A comedian once said that there will never be a revolution because you’ll never get citizens to coordinate their schedules. “Thursday’s the uprising? Oh no, that’s bad, my kid’s got soccer practice that day. Friday? Hell no, that’s clubbing night.”
But really, it’s hard to imagine a comfortable nation rising up, and the vast majority of us are pretty comfortable and not very motivated to rock the boat. Americans are just as likely to complain that their stupid smartphone doesn’t respond to their finger fast enough as to complain about real shit.
While we have had very small uprisings, from the Whiskey Rebellion to Clive Bundy, the only serious challenge to the US was the Civil War, and if anything, the North imposed revolutionary change on the South after their victory. You mention the other two eras when actual revolution was possible, and if it did not happen then, it will not happen now. Our country is too large - geographically, demographically, and economically, for widespread revolution to occur, and there is no organization capable of doing so on either side of the aisle. Any such imaginings are fantasy. I disagree with Hedges that any such revolutionary consciousness is brewing.
But…
The 1890s and the 1960s did lead to real social movements that effected real changes in society. Beginning with the Free Silver movement of the 1870s, that populist force evolved into the Progressive Era which reined in the worst excesses of the robber barons. It led to stronger local governments via new city charters, created agencies such as the FDA, the Department of Labor, the Public Health Service and similar programs, and other tangible benefits.
The 1960s saw the culmination of the first part of the Civil Rights movement with the legislation signed by LBJ. (The acceptance and enforcement of that legislation is an ongoing issue which Ferguson and Baltimore highlight.) It also saw a cultural revolution that fundamentally changed the nature of relationships within society. A sublime example of that change is depicted in Animal House. While a comedy, it depicts real changes in social attitudes and cultural values.
That cultural revolution is ongoing, as seen in the continuing victories by the LGBT community. (Sadly, the intersection of the two civil rights movements is very narrow.)
But all of those movements were about achieving success within the system - for farmers to be successful small businessmen, for beatniks and hippies to have real freedom of expression, for blacks and other minorities to be equal citizens with equal opportunities. None of them were concerned with revolutionary change of the system itself.
Yet…
That system is showing serious systemic faults - politically, economically and socially. The grand American experiment is showing increasing signs of failure for the majority of its citizens. And a movement is brewing to radically transform that system to remedy those faults. OWS was an sad attempt at such. Groups such as the Next System Project , the New Economy Foundation, and the Democracy Collaborative are the current leading edge of this movement.
But their goal is not to build ‘revolutionary consciousness’, but social consciousness and political awareness of possibilities that already exist that can lead to transformation - not based on any violent overthrow of regimes, but the creation of dual power systems and a peaceful transition from the current dystopic system to the new improved dystopia.
A more serious concern is not revolutionary change, but irreversible decay. Likewise, there does not seem to be any organization capable of preventing it, especially any government. Urban cores rot, rural towns vanish, and a strange hollow suburban middle staggers its way along an increasingly decrepit infrastructure.
This. I can see people in this thread asserting that a revolution isn’t going to happen, that Hedges is stupid for thinking so. Well, I agree that a real revolution won’t be happening soon.
But do the same people not see the problems with the country? That isn’t so clear. If you think things are basically hunky-dory in the US now, and “malcontents will be malcontents,” I think that’s incorrect.
Makes sense, though I think the current Republican party is pretty close to fascism. You have authoritarianism, corporatism, nationalism, hated scapegoats (immigrants, Muslims), and a desire to return to the purer Reich of yesteryear.
And that, my friends, is what we call a false dichotomy. Of course we have problems. Lots of them. But nothing that screams: REVOLUTION!!
Has there ever been in a time in our history, or the history of another nation, that there weren’t “problems”? It’s only when such problems are serious and cannot be managed thru the existing political structures that revolutions occur. We’re not even close to that.
So, do you want to change your OP and the substance of this debate to “does the US have problems”?
There are plenty of problems in the US–e.g. the incarceration rate of black men is atrocious. However, no society in human history has had it better than the USA of today. That’s why I don’t think we’re heading towards revolution–because slowly-but-surely we’re getting better and it would be monumentally stupid to throw it away on a violent revolution*. If you disagree which society had it better?
(* - In his defense Hedges was advocating non-violent revolution. I’m not sure how that works.)
I personally am not in favor of a violent revolution. My question is why we’ve gotten to the point where people can even discuss it who are not campus Communists, etc.
I definitely think our problems can’t be managed through the existing political structures. Those structures currently serve the rich and powerful.
