing, because I met, you know, even to this day I mean, I think he's still alive but even to this day he is the great. I mean he he has been for his time the greatest sort of Bearer of the flame of this theory of nonviolence, the. The most recent, though, hit the. That torch was passed, though, recently, to a woman named Erica Chenoweth, who was a Harvard researcher right there in Boston probably knew Jean.

Scot Maupin: 13:00

That was. It was past peacefully. It wasn't like a tournament.

Adam Braus: 13:03

There was a really it was a violent.

Scot Maupin: 13:07

Best of the best tournament where he had a fight for who gets the title of most violent.

Adam Braus: 13:12

It was a bloody. No, it wasn't violent, they did, I think. Actually they weren't. There wasn't even coordination. Erica was just like, okay, then you can treat him in, можете.

Adam Braus: 13:19

Erica Chenoweth, actually, when she talks about it, when she yeah, she's really cool when she talks about it she was like, well, I didn't think that any of this could possibly be true. She was like a PhD in political philosophy and international studies and stuff. And she was like, well, this couldn't possibly be true. That like non-violence did anything, like of course violence is the main arbiter, or like the final arbiter of power in society. And then she like actually did like a data analysis this is kind of what she's known for.

Adam Braus: 13:47

She pulled her, she and her co-researcher pulled all the conflicts like in the last whatever 300 years and Categorize them and in filtered them and categorize them into violent or nonviolent. Obviously they're a mixture, but they had these kind of rigorous standards for whether it was a violent or nonviolent. And then they found out that actually nonviolent Methods for 300 years, like since before modernity, have actually been more successful in Achieving whatever the goals were then violent conflicts and that's for a bunch of reasons violent conflicts are are dangerous. They're kind of unpredictable, you know they kind of swirl out of control and stuff, whereas nonviolent conflicts you have like discipline, because you kind of you know, and people stay kind of calm because no one's like burning shit down and like Killing people and stuff.

Adam Braus: 14:33

Yeah, sure, yeah but anyways, really interesting. Jericho Chenoweth, and, and, and and Gene Sharp. So Gene Sharp wrote this book. That's actually an open source book that I urge everyone to go and look and it's called anti-coup, anti-coup, the anti-coup. Okay, and it's a. It's a free. I think it's a free and open source book, but you can also buy it, which you know you should buy it. Give Gene a little money, like $12, but you can also just I think you can just download it too, because it's meant to be like a public good. You know it's meant to be like right thing, that that that kind of isn't.

Adam Braus: 15:04

It's like vaccination, like the way we just vaccinated everyone for the pandemic. This book and the idea of like inculcating this idea of like an anti-coup, is like a vaccine for a country against coups. Now, when I met Gene Sharp, I did not think that we would live through a coup during my lifetime Right in America.

Adam Braus: 15:22

I sure yeah, but that's January 6th happened like last, you know, two years ago, and I was like oh well, immediately now everyone's gonna start reading this book, right? People are gonna start preparing for the next possible coup, right, because we almost had one, right. Mm-hmm and then I just kept waiting, and waiting, and waiting, and waiting, and now it's been two years and I've never even heard anyone breathe a word of it.

Scot Maupin: 15:47

No, what's insane? What you see is like people pass around that the picture from the Holocaust Museum. That's like the signs of fast, the signs of fascism, or you know like those, these types of memes, but I Don't see anything coup specific. You're right.

Adam Braus: 16:03

Yeah, yeah. And so the way you move from like democracy to fascism or from you know democracy to you know explicit, you know oligarchy or democracy to whatever is through a coup. That's how it happens. So if we really cared about especially the Second Amendment, like I can almost get on board With the people who care about the Second Amendment when they say you know, we have to be ready for anything to like protect ourselves from the government to defend freedom. I agree completely. I just I look at Eric Eric Achenoweth's research that actually has figured out what would be the most successful way for us to actually do that, and it turns out it's not guns, it's actually being prepared to execute this like nonviolent mass action Against the government and against okay, one who would try to do a coup?

Scot Maupin: 16:48

So, for people who haven't read that or looked into it, what does that look like? What it? Yeah, you describe what that would look like, instead of a bunch of people grabbing guns and then Exactly.

Adam Braus: 17:00

Yeah, so basically, what you do is well, this is why you need to like prepare, because you can't do it spontaneously. That's why there should be these like well, okay, I'll you got to bleep it out here, but I'll tell you what it was gonna be called. It was gonna be called, but then I realized it sound like.

