What would it take for Americans to repudiate those in power and start from scratch again through an armed conflict?
A total repudiation of written history and an average 30 point drop in I.Q. might do it.
Czarcasm - that was one of the best one sentences replies I have read here.
Seize control of the means of production! Expropriate the expropriators! Burst the capitalist integument! Lose inches off your hips, thighs, buttocks and abdomen! 
It would require that somehow a tiny fringe of retarded assholes at each end of the political spectrum magically get the vast majority of Americans to agree with them. Except for those retarded assholes, nobody wants to repudiate the system. Many want to modify it in varying ways, but not scrap it.
Rise again? This wouldn’t be rising, this would be falling.
(On the other hand a new major political party is a real possibility for the future. How? No idea, it’ll probably take a while.)
While the above responses are a bit glib, I think the answer is closer to “the population will rise again only after their system of government has become so perverted that they must rebel to restore their freedoms”.
Something like a president refusing to turn over power after his term ended and using the military to shut down Congress and control the courts would effectively render our Constitution null and void. At that point you were see underground revolutionary groups start to form.
The success of any such movement is an open question, and would likely require infiltration both of the political and military apparatus - unless the dictator is running more of a cult of personality in which case assassination might be the most effective action.
Well, the obvious thing is that it would require those in power to refuse to step down and to try to hold on to power. But as long as there are elections and presidents step down when their gig is over I cannot see the mob getting so impatient that they would storm the White House. It even seems a lot of people feel one election circus every four years is more than enough.
First of all, the standard of living would have to drop quite a bit. The past few decades have shown clearly that as long as the bulk of the population has a decent amount of wealth, and as long as that wealth continues to inch upward, there is little demand for radical political action.
I can’t remember the source, but there’s an idea out there that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.
Granted, it’s probably some radical, left-wing propaganda piece, but it does make a good point.
Seeing as 130 million American citizens freely participated in an election a few weeks ago and elected a new President and other officials, I am reasonably sure that the day or revolution is not in the immediate offing.
I would expect a secession movement before a revolution.
By whom? Secessionism is a joke even in Alaska.
Oh, I can see something happening if there were a serious and prolonged global crisis that causes a substantial drop in the living conditions of the average American, and which substantiates the perception of the government being nothing more than a means for the elite to protect themselves.
The kind of situations I’m talking about are like, oil finally runs out, climate change creates huge droughts, a nuclear war levels major cities, or Social Security is privatized.
Hey, if anybody denies me my Social Security, I will take up arms in the streets. That and good Chinese take out.
Secessionism is a fantasy of basement-dwelling beardoes, racists, religious nuts, and other misfits. Despite being relatively high-profile on the web, there aren’t enough of them total in the US to qualify as more than a joke. If all of them lived in one state, they’d still be a joke. None of them agree on what their new nation states would look like, but they all see themselves as Important People there.
Yes, secession is a joke and only bandied about by a fringe. Like revolution is much better?
Things are just fine right now, so nobody is willing to revolt. My point is that if the nation started to REALLY hit the skids, I would expect secession to be part of the revolution. Take the example of the President refusing to step down. Lets go further and make it Bush/Cheney with the support of some military elements to make it stick.
Where would the organization to rise up come from - a demagogue individual or a state legislature? I argue that the movement would be more likely to come from a state than an individual. The American Revolution was run by people representing areas, the Confederacy split off based on votes by states. I think the same would happen again in the US.
What would be the trigger to get California to secede, along with other Western States? I do not know. But I think that for it to be a true revolution it would take an action by an already existing entity such as a state government.
Who is advocating revolution in the US right now, other than fringe lunatics?
Or that the the revolution happened with said election, and the only fatality was Joe (of plumbing fame).
Good point NB.
In the last 100 years, the closest we came ot such armed revolt was in late 1931 and early 32 when people fought that their government did not give a rats ass about them. There were a few cases of actual armed rebellion like the farmers who took over a Red Cross store in Arkansas but harmed nobody.
The unemployment rate then was between 20 and 25%. Welfare programs were a sad joke. In Toledo, Ohio the government agency in charge of public relief budgeted 2.14 cents per day for a persons food.
We are a very long way from that. And even then, people peacefully waited and turned to government for the answers.