The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    cmaukonen's picture

    Revolution ?...don't think so.

    By cmaukonen on Fri, 12/03/2010 - 11:35pm |

    Not going to happen. And here is why. Unlike the very spontaneous, active and sometimes violent protests of the Union and Socialist movements of the late 19th and early 20th century where people were more self reliant and had to live with risks every day and no social safety nets at all, most people are almost totally reliant on the current economic, social and political system for their lively hoods. Their ability to cope with out the services provided by the public and private sector is limited at best. In fact cities of today can becaome deat traps if electric, sewer and water is disrupted for any length of time, which any social, economic and/or political upheaval would likely cause.

    Most people cannot even do minor, let alone major, repairs around their homes and apartments because they do not posses the skills or knowledge to do so.  Nor could they feed themselves or even keep from freezing in the winter without these things provided. Unlike in the past where electricity was something more of an extravigance to those in the middle and bottom economic strata.  Where people still had gardens and even some live stock such as chickens or even a cow or two and not only were capable of constructing and repairing that which they owned but quite often did.

    So these confrontations with business management, banks and government officials were considered risks worth taking. This view is not held much anymore except by those on the political right. And interesting observation too is that a number of those on the right also live in the more remote and still rural areas. Are more self reliant and are not only angry with the government as it stands but also see themselves as not needing it as much. Though I doubt that this last part is really the case, you could not convince them of this.

    It would take total collapse of the country and the suspention of most services to get most people to take any kind of major action against those in charge right now. So even though I do believe that a revolution is necessary to make any real change in how this country is being run, I do not believe that it is possible for it to occur.  Most people are far too dependent on it to contiue in its present form however dysfunctional it becomes.

    Comments

    A lot of the sites I read see a collapse on the horizon.


    by Donal on Fri, 12/03/2010 - 11:39pm

    The question is how will the collapse unfold.  It isn't like one day the world wakes up to find everyone is living like they do in the outback of Afghanistan.  It will be a slow unfolding occurring over the coming years.  That is why Orwell was so insightful in 1984. Aside from his brillance regarding the authorities ability to contol language and thus thought, he created a world where there was still Winstons, those who had a better life than most, relatively speaking, and were willing to believe, literally (the decrease in rations is an increase), anything in order to avoid looking at the reality that has occurred.  The frog in the water slowly coming to a boil.


    by Elusive Trope on Fri, 12/03/2010 - 11:55pm

    Well, I can shoot a .22 rifle pretty well, but I'll use one to shoot birds for dinner when the time comes....and not a banker.

     


    by LisB on Sat, 12/04/2010 - 12:00am

    List...that puts you one up on me. I only ever shot a beebee gun and that was years ago. And if my current experience with a sling shot is any indication, this is probably a good thing.


    by cmaukonen on Sat, 12/04/2010 - 12:08am

    With the bankers you would probably have to get in line anyway. So don't worry.


    by cmaukonen on Sat, 12/04/2010 - 12:09am

    Okay, that made me laugh out loud. 


    by LisB on Sat, 12/04/2010 - 12:15am

    I live pay check to pay check, and my job puts me in contact with those suffering the most regardless of the overall economic health, yet in the end, in the scheme of things, what we are enduring in this country is not the worst of the worst.  Paradigms are formed in an unfolding process.  We are raised by the previous generation who were raised by the previous generation. 

    There was a time when to be poor in America meant real suffering.  As cultural reference point I go back to the movie The Gangs of New York.  Does this justify the injustices done today? No.  That is not the point.  The point is what do, down deep, find acceptable.  And that is based on expectations.  Which is based on has transpired before us.  What in the cultural hand me downs is given to us before we know how to utter a word.


    by Elusive Trope on Sat, 12/04/2010 - 12:47am

    Yet another film I haven't seen, although everyone I know has seen it.  *LisB puts it on her list*

    I would hate to think that something could happen to us where we'd all be living without electricity, without phones, computers, heat, etc.  I most certainly hope it never comes to that.  Could I survive if it does?  For a short time I'm sure I'd have to live with my sister in PA (who has two wood-burning stoves) but only if I could prove to be useful, and not a burden.  As I was saying in Chat earlier tonight, discussing this post, my ex-bf in California was a survivalist-wannabe, and had me read up on how to clean a deer, how to find water while camping, how to build a lean-to, etc.  He bought a trunk and kept camouflage outerwear in it for both of us, and two gas masks, the whole bit.  He tried to teach me how to shoot a handgun but I hated it and preferred the softer, quieter .22 rifle, so I became skilled with it just to shut him up, LOL.  But grow my own food?  Can it?  I know nothing of farming even on a small scale.  I don't know that I'd last very long under conditions like that.  And knowing that others with even less skills might come crashing the party would put me on edge to the point where I'd be distrusting every soul who came near me.  I think I'd hate living that way, and would most likely reach for some sleeping pills eventually.  If any were still around.

    Long story short, I don't like to envision things like this, but then....perhaps that would be my downfall.

    Shorter comment:  I live paycheck to paycheck too, and don't see that changing anytime soon.  So perhaps we're already getting by in a way that those in higher tax brackets could never accept.

    Food for thought.

     


    by LisB on Sat, 12/04/2010 - 12:58am

    the last sentiment expressed...maybe why I don't stress too much about the implosion on a personal level.  I haven't lived the 'good life' so I am too worried about losing it.  Of course i expect the electricity to work (hell hath no fury like a Ducks fan who suddenly loses his or her power just before the Civil War game comes on today...I'm a American damnit. I'm entitled to my college football games.)


    by Elusive Trope on Sat, 12/04/2010 - 1:12am

    Hey, just watched the first 14 mins of Gangs, thanks to you.  That was Cellophane Man in there, hee!

    College football, eh?  Been a long time since I've watched professional even, but I can enjoy it almost as much as World Cup Soccer.  GO ORRRRAAANNNGGGE!!!!!  (stupid octopus....)

     


    by LisB on Sat, 12/04/2010 - 1:19am

    (the late great octupus.  may he rest in peace.)

    (may the ducks roll past the beavers.)

     


    by Elusive Trope on Sat, 12/04/2010 - 1:23am

    (I shall oommmmmmmmmm)


    by LisB on Sat, 12/04/2010 - 1:25am

    Unfortunately the communication and electric infrastructure is some of the least protect areas of this country. The electric is old, outdated and in bad shape. The communication is just very, very vulnerable. Would not take much for either to fail of their own accord let alone acts of nature and/or sabotage. The electric those in the North East are especially aware of, I believe.


    by cmaukonen on Sat, 12/04/2010 - 1:26am

    And yet those in Bagdad adjusted to off and on service.  At some level our natural inclination to adapt is used against us by the powers to be.


    by Elusive Trope on Sat, 12/04/2010 - 1:29am

    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.


    by LisB on Sat, 12/04/2010 - 1:36am

    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,


    by artappraiser on Sat, 12/04/2010 - 9:17am

    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.


    by Richard Day on Sat, 12/04/2010 - 1:07pm

    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?


    by SleepinJeezus on Sat, 12/04/2010 - 1:30pm

    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.


    by SleepinJeezus on Sat, 12/04/2010 - 1:33pm

    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)


    by Obey on Sat, 12/04/2010 - 6:49am

    "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.


    by MrSmith1 on Sat, 12/04/2010 - 9:37am

    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.


    by Obey on Sat, 12/04/2010 - 10:42am


     

    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.

     


    by AmiBlue on Sat, 12/04/2010 - 4:43pm

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


    by Barth on Sat, 12/04/2010 - 4:25pm