Scot Maupin: 17:17

It is. It shares similarities. Yeah, there's something you don't want to evoke.

Adam Braus: 17:22

Yeah, yeah, so.

Scot Maupin: 17:23

I evoke and I didn't realize at all.

Adam Braus: 17:26

I didn't realize at all when I started saying it. But yeah, so what we want is anti coup Militias. That's really what they are they're. They're militias, not armed militias. These are nonviolent militias, but they're people who meet up and are members of like a club. Locally. Right, it would be like a local sort of activist club where you would you don't have to meet all the time. I mean, you could just meet once and have like a website that trains you and then maybe meet a few times to know your other kind of co, co, anti coup militia members. You might do trainings. You know, once a year you might do a training.

Scot Maupin: 18:01

You go out to the wilderness fresh with a bunch of other people in your anti coup. Yeah, like well, yeah, and you're like you're just one like, ditch over from the National Guard who are doing their monthly training, and you're like and then you run into them. They're like hey, what do you do? You're like, I'm training to take out you if you become a problem.

Adam Braus: 18:20

They're like okay, All these guns and all these big rifles and you have nothing.

Scot Maupin: 18:27

You're just like they're like how are you gonna do that? They're like non-violently, you'll see, you'll see, you'll see there's a woman in Harvard who will show you.

Adam Braus: 18:38

It's gonna be a big deal.

Scot Maupin: 18:39

So what is a mass? What would you do to stop a coup? Is it, I guess, different depending on every coup?

Adam Braus: 18:45

or it's, it's, it's. That's a good, that's a really good point. It might be a little different for each one, but generally they follow, want like they just do a few things and you have to be creative, but you pretty much a follow one principle, which is you withdraw cooperation with the government. So it feels like to most people this is kind of Gandhi's like key, like insight, which was like it seems to most people that the government rules over people because the government has power over you. But it turns out the actual fact. This is not like a metaphor or some kind of spiritual thing, this is like actual political philosophy. Fact is, the government can only rule because of the consent of the rule to be governed by the government, and so what you have to do is withdraw that consent very dramatically and very like Rigidly and quickly so that, so that the message is sent to them like this will not go forward, like the society will grind to a halt if this coup happens, and Therefore we demand for the actual government, the legal government, to be reinstated.

Scot Maupin: 19:58

Yeah, that's the. The meme is become ungoverned, or.

Adam Braus: 20:01

There you become ungovernable.

Adam Braus: 20:03

That's right now. That could be violence, though, so I don't want to promote exactly that phrase, because it could be like oh, burn shit to the ground, you know, throw rocks at the police or something. You don't want to do that. Instead, you just want to withdraw all cooperation. So the key things are stop going to work, stop going to school, stop, definitely stop paying taxes, you know. Block the street. You know, just block the street with. You know, get cars, take all the gas and wheels out of them and block the street Like block. You know, basically seize up everything so that nothing can happen in society. And if you do that, actually a very small number of people need to do that To have success. So Erica Chenoweth also researched this. So she researched, for every nonviolent act, you know, a political change or political movement, what percentage of people in the population needed to get involved, and she found this key number. She and her co-researcher found this key kind of golden number, which is 3.5 percent.

Adam Braus: 21:05

Huh every single Nonviolent Battle like that was ever fought. If 3.5 percent of people got out, got involved and and withdrew their cooperation, they succeeded. There's never been a time in history when one did not succeed when it reached that threshold.

Scot Maupin: 21:24

But you would want to have as much, as much support as you could get. You know, right, yeah, yeah, have the have the validity or the legitimacy. I, when you're describing this, I'm remembering a few years ago there was a truck trucker based Shutdown of a city where they were Canada no coordinated.

Scot Maupin: 21:48

Or Florida or where I thought it was Canada or DC, but it was like they coordinated a Like just moving slowly on the streets and then Parking and leaving big rigs in places that would just be really inconvenient and you can't. You can't do anything about it, because it's like what are you gonna do? And and just like this it. To me it became characterized as like a siege on the city right, it was not, it was Canada.

Adam Braus: 22:16

Yeah, it was Canada, but it was just not because they were there were mad at Trudeau, it was like a right-wing thing, right it was yeah, but it's like that's.