If you are saying that our level of problems now and the ways in which people are processing them (i.e., national psychology) are not particularly different from anything in the past, I would disagree.
Sure, the society of the US in 1999 had it better than today. Thought experiment: Poll every American who was at least 10 in 1999 (i.e., can remember life then) as to whether life on the whole in the US was better then or now. I think a majority of people would say then.
I think several European societies have it better than we do, although the global economic crap has tended to affect everyone, everywhere.
I agree that violent revolution would produce a net aggregate loss for the country. I’m definitely not in favor of it, nor do I think it will happen. I think states succeeding and the nation breaking up is much more likely and an actual possibility over the next 20 years.
I perceive that there is less of this ding-bat hard left analysis than there was during the 1980s and early 1990s. And there wasn’t all that much back then. Is there more than there was in the early 2000s? Who knows? It’s like comparing amoeba with paramecium. At any rate, within a certain social set, revolution is always imminent. I suppose the end of the cold war may have temporarily punched a hole in a few of the hard left socialist gasbags.
The pic of Hedges is pretty funny: he looks like an out of touch German intellectual. Or maybe a performance artist.
It’s nice that you think that, but you’ll have t prove it if you want to assert that in this forum.
Really? I know a lot of gay people who wouldn’t agree with that. But I’m sure you have some proof, otherwise you wouldn’t make such a bold statement. Right?
I think part of it are the particular issues in question, especially police brutality and claims of oligarchy, and how it makes those who think about those issues view the world. People who think that their race is being targeted and slain on a widespread basis by authority figures with no consequence would be horrified at the idea that racial genocide doesn’t warrant revolution. People who think that the political system is weighted almost entirely against people in their tax bracket with no recourse due to what amounts as outright corruption and bribery would probably not see any other way but revolution to fix it.
I don’t quite get the responses of Conservatives in this thread. It seems like a lot of, “Nothing to see here, move along.” Oh, but maybe we can admit there are some “problems.” But there always have been problems, so nothing has changed!
I’m not sure what you guys really think. America is doing fine? The article is really just Leftwing gasbaggery that does not reflect public opinion in any significant way.
As for proving stuff, that would be cool. I think we’d need some polling companies to do some polls to see how people feel. To me, it seems prima facie true that there is widespread discontent in 2015 that did not exist in 1999.
Unemployment is higher. Workforce participation is significantly lower. The number of people who are in foreclosure who have lost their homes is higher. Wages have stagnated. These are well-known facts that we constantly hear. As to whether they add up to the country being better or worse off is a matter of opinion. Polling could at least reveal people’s feelings on the matter.
And of course, some things are better now than in 1999. Gay rights are better. I remember almost dying from smoke inhalation in bars. There is an even better selection of craft beer, Scotch and bourbon available now. Food and coffee culture has advanced. The Internet offers a lot more overall. Smartphones! In fact, the surface of things has followed the trends started in the 90s, and those are mostly all better. The problems, however, are very deep: war, economic stagnation and inequality, political dysfunction and rancor.
Yeah, but those are stupid people. If you want to stop black people being murdered - again, that’s something we should all be in favour of - you need to at least understand who is murdering them. It’s not whites, it’s not the police, it’s other blacks. Even if every single justifiable homicide by police or private citizens of any race was really a white person murdering a black person in cold blood*, a black American would still be 2.7 times more likely to be murdered by another black person than a white person.
*And if you don’t understand how ridiculously lenient that is, that means counting a black man killing a white mugger in self-defense as a white man murdering a black man.
There’s a lot of truth in what you’re saying. But that doesn’t equal the preconditions for a revolution. At most, they’d equal Bernie Sanders getting elected.
Americans in 2015 aren’t feeling the levels of desperation and helplessness that a revolution needs.
I’m going to disagree. John Mace already pointed out that gays would strongly disagree. The violent crime rate is significantly lower today; outside of greenhouse gases (which is admittedly a problem) the environment is better. We are slowly loosening some of the draconian drug laws that disproportionately bite the poor. We have UHC and now some people can actually afford to go to the doctor. These areas are better largely because the democratic process works. Revolution is not only unnecessary but counterproductive.
Which ones? I’d say that possibly excepting Norway the Western European nations are roughly the same as the US. Norway has the advantage of a small homogeneous population bolstered by North Sea oil so they might be better off. It’s close, though.
So would you say that, if we polled people right now, they’d say things are fine? The economy is fine. The direction of the country is fine. Dissatisfaction is not particularly high?
