How did we even get to talking about a revolution? (Chris Hedges article on Salon)

[John_Mace]

Revolution isso 3 months ago.

Also, as a 60s kid, what The SS Rat said.

[Shodan]

@TriPolar

I doubt any of us grew up in the 1890s.

Get off my lawn, sonny.

Regards,
Shodan

[Bridget_Burke]

@TriPolar

I doubt any of us grew up in the 1890s.

Some of us can read. Even history we don’t remember can be illuminating.

I don’t see people too lazy to get off their asses and vote bothering to start a revolution. Even the Texas idiots blathering about secession–one of whom just announced his run for President of the hated US government. Again.

[Bricker]

@RickJay

It wasn’t as easy to post silly opinions on the Internet and get lots and lots of people to read them.

To be honest I find the linked article almost jaw-droppingly stupid. Hedges’s case for America being headed towards revolution appears to be a cynical list of things he doesn’t like. He makes no solid case for their being the lines of demarcation needed for such a thing, for a collapse of the existing apparatus of state, or the failure of the society. Of course, this is a phone interview with Hedges about a book he wrote, not the book itself, so it may be he doesn’t do a great job over the phone making his case. But he doesn’t do a great job making his case.

The idea that police brutality against black people is going to start a revolution is so insultingly dumb I cannot believe an educated adult would make it, when one considers that there has been brutality against black Americans for centuries. One could quite plausibly argue there’s LESS police brutality against black Americans now than at any point before (though it’s now much more visible.) But revolution didn’t happen before. He rails, as people so often do, about corporate power, as if that was a new thing and the robber barons of the 19th century are fiction, but there was no revolution then.

An American who claims the USA is somehow a non-functioning state is either looking for attention or doesn’t have a passport, because the USA is not even in the same league as non-functioning states. It is an extremely well-functioning state and is nowhere near revolution. I’m not saying it doesn’t have problems 'cause it does, but it is absolutely nowhere near revolution. That’s head-up-your-own-ass campus blather bullshit.

I could type a long post, but why, when this one says almost everything I was going to?

[Freddy_the_Pig]

Poor Chris Hedges, born in the wrong time and place, never to fulfill his dream of being the Marat or Madame Roland whose words inspire a generation of revolutionaries to change the world forever.

On a scale of things I worry about, revolution falls somewhere between curling hooliganism and getting ebola from a toilet seat.

[GIGObuster]

Well, things is that as even Shodan noticed, the revolution Chris Hedges is talking about is not a revolution as in the old bloods and guts French revolution model.

Of curse as The Stainless Steel Rat pointed out, Hedges is not even close to what would really take to precipitate a more tame “revolution” in the USA.

[CaptMurdock]

But when you talk about destruction…well, you know that you can count me out…

…

…in.

[Amateur_Barbarian]

@Aeschines

The question, however, is what has changed. Shitbags weren’t talking about revolution in the year 2000.

I can’t think of a time in my life (Da Sixties onward) that some faction or another wasn’t claiming a full-out revolution was the only solution to our problems.

IMVHO, most people talking change and revolution aren’t even addressing the right/root problems. They’re trying to fix symptoms without even considering what’s causing them.

That’s always a path to failure, if not inadvertent (as in, “Whoops, that’s not what I meant!”) destruction.

[Little_Nemo]

Another vote for Hedges being so out of touch that I wonder if he’s reporting from some parallel universe. People aren’t even looking to vote for any significant change much less revolt for it.

[BrainGlutton]

@puddleglum

Evil people have always been around and will always be around. Luckily there is no possibility these people will ever have power in this country.

Of course there is. They own it now. That is why some people are talking about revolution.

[BrainGlutton]

@The_Stainless_Steel_Rat

I’m betting that most of you are fairly young–and didn’t grow up during the 1960’s and 1970’s.

Remember them? Presidential Assisination, Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam, Riots in the Cities, Kent State, King, RFK…oh, those were the fun times, I assure you.

And the 1890’s…anarchist bombings, strikers and pinkertons…another fine old time.

Sometimes I think the proliferation of news channels/internet/personal communications is a two-edged sword, because it tends to dramatize the hear and now without any perspective or nod to history.

IMHO as always. YMMV.

OK, the lesson there is that political/social unrest with revolutionary tendencies is indeed possible in an American context. However, while such can lead to change, sometimes what one might call revolutionary changes, it never actually leads to revolution in the regime-change sense.

So far.

[Shodan]

@BrainGlutton

Of course there is. They own it now. That is why some people are talking about revolution.

But nobody is talking about revolution except crackpots, and the fizzling out of Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter and so forth shows that there is essentially no chance of revolution.

The hard Left in America never seems to get it - the middle class is not going to fall for your shit. We aren’t going to be radicalized, we aren’t going to come to class consciousness, and the only result you are going to get from blocking traffic when we are trying to get to work is annoyance.