Scot Maupin: 22:23

That's kind of what you're describing in that there was no there were no guns pulled out. It was strategic in the like, impeding other people's convenience and stuff great but I think the messaging was hey, these are, these are kind of like A kenta terrorists. Essentially they're not using violence to accomplish right, but they're using inconvenience in some somewhat the same way.

Adam Braus: 22:48

Very creative, very, very successful? Yeah, very good? I think not. I'm not saying their ends were good, but I'm saying technically their means were very, I think, quite powerful.

Scot Maupin: 22:58

Well, it definitely got. It got them noticed and it got their platform Wily spread very quickly because I heard about I'm not in Canada, I've not been to Canada anytime recently and I heard about this where I was from. It came to me. I didn't go to it.

Adam Braus: 23:16

Yeah. So I mean, yeah, I mean I'm not good. I think I knew a little bit about what they were doing and I probably wouldn't be on their side in terms of what their ends were, but I certainly appreciate their means. I mean far worse than that would be like violence, right. I mean violence would create, right, horrible chaos and obviously death and destruction and pain and Grief.

Adam Braus: 23:34

You know, here's what would happen if people actually took this idea up. It would be a bunch of sort of you know, leftist, sort of Democrat, leftist activist type people would start, I imagine, and Then and then they would be like oh well, so long as we're meeting, we should also protest. All these things that are just our partisan things, and I would really think that's bad. I wouldn't want to do that. I would say if you really wanted to protect America and protect, like really protect the government from a coup, you, you want to like get together people who literally want to stop coups and that's like their shared interest, and even if they have different beliefs about other issues, you could all agree that you like want the Constitution to continue to be like the, the kind of, you know, chief law of the government and not some jerk or whatever of either of either stripe, you know, sure could take over, so so I would.

Adam Braus: 24:23

I'm afraid that it would probably get co-opted and co-opted into like all this stuff. But or maybe that's another way to do it. You could say hey, we're starting like a American democracy club where we're gonna include Anti-coup training and we're gonna read the anti-coup or whatever, but we're also going to do like pro voting and pro democracy stuff to like support the Constitution, support Democratic process on a. That'd be cool to. That'd be cool too, but so long as people had that anti-coup a.

Adam Braus: 24:51

Component component where they're getting trained in how to do an anti-coup. Yeah yeah, that's, yeah, that's the solution that's come up.

Scot Maupin: 25:01

I've come up with a name for it. Good, what is it? Okay, it's called hey uncool Dude. I like uncool, uncool Dude. Hey uncoo, cuz uncool, you're undoing a coup.

Adam Braus: 25:17

Okay, so this I. You will not believe this, but hit on the exact name of my club that I started. It was called uncool. It's a weirdo Rush to join it with you, there were knocking on the table. You want to hear a whole sign, your stupid. The name was it was called.

Adam Braus: 25:37

It was called the peace query. I don't even know if it's English, but that's what it was called. It was like a query query like the people who are gonna ask questions about peace. It was so stupid. I had no shame and no self-awareness. I put, I put, I printed posters and put them all over joint come on Thursday 5 pm In this meeting.

Adam Braus: 26:04

No one came maybe took us like a friend came and was like what you know, just to be a friendly. But then I was like, oh, no one wants to talk, nobody did this group go on after this initial meeting?

Scot Maupin: 26:17

No, did you. Oh yeah, yeah I get no.

Adam Braus: 26:19

no, I kept trying to get it to start and because I was just so taken with it, because to me it was like I found like a cheat code in the universe, you know, like I was like, oh my god, this is so pot, this is crazy.

Scot Maupin: 26:31

You're like I could start a group and no one will hang out with me. How did I do that? It's cheap code.

Adam Braus: 26:35

Look at this cheap code. Well, I thought a cheat code in like politics, because we were reading, like I was studying, like Machiavelli and we had just read like the Iliad and we are, you know, people would talk about, you know, the Iraq war was going on and everyone the default thought was man, violence is the ultimate, ultimate arbiter of like things. I was that everyone was thinking. And then I was reading Gandhi, like no dude, like this is a pretty strong evidence here. And then Erica, really Eric Chenoweth really goes To like way past, where she really gathers the data and shows you know the facts. So I mean, but Gandhi just kind of intuited that you know, and then he proved, I mean freed India from the British. You know, using that intuition, I mean.

Adam Braus: 27:16

I'm sure I was really in people's face about it because I was a bit obnoxious. I didn't have a nice podcast for as an outlet, you know, where I kind of contained my ideas into just the podcast.

