Please help me counter some poor reasoning: why is the idea

[coalition_unwilling]

that electing Romney will 'bring on the revolution' poor logic?

Context: there's an Occupy group on FB that argues that a Romney administration will bring about a revolutionary moment faster and that people should thus vote for Romney (in order to speed up the revolution). The idea is that Romney will concentrate negative conditions so intensely that people will finally rise up and revolt and overthrow the system.

I know this is a bullshit argument but am at a loss as to exactly why. (I used to know but can't remember now.) Something about how you can't move forward by taking steps backward. Had a Dem Socialist explain it to me in meticulous and convincing detail back during the Reagan years but for the life of me have forgotten it now.

Any inputs deeply appreciated before I land on this FB thread.

[Summer Hathaway]

1. ...

"There's an Occupy group on FB that argues that a Romney administration will bring about a revolutionary moment faster and that people should thus vote for Romney (in order to speed up the revolution)."

Yeah, sounds like a plan - a plan conjured up by people who think a 'revolution' would be totally cool, and like the people will rise up and change the world overnight, and it will all be like so fuckin' great, and everyone will have jobs and be happy, and like ..."

Jesus wept.

[coalition_unwilling]

2. As I recall, the counter to this argument is that you can't move forward by

taking steps backward. But there was a far more compelling argument against the logic that I cannot remember, try as I might.

[Freddie]

3. Because the damage a Romney administration would do

Supreme Court justices, repealing health care, to name just 2--would be permanent. And when was the last time the country has had a "revolution"? 236 years ago? We're just too geographically spread apart, and too complacent, for that to happen again.

[coalition_unwilling]

4. Actually, we had a "revolution" about 150 years ago (at least as historians

of the Civil War era like James McPherson depict it) but, yeah, I take your point.

The amount of suffering the 99% would endure from a Romney administration would exceed my many orders of magnitude that which they suffer under the status quo.

[freshwest]

5. The problem is that chaos benefits authoritarians, strangely enough.

The anti-government types intend to destroy the government that has protected our civil rights. Their utopia will be a strong-man dictatorship who will eliminate those rights by letting the market rule everything.

The people with the money and organization to kill the liberal opposition are the Koch brothers and Tea Partiers, who see an immediate gain to themselves, especially those who are currently profting from private military contracts. They do want to privatize everything, even if it means that people are going to die, because they'll clean up.

They want this and are funding every venue to get people to go with it. Those who have gone the CT path expect mankind to be transformed. They believe a mystical force as yet unseen will make it all work out. Just like the Rapture crowd, the invisible hand will take care of tt.

The end of this government is not going to give anyone prosperity or freedom. It will allow them to eliminate anyone who doesn't agree with their theocracy. When governments fail, religion, strong men or corporations take over. We've seen it happen worldwide. Those who believe differertnly are just ignoring the trends. And most likely, they don't imagine they'll be the ones to suffer.

[progree]

6. I hope there are as many on the right who vote for Obama to bring the Apocalypse sooner (in their

Last edited Mon Oct 22, 2012, 11:29 AM - Edit history (1)

minds, using the same sort of logic except everything turned around 180 degrees). The Apocalypse being of course the thing in the Book of Revelation where Jesus comes back to earth and establishes the Kingdom of God and rules for 1,000 years or whatever - a staple in the more feverish Christian right minds.

On the Occupy FB group, I sure hope this isn't a widespread sentiment among Occupy people. I don't believe it is.

[coalition_unwilling]

7. What was surprising is that the thread belongs to a fairly committed member of Occupy Los Angeles

and a fairly level-headed one too.

I do think this is a fairly small rump group of OLA folks but not sure at this point.

[Freddie]

8. Sounds like "vote for Nader and teach the Dems a lesson" logic

We know how well that worked.

[coalition_unwilling]

10. Actually, I think the logic is closer to "Romney will make things so bad that

the 99% will have no choice but to rise up and revolt."

It's specious logic, but I cannot remember exactly what the refutation of it is.

[Spider Jerusalem]

9. It's poor reasoning because I can't really think of a single instance...

save for the American Civil War, perhaps...of a "revolution" in a democratic republic. Classifying the American Civil War as such is problematic anyway because the Confederacy's secession wasn't seeking to establish a new order, but to preserve an old one that the rest of the country had come to increasingly reject. And the American Civil War, like the American War of Independence, and UNLIKE the French and Russian revolutions, was not a revolution of peasants rising up against an oppressive regime and a corrupt social order that left them powerless. The leading figures of the colonies who led opposition to Britain were, by and large, merchants, planters, lawyers and tradesmen; the aristocracy and middle class. The Southerners who spent the 1850's declaiming that "slavery must follow the flag" and then led the call for secession were plantation owners and merchants in places like Savannah and Charleston engaged in the transatlantic cotton trade. In neither case were the peasantry, as such, calling for secession and independence.

There is absolutely no reason whatever to presume that a Romney presidency would exacerbate partisan tensions to the point of igniting open civil war (which is what anyone stupid enough to think it'll lead to "revolution" really means); compare the situation of the USA at present to France under the ancien regime or Russia under the tsars and there's really not any comparison. Most Americans except for a very small minority of hardcore political partisans and anarchists are too indifferent. And really..."overthrow the system", and then? Replace it with what? Latter-day Dantons and Robespierres, no doubt, and a Committee of Public Safety.

[coalition_unwilling]

14. The position struck me as somewhat jejune, but I was at a loss as to

what to say to refute it decisively since, undeniably, a Romney administration would make matters far, far worse for the working classes in this country (thus satisfying the premise of the argument, I suppose).

There's also a countervailing argument put forward by some historians and sociologists that revolutions principally occur when things are getting better but people are frustrated with how slowly they are improving (as opposed to the premise I'm disputing here, that revolutions occur when things get really, really bad).

However, your points are well taken also.

[quaker bill]

11. First, revolutions are chaotic and unpredictable

The folks in Occupy expect a particular