What if I can’t convince people that democracy is necessary or even the most viable and effective alternative form of government?
People won’t risk their lives for freedom and democracy; they’ll risk their lives if they think that the government is going to ruin their standard of living and that they won’t be able to do anything about it.
I haven’t posted any fresh smut lately. I should work on that. Problem with political smut is it’s usually a boner-killer. Anything with current players, ick, ewww… Some can be merrily parodied, like Trish Nixon holding up a French tickler in her father’s image and gasping, “Ooh, it’s gooey!” But set here-and-now, it would only seem like reporting.
A 2020+ revolution story will require nerdy hackers, Slavic zillionaires, coke-smuggling submarines, balloon-launched amateur satellite zappers, wired killer dolphins, deep-fake political vids, sexual abuse by radioactive octopi, sabotage at a Hormel packing plant, and IQ-enhanced gibbons. Then a cliffhanger ending, with an orgy hinted. But it turns out to all be the wet-dream of a conservative SCOTUS justice and is thus a tragedy. Cue the weepy strings. Oh no, they’re explosive!
Next: Naked patriots on skateboards ravage the demon-haunted landscape. Zoom in for details.
Those 48 million people are spread out across about 3.5 million square miles. And they aren’t all revolutionaries, those are the 16% of the population that are unsympathetic to the government and own firearms. Further, these people do not have any clear means of communicating, much less organizing into a formal resistance movement.
~Max
It depends on motivation. If the revolutionaries are both motivated to the point of willing to give their lives, and ruthless to the level of Beria, it can be done, I think.
So add to the scenario the patently unacceptable propensity of the new government and any who support it to, say, tap the brakes before they enter a tunnel:
The revolutionaries threaten the lives of loved ones of low- and mid-level government. Everything from chiefs of police, to sanitation supervisors, to air traffic controllers, and also key private individuals, like truck dispatchers, power-plant maintenance coordinators etc. Threats are individual and specific: quit your job by Friday, or your wife/kid/mom/pet gets it. Follow through on non-compliance. First in a random area of the US as proof of concept, then in whatever area those whom you seek to pressure into making changes live and work.
When two kids fight over a toy, the kid least concerned with breaking the toy ends up with it. I reckon the same goes for nation-states.