Scot Maupin: 27:26

I was had to go person to person and, yeah, each person to show every time every time right, and they were like. God so much more convenient tolerable.

Adam Braus: 27:33

Yeah, that's right. This is the mass, the mass exploration of. I Just think it's so cool. If there had been a coup I mean obviously there wasn't. But even if there had been the threat of a coup, everyone was completely taken unawares after January 6th, right yeah, I was like flabbergasted and everybody I talked to was the same way. They were just like. I cannot believe. First of all, I couldn't believe that just the police didn't like stop it, like the police are so quick to just crush any protest I've ever seen has had massive police Presence and then all of a sudden, like six thousand people can take over the central government, like the central government's main building. I'm like what the hell? I don't think people could get into a DMV in San Francisco with that, you know, I mean yeah that was wild.

Scot Maupin: 28:20

I remember watching it as it was happening and Thinking to myself this is this is more shocking to me than 9-11 was, which I also. Was watching at the time you know, and it's like it's like wow, I cannot believe this is happening. I have no idea. It's really crazy situation, yeah and it kept going on for a very long time. You're like somebody's gonna swoop in and like do some massive action, right, yeah, yeah, like show force.

Adam Braus: 28:46

I thought there was gonna be. I thought there was gonna be like this show of force where, like the trucks rolled in and was like Get the hell out of the right.

Scot Maupin: 28:55

Yeah, that's what I thought was gonna happen. Dude's in masks slide in on like bungee cords and nope.

Adam Braus: 29:00

They were just like okay, well, if you're done now, please leave like wander off.

Scot Maupin: 29:05

Yeah, it was very.

Adam Braus: 29:08

It's like what the hell is it made you look?

Scot Maupin: 29:10

at it and go like, oh, I don't know what I imagined would be the response to People invading the Capitol, but I thought it would be more, something more than yeah.

Adam Braus: 29:19

I thought it would be more than I thought. I thought at least they would create like a cone around them Outside the Capitol and surround to do a perimeter and arrest every single person coming out.

Scot Maupin: 29:29

That's what I thought they were gonna do but apparently no, they had to drag it down later. They just like let them go. Media like has anyone seen this person?

Adam Braus: 29:37

for no reason I'm not trying to get them.

Scot Maupin: 29:40

Did they maybe not hang around you in your house during January 6th, cuz they were possibly somewhere else? Give us a call, we're the one. 800, fbi, fbi.

Adam Braus: 29:50

Yeah, right, but wouldn't it been cool? I thought, you know, as a member of the peace query the soul Member and president and treasurer of the peace query I thought I was thinking to myself Well, first of all, I understood what was going on, or at least I understand how coups work. I mean, I lived through two coups when I lived in Thailand, so I, like, I know about coups and so when it happened, I knew exactly, like what the risks were and like how it could play out. At least a couple different scenarios I didn't think very many were very likely, because it looked like kind of Greg tag, you know band or whatever. But I was at least thinking like that.

Adam Braus: 30:22

But everyone else was just like flummox, like what would they do in a coup? They wouldn't. No one would know the first thing. And that's when I was like, oh well, we all need to read Gene Sharp's anti coup like the. It's the playbook, like and it. Today it's very, it's stayed, it's stayed very recurrent and relevant. It's the playbook you can read, yeah, to know exactly what to do during a coup. And so I, yeah, I just kept waiting like okay, pretty soon, like we're high schoolers, are this is gonna be required reading in like high school civics classes. You know, like you're gonna read. You're gonna read to kill a mockingbird and then you're gonna read the anti coup. You know, nope, no one's ever. Even so I was like, okay, we got to use our huge platform. We got to use our giant, you know our giant, million Subscriber tick, tock, you know, man, and our likes.

Scot Maupin: 31:09

We get all these likes these clicks this old Wilson who's doing this?

Adam Braus: 31:13

anyways, but yeah. So I thought we should use our platform to promote the, the anti coup. And yeah, we should start little little militias, little anti coup militias, because then when there's next the next coup, you know people will say what should we do? And we can literally call the newspapers and be like we have been. We are the coup militias. We'll tell you what to do Everyone stay home from work, do not go to work on Monday, do not go to school on Monday.

Adam Braus: 31:36

Do not like do anything. Like do not. If you work at the post office, do not show up, like do not do anything, and instead like go and park your car, like go buy a used car and park it in the middle of the road and rip it, and like rip its wheels off and drain the gas out of it, and like pull the alternator out and just abandon it, and like screw up the street and do that at every single corner of every single street in your city. You know to say no, this government, this coup will not go forward. We are ungovernable. You know, with this coup it's kind of fun actually, you know, because you get to go. Basically you just have a big party.

