We’re watching the tremendous Ken Burns PBS series “The American Revolution”. It stresses that the British tried to hit the Americans suddenly and hit them hard. They would disperse this disorderly rabble with a whiff of grapeshot. They burned everything they could reach along the coasts, and held New York, Charleston and Savannah for the duration of the war. They saw that all the colonies were at each others’ throats and thought they would fall in line once they saw the danger of their treason.

Well, that didn’t work. The opposite happened – the colonials all realized that the British were their true enemies and put aside their differences, at least briefly.

This strategy has failed against the US again and again. The Confederates thought that the greedy and mercantile Yankees would sue for peace once they took Fort Sumter rather than risk their profits in the Civil War. The Japanese Empire thought the same thing when they destroyed almost all of the US Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor. That display of valor would surely cow the fat and dishonorable Americans.

It’s also what Trump and Musk thought this year. Within days of getting into office they were destroying federal agencies. It was wildly illegal, but they wanted to overawe the opposition with a demonstration of power. Musk seized the federal IT resources while Trump seized all the police power he could. He set up concentration camps and has masked goons grabbing people off the street. He threatened universities and news organizations and extorted them for hundreds of millions. He talked blithely of third terms and military occupation of blue cities.

That too has united the opposition. The October 18th No Kings protest was the largest in US history, and occurred in every state. The November 4th elections were the first since his ascension and were wipeouts for the GOP. The legal system has ruled against him now dozens of times, even though the corrupted Supreme Court still rules in his favor. It’s got to go.

The Democrats have set aside their endless squabbling over appeals to the working class versus appeals to marginalized groups to focus on the real threat. Even the GOP is cracking. They backed him as an outsider candidate who was not as tarred by their massively unpopular policies as Mitt Romney was. They liked railing against neoliberals who lose wars and export jobs, but now find themselves backing a pedophile who is stealing everything not nailed down.

The British obviously should have set the colonies against one another. They could have offered representation in Parliament to Virginia and New York while isolating restive New England. The Loyalists in both places would have approved, and probably sent troops. The British couldn’t do that at the time because they were too proud and upset. Yet the Revolution was such a disaster for them that they learned that lesson well. They applied that kind of divide-and-conquer strategy in India and ruled the sub-continent in spite of being out-numbered a hundred to one.

Trump and Musk are also too blinded by pride and hatred to be smart about their takeover. They’re seeing the pushback now. Let’s hope they continue to fail, but that the conflict doesn’t become as brutal as the Revolution!