I expected, and predicted, a self coup by Trump, seizing the power of the presidency for the president, but instead, Mueller has empaneled a grand Jury, which is the permanent government, the presidency, seizing the president.

Empaneling a grand jury is institutional preparation for arresting Trump, not institutional preparation for an impeachment vote in the senate. Attempting to arrest Trump is a coup.

A grand jury issues indictments. That is what it is for. A grand Jury indictment directly results in an order for someone to be arrested and imprisoned. The target usually does not know what the indictment is, what the evidence is, what the charges are, until after he is jail, which is mighty convenient for prosecutors – and for coup makers.

Should it succeed, not long thereafter leftists will be arresting leftists for insufficient leftism, until the process is halted by a Cromwell, a Stalin, or a Napoleon, or until the process goes all the way to the Seven Kill Stele, and everyone executes everyone else for insufficient leftism, leaving very few survivors.

Mueller’s cops armed with guns and a warrant may well be quietly shown the door by Trump’s praetorians armed with guns and a presidential pardon, but if both sides survive, trouble and escalation will ensue until one side does not survive.

A grand jury is pretty much a formality, since the prosecutor has complete control. A grand jury will indict you for being a ham sandwich, so will surely indict Trump of being a Russian agent and stealing the elections. Or something. We will probably never find out what the charges were, because once the arrest is made, or attempted, the charges will cease to matter, and being able to hit what you are shooting at will matter. Does anyone recollect the charges on which King Louis or Czar Nicholas was executed?

The trouble is that the institutional outcome of the grand jury process is not a two thirds vote in the Senate, as provided by the constitution, but a bunch of social justice warriors dressed as cops equipped with an arrest warrant from someone no one has heard of, giving Trump a perp walk in front of the press.

And when you attempt to give the president a perp walk, that is not an arrest, but a coup. By empaneling a grand Jury, Mueller begins walking down a path where the end of the path is his death or Trump’s death.

First faction to start shooting usually wins. The merely elected government, the mere president, needs men who will shoot to kill other men dressed in police uniforms and equipped with a judicial warrant from someone no one has ever heard of. For I am pretty sure that those attempting to serve a judicial warrant on the president will shoot to kill. Once the fatal words are spoken, the logic of the situation is that you win or you die. The violence inevitably escalates. Whoever is slowest to face up to this loses, gets arrested, imprisoned, and eventually, executed, for once imprisoned, too dangerous to live. If Trump gets arrested, one thing will lead to another thing, and pretty soon his entire family and then all elected Republicans will be arrested, and not very long thereafter, executed. It is defect/defect, and the one who defects hardest and first wins. A grand jury exists to arrest people. Once you start resolving political conflicts by arresting your opponents, you win or you die. If Mueller attempts to arrest Trump or his people and fails, Trump has to arrest Mueller and his people, for if he does not, Mueller will surely succeed the second, the third, or the tenth time.

And if Mueller successfully arrests Trump, he is going to have to kill Trump, and a rapidly increasing number of other people, for if he does not then sooner or later Trump is going to be unarrested.

Arresting people is violence, and the logic of violence takes over from the logic of politics. Once started, hard to stop. This does not mean that the escalation will take place overnight, though it well may do so, but there will be escalation.

If the permanent government successfully performs a self coup against the merely legitimate and formal government, we get informal and illegitimate government, on the model of our officially unofficial official state religion. This sets in process a power struggle, where you get a sequence of coups, each lefter than the last, as happened when the Kadets overthrew the Czar to institute moderate conservative parliamentary democracy on the British model, until the army, the praetorians, or the security services get involved, or until a single dictator makes himself absolutely supreme.

Unless saner heads prevail and stuff Mueller back in the bag, or just simply shoot him and his jurors, we are on track for a coup, which, if it succeeds, will result in a chain of ever more radical coups.

From the illegal re-election of Tiberius Gracchus in 133BC to Caesar crossing the Rubicon in 49BC was eighty four years, one long human lifetime of steadily escalating political violence, ending in direct military intervention.

From moderate constitutional monarchists overthrowing the King of France to Napoleon was ten years of steadily escalating violence, ending in direct military intervention.

From the Kadet’s overthrowing the Czar in the name of constitutional democratic monarchism to Stalin stabilizing the Russian political system was sixteen years of steadily escalating political violence, during which the military and the security services have remained strangely quiescent.

So this grand jury is not going to result in the stuff instantly hitting the fan. Rather, we will see substantial and escalating erosion of the norms of peaceful political competition, and in retrospect future historians will record the revolution as starting in 2017 or not very long thereafter. It is not going to instantly result in war to the knife, and for a while, everyone will think that normality continues. But the logic of events takes us to war to the knife, and the side that first sees the logic of events and acts on that logic, wins.

Politics by arresting your opponents is not politics, but war. Wars are easy to start, hard to stop. The side that first realizes that war has begun gains a substantial advantage.