Or the American Revolution. The leaders (John Hancock, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington for example) of the revolution were leading citizens including some of the wealthiest men in the colonies.
Incidently, to those who say that a successful revolt in the US is highly unlikely, that’s true. Successful revolutions are the exception I think.
Which does sometimes happen, as in Russia in 1990 – the troops refused to follow the generals’ orders if that meant firing on their own people. Come to think of it, that also happened in 1917, when Bolshevik-indoctrinated soldiers were actually killing their officers.
Maybe I misunderstood your post but I read it as you claiming that Hoover and Roosevelt deserve equal credit for ending the Great Depression.
The Viet Cong and the Afghan mujahideen didn’t have nuclear bombs, tanks, fighter jets, etc., but that didn’t stop them. (Nuclear bombs in particular really strike me as a red herring. You’ll note that even the Evil Empire USSR didn’t bust out the nukes against a guerrilla insurgency, and even an Evil US Dicatorship would have to be pretty damned evil, not to say outright nihilistic, to start nuking its own country.)
The fact is, superpowers don’t really have all that good a track record against sufficiently motivated guerrilla movements–which is not to say such a conflict wouldn’t be really, really ugly, regardless of which side won.
Now, the Viet Cong and the mujihadeen both had external sources of support (as did the American colonists during the Revolutionary War), but it’s impossible to say, given that we know nothing about the circumstances of this hypothetical new U.S. civil war, that American rebels wouldn’t. If the new President Palpatine, after suspending the Constitution “for the duration of the emergency”, is content to rule as an isolationist dictator, then the Wolverines might be on their own; but if he starts making noises about bringing the benefits of the New Order to other countries, then who knows what the E.U. or the Russians or the Chinese might be willing to start smuggling in across the Mexican border.
The reason it’s the status quo is because that’s what the people have chosen. The majority of the American people want a political system dominated by two big parties - it doesn’t matter if it’s Democrats and Republicans or Federalists and Whigs. If people wanted the Greens or the Libertarians or the Socialists in office, they would be.
Actually I think an American dictatorship would be much more likely to nuke rebels, or even nuke everybody in an act of suicidal self-immolation. An American dictatorship has a good likelyhood of being a fanatic Christian theocracy, some of whom actively want nuclear war, or any other form of mass destruction to bring on the Rapture.
For all their other flaws, the Communists were never known for regarding the end of the world as a good thing. Some varieties of Christian do. Millions, judging from the sales of that Left Behind series.
Is it what they want, or what they accept because they’ve never had any other choice?
I want to defer to you since you certainly seem like you know what you’re talking about, but isn’t there a pretty big difference between Viet Cong and Mujahideen and the predominantly comfortable, middle-class, suburban people of America? The former had poverty and, in the case of the Afghans, religion to motivate them. Americans are comfortable and content, and are very very afraid of death. It would take a huge change in the lifestyles and ideologies of the average American to give them the guts to go up against the military machine.
Well, I agree that Americans are not likely to launch a bloody guerilla insurgency/civil war for no particularly good reason. On the other hand, a dictatorship evil and repressive enough to justify widespread armed revolution might very well put an end to Americans’ comfortable, middle-class, suburban lifestyle by its own policies, creating the desperation that leads to revolution. Conversely, some other force (a global economic meltdown, avian flu, giant meteors) might have already ruined Americans’ comfortable, middle class existences, allowing the dictatorship to come to power in the first place.
I was mainly reacting to the oft-heard sentiment that the nuclear-armed, high-tech armies of a superpower couldn’t possibly be defeated by some low-tech rabble of guerrillas–something that has been repeatedly demonstrated to be untrue in history, and which we are (very likely) seeing falsified all over again in Iraq at this very moment.
Are you really that dense? Have you NOT noticed how our throwing the most advanced military machine ever to grace the surface of the Earth at Iraq has done diddly squat to quell the rebellion there? All any rebels have to do is wait out the military. Whichever side is most willing to keep dying for their cause will win.
Most militaries are unwilling to win the way that your route (with nuclear bombs, tanks, etc.) requires–genocide of everyone that resists.
Thanks for being polite.
What exactly did we do to Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II?
Moderator’s Note: Are you really that unaware of the rules? Tone it down–there’s no need to make personal attacks in Great Debates.
A few things. First, it’s different if you are trying to impose a dictatorship at home. Usually, the dictator will have quite a bit of support; in Iraq, we have almost none. Saddam had more Iraqi loyalists than we ever will.
Second, we aren’t ruthless and brutal enough in Iraq to terrorize them into submission; neither were the Soviets in Afghanistan - you have to be really awful to terrorize a conquered people into true submission. We are too ruthless and brutal to win anyone over, but not enough to produce the nationwide fear and despair that would let us win that way. A hypothetical future dictator might very well be that brutal.
Third, in Iraq it’s inevitable that they will outwait our military, because it’s their home and they aren’t going anywhere. That doesn’t apply to a homegrown tyranny.
Finally, we know that tyrants can suppress rebellion for a very long time, because they can and have done so all over the world. Not always, no, but neither is it some near impossible task.
Just what I was going to say. If our military starts to take losses abroad, they can always be withdrawn eventually. What is the White House going to do if they’re confronted with a revolution? Flee? When governor’s mansions start getting stormed, what are they going to do, say “fuck it” and throw up their hands? Will the president flee to Canada and take the Marines with him?
Of course, America’s current high-tech military is supported by the gigantic American economy. Since a successful dictatorship would both require an economic collapse and tend to cause an economic collapse, that high-tech military won’t exist any more.
There will be a bunch of equipment from “the old days” rusting away, and almost none of the conscript slave soldiers in the new army will know how to use it, or be trusted to use it. There won’t be fuel to keep the fighters, bombers and tanks running, there won’t be enough money to buy anything. The dictatorship’s military will more resemble Saddam Hussein’s than the current American military. A few high-tech high-prestige toys left over (including nuclear bombs), but those toys will be to expensive to actually use or maintain.
:dubious: Just because people read post apocalyptic fiction doesn’t mean they want it to happen.
I think it does, not in all but in most cases, when they collect the whole series of LB novels in hardcover.
Remember also that Christian Zionism exists mainly because some fundamentalists believe the existence of Israel is a precondition for the playing out of End Times prophecy.
I agree with the second, but not the first; enough religious or political hysteria would easily allow a dictatorship; I find the rise of someone like Heinlein’s Nehemiah Scudder quite plausible. And a high tech military, while useful for defeating other militaries, is overkill for slaughtering unarmed civlians or poorly armed resistance fighters.
It doesn’t mean that they don’t, either. Do recall this is the same country that produces people like Jerry Falwell, who tried to convince Ronald Reagan to launch a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, in the hope that they would retaliate and that everybody would die - except Falwell and his believers, who’d get Raptured into Heaven. The Russians have admitted that the simple election of Reagan nearly provoked a nuclear first strike from them, for just that reason. Such people are a major force in American politics.
I’m sorry to say that I agree with Der Trihs here. It’s very sobering to read the “Afterword” to Heinlein’s short-fiction collection Revolt in 2100, his sole comment in his own voice on the topic, and to realize how something written a half century or more ago is playing out in great part just as he extrapolated it.