dagblog - Comments for "Revolution ?...don't think so."

It's too soon for the

AmiBlue — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 21:43:46 +0000

It's too soon for the revolution. The working and middle classes in the U.S. have been voting against their best interests for the last 30 years, but the deterioration in their standard of living and, more important, the deterioration in the outlook for their children has been slow in coming. It's like cooking a mess of frogs that don't realize they're in trouble until it's too late. (Something I've never done, BTW, nor seen done for that matter.)

I believe there is an unease as evidenced by the tea partiers. I believe the TParty unease is basically an acknowledgment that something is fundamentally wrong, but their attention has been focused on the black "foreigner" in the WH rather than the real problems with the economy. I believe that once the cons regain power over all three branches (2012 probably) the country will take a nose dive if they continue the same trickle down economics and promote the same C Street religious fundamentalism that "help[s] the weak by helping the strong" (C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy by Jeff Sharlet) Watch what happens then.

Sadly, I could not agree

Barth — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 21:25:20 +0000

In reply to Revolution ?...don't think so.

Sadly, I could not agree more. The only thing on our side is time. Maybe.

Want peace? Work for

SleepinJeezus — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 18:33:04 +0000

In reply to And so I'm not quite sure I

Want peace? Work for Justice.

It really doesn't ever get much simpler than that. Or more difficult. It's never-ending. But it sure beats waiting for Bill the Butcher to at last make circumstances so dire as to at last warrant a response.

And so I'm not quite sure I

SleepinJeezus — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 18:30:34 +0000

In reply to Thanks for the reminder of

And so I'm not quite sure I understand your point here in criticizing those who rail against present-day corruption and the rocket-ship ascendancy of the wealthy elite.

Is it your perspective that we are not suffering any circumstance nearly as desperate as the depradation of the 1880's, and so therefore we should accommodate present-day corruption and oppression because it ain't bad enough yet?

Seriously, what's your point?

That is one hell of a line.

Richard Day — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 18:07:00 +0000

In reply to Thanks for the reminder of

That is one hell of a line. Hire one half to kill the other half.

I am really struck by this. After all that is what the union battles were all about; union workers vs. scabs.

There was a balance in the 50's.

Our nation was just coming out of a socialist government run economy imposed during a world war. Everybody had less due to rationing and other controls during the 40's. But unlike the 30's, everybody was employed either in the military or in domestic production necessary to supply that military.

But management could not take too too much in the 50's. Management was reined in by unions and the government. The problem was the permanent underclass based primarily on color that had always been present.

The ruling class had to figure out how to attack unions and civil rights legislation. The unions were hamstringing it by keeping the ratio between management's salaries and workers' salaries reasonable.

Civil rights were giving employees certain rights that also threatened management. But it was fast becoming politically incorrect to attack civil rights head on.

That is how it became an issue of affirmative action vs. civil rights.

The ruling class is always clever in turning the underclasses against each other.

Its tactics just change to accommodate changing times.

Well put.

Could be, Smith. I find it

Obey — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 15:42:09 +0000

In reply to "Why it doesn't seem likely

Could be, Smith. I find it all pretty mysterious, personally. The founding fathers remark was a bit tongue in cheek. But it's not like nothing has happened since. The civil war is probably up there with any other western country's modern era upheavals. And if you look at peace-time radical political changes, I'd class the New Deal, the Reagan Revolution, and the Bush era National Security revolution up there with anything other countries can offer.

My point is, it doesn't strike me as plausible that Americans are peculiarly afraid to 'shake things up'. It's just that recently, those willing to shake things up are unfortunately not on ... our side.

But honestly, I don't have any set view about this. The Artappraiser/ATrope view that things haven't gotten worse over the recent decades seems wrong when you look at the numbers on median income and income volatility. Maybe one thought is this - those who have been hardest hit, working class white males, whose wages have fallen 10% over that period, are of course hopping mad. But their anger seems susceptible to the kind of political jujitsu where that energy ends up being used against them.

"Why it doesn't seem likely

MrSmith1 — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 14:37:02 +0000

In reply to I think the fall of the

"Why it doesn't seem likely in the US, I don't know ..."

Could it be that after our one big moment of revolutionary fervor, we've had 220+ years of incremental change, and we've grown to like it. We don't do big change anymore. Sweeping landmark bills are seldom enacted, they're phased in. We're not apple cart upsetters anymore, we like our change to happen so that we don't much notice. We have fallen in love with our own status quo, even when it stinks, because, deep down, we fear it could get worse if we try to mess with it. Just a thought.

Thanks for the reminder of

artappraiser — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 14:17:45 +0000

In reply to I live pay check to pay

Thanks for the reminder of Gangs of New York, it's a good one to recommend to those who get on those rants about the oligarchy/rich running this country now worse then its ever been, the political corruption is worse than its ever been, we are not making progress we are going backward, yadda yadda. While it has it has an over the top plot (as to the Daniel Day Lewis character especially,) and the facts and historical chronology are played with a lot, as a student of 19th century America, I do think that in doing so it did a pretty good job of getting across a lot of the gist of things back then, it's accurate in zeitgeist. One of those things that impressed me about it and is often not presented well is that it got across that while the Civil War was raging, the whole country wasn't focused on it, all kinds of other shit was going on--not everyone even cared much about it. (It knocks down the Ken Burns mythmaking about the Civil War a notch where it belongs.)

An example of how the movie plays with the facts to get across the zeitgeist correctly is using the line I can hire one half of the poor to kill off the other half, that was inspired by the attribution to railroad financier Jay Gould of the 1880's: I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half. I think it also does a good job of getting across how incredibly corrupt voting was back then and how fooled and ill-educated the majority of the voting public was and how easily votes could be bought--Afghanistan of today has nothing on 19th-century America on that front--when people claim that there has been no progress in the democratic process in this world, well that's just a joke. Those that argue the latter often strike me as picking out some halycon decade for themselves to represent the entire past delude themselves just like conservatives who pick out the 1950's to represent our entire past,

I think the fall of the

Obey — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 11:49:33 +0000

In reply to Revolution ?...don't think so.

I think the fall of the communist regimes in eastern Europe in 1989 would be a pretty strong counterexample to your thesis. Highly industrialized and urbanized, hypercentralized, where people were dependent on the government for basic necessities to a greater extent than in Western countries now.

In any case, I don't think looking to the model of 'mobs-storming-the-bastille' is the right picture of what to expect in the kind of radical change in regime that might occur. Not in the US, it seems, but in Ireland, Britain, or Spain perhaps. Why it doesn't seem likely in the US, I don't know. But the other ideas floated above in the comments - that the poor really just have it so good - don't seem like the right diagnosis.

That's not to deny that there might not be some peculiarly American resistance to revolution. I mean if the founding fathers were anything, they clearly were NOT urbane revolutionaries...

;0)

That's just it. The word

LisB — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 06:36:09 +0000

In reply to And yet those in Bagdad

That's just it. The word "adapt". Many people could adapt. And while I think C uses generatlizations quite often, I'm inclined to think that folks who have already been making do, getting by, etc. would adapt faster and easier than folks who are used to having nannies and housekeepers and people catering to their whims.