Scot Maupin: 32:15

Sounds a little scary it sounds like potentially. I mean you're poking a bear.

Adam Braus: 32:20

Yeah, it's dangerous, but it's not as long as you're not violent, you very rarely will see action against the people who are nonviolent. An example is Slobodan Milozovic, the Serbian dictator who was creating, who was like, planning and maybe even executing, like a genocide in Kosovo. And he was planning like great Serbia, he was trying to create great Serbia and then there was a mass nonviolent opposition to him and the order came down from you know, his generals are from him to the police, like to the soldiers who were like facing the nonviolent protesters.

Adam Braus: 33:01

And they said shoot on the protesters. And when the order came to shoot on the protesters, the army switched sides to the nonviolent side and Slobodan Milozovic was taken out Well, not killed, but he was just arrested.

Adam Braus: 33:17

So wait a minute, that was an example of where, if you don't, if they had used violence and then they said shoot on the people, they would have been like sure, I'm scared as shit. And these guys were using violence, let's shoot them and they'll get out of here. We'll kill a couple hundred of them and they'll run off and the protest be over. But because they kept nonviolent discipline, when the order came to shoot, they were like that's beyond, that's like you know, but wait it sounds like, in this circumstance, the nonviolence made a coup happen instead of stopping a coup.

Adam Braus: 33:47

No, because the reason why they were protesting was because he was seizing power and executing it. He had seized nonconstitutional power and was executing a Holocaust Like he was murdered.

Scot Maupin: 33:58

Isn't a coup just cutting the head off of like whoever the top person is just getting ousting them?

Adam Braus: 34:04

Yeah, but it's all. It's really ousting the constitution. It's like a constitutional crisis really. Any kind of constitutional crisis is essentially a coup, although you're right, a coup d'etat is, when you like, replace the executive you replace the government.

Scot Maupin: 34:18

A coup is a regular upending the way things were and having a new order.

Adam Braus: 34:22

Any kind of like, like, even when Xi Xi just like changed the constitution of China so that he's like the permanent guy, Like the Chinese, could have done an anti-coup. Then too, same thing because he was changing the constitution, causing a constitutional crisis. So yeah, coup clubs, it would be a good thing. The coup militias, you know. And if people ever said no, you can't have that militia, you'd be like second amendment, bro, right to form a militia, or at least the founding fathers telling us that the important thing for preserving freedom is not so much guns as much as militias.

Scot Maupin: 35:00

Well, yeah, and the people who say you can't have that militia? They're worried about the guns, not the people who are planning non-violent actions, so I don't know that you'll be opposed. Like you're not gonna be the target of a lot of like people coming after you trying to get you to stop. Stop all your non-violencing.

Adam Braus: 35:17

Stop the militias, that's true. They probably would rather have the non-violence than the violence.

Scot Maupin: 35:21

You know I was thinking one of the clever things about making a group in college where you're the only member. Coups are impossible.

Adam Braus: 35:30

It's absolutely impossible for a coup to happen. You were a coup-proof. I'm the judge, jury and executioner.

Scot Maupin: 35:36

Yeah, you were a coup-proof. There was no one who was gonna swoop up and like make you not top dog.

Adam Braus: 35:41

That's pretty smart. You know what they call a coup when you add two more doors. Oh no, a sedan, oh no, oh my God.

Scot Maupin: 35:52

Is that it Did we?

Adam Braus: 35:53

just end the episode.

Scot Maupin: 35:54

I mean I can't imagine anyone still listening after that. I mean we should probably leave too right.

Adam Braus: 36:00

We just emptied the listener base Mic drop. Yeah, yeah, let's wrap All right on All right An anti-coup.

Scot Maupin: 36:07

I'll join in the anti-coup militia.

Adam Braus: 36:08

Let's start with just this, we can solutions.

Scot Maupin: 36:11

we can be an honorary anti-coup militia right here I mean we already have double the membership of the Peace Query.

Adam Braus: 36:17

Oh easily easily double. Scott, you thank you so much for listening and for everyone else for listening to my, to the crazy idea.

Scot Maupin: 36:26

Thanks, for tuning in and we'll see you again next week. Yeah, see ya, bye, bye, bye, okay.