Regards,
Shodan

[Amateur_Barbarian]

@BrainGlutton

Of course there is. They own it now. That is why some people are talking about revolution.

And I challenge you to point to a time where the rascals in power were not being threatened by rev’looshunerys who wanted to throw them out… and put their own rascals in charge, instead.

It’s almost always a bad idea. The cases where revolutionary overthrow of a government resulted in a better country and a better life for its citizens are… sparse. In most cases, it results in a worse overall situation for Joe Citz. In nearly all cases, it’s just that one set of rascals for another swap.

[Amateur_Barbarian]

@Shodan

But nobody is talking about revolution except crackpots, and the fizzling out of Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter and so forth shows that there is essentially no chance of revolution.

The hard Left in America never seems to get it - the middle class is not going to fall for your shit. We aren’t going to be radicalized, we aren’t going to come to class consciousness, and the only result you are going to get from blocking traffic when we are trying to get to work is annoyance.

And on the other hand, the vast majority doesn’t fall for Hard Right shit, either - they don’t believe the entire US social network/safety net is money wasted on losers and that giving corporations free reign would bring paradise to everyone.

That’s why the real answers are in the center: we need a socioeconomic system that doesn’t let people fall between the cracks, but does not get lost in make-believe economics that can’t possibly be sustained or support that societal sharing.

[RickJay]

@BrainGlutton

OK, the lesson there is that political/social unrest with revolutionary tendencies is indeed possible in an American context. However, while such can lead to change, sometimes what one might call revolutionary changes, it never actually leads to revolution in the regime-change sense.

So far.

If revolution was imminent we’d see real signs of it. But there aren’t any. “People were angry over Michael Brown” is not a sign of impending revolution.

[John_Mace]

@BrainGlutton

OK, the lesson there is that political/social unrest with revolutionary tendencies is indeed possible in an American context. However, while such can lead to change, sometimes what one might call revolutionary changes, it never actually leads to revolution in the regime-change sense.

So far.

No, that is not the lesson. The 60s were a time of much greater social upheaval than we are seeing now, but the folks talking “revolution” were still a tiny minority. The government was not in any peril of being overthrown. Not by the Weather Underground, the SLA, or the Black Panthers.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

If there was ever going to be a revolution, it would be over income inequality. And given that one didn’t happen in the late 1800s, when income inequality in the US was at its peak, it’s probably not going to happen now.

[Larry_Borgia]

Chris Hedges is a very silly person. Salon is a very high class clickbait site.

[Inigo_Montoya]

@adaher

In order to have a revolution, you have to get enough people to agree on who the enemy is. If the social order did break down, it would end up being more like what happened in El Salvador, with leftist and rightist militias duking it out. Given the culture of the left and right in this country, the right would win that war(we’ve got the guns and the military men and the money) and what you’d end up with would be something significantly worse than where we are now, from the leftist perspective: A Pinochet-style government.

I’m a liberal veteran with guns, who knows lots of liberal veterans with guns. Be careful about the assumptions you make about left/right. But I do agree a full-on revolution (people vs. federal government) is extremely unlikely. Typically you need starving people to get the requisite traction and Americans are generally pretty well-fed. You might see the occasional neighborhood come together in sporadic and disorganized action against a local offender, but nobody has the need or desire to overthrow The Feds AND install something else to govern 300 million of us. Odds are better (and still slim) of various states seceding, leading to the eventual disintegration of The Union. I think it would look a lot like how the USSR just dissolved.

My personal experience with actual libs & cons whom I actually know and rub elbows with on a daily basis doesn’t mesh with what the media claims is the reality. Eyeball to eyeball I’d have a beer & BBQ with any of 'em and even discuss without great conviction religion, politics and lawn care–giving and receiving mutual respect where we differ. In the real world, people want to be able to pay their bills, feed and love their family, be safe from rogues, and be left alone to do their own thing. If any of that gets seriously and openly threatened by The Man, those of us with more guns than bodies would be happy to play the role of armory at the appropriate time.

From what I’ve seen, people aren’t meaningfully divided into liberal/conservatives. They ARE meaningfully divided into good people/meddlesome shitheads. And I don’t see the roots of a revolution in that, just shitheads being bad-mannered, and good people failing to call them out on it.

[Fear_Itself]

@adaher

In order to have a revolution, you have to get enough people to agree on who the enemy is. If the social order did break down, it would end up being more like what happened in El Salvador, with leftist and rightist militias duking it out. Given the culture of the left and right in this country, the right would win that war(we’ve got the guns and the military men and the money) and what you’d end up with would be something significantly worse than where we are now, from the leftist perspective: A Pinochet-style government.

Just how are the right-wing militias going to deal with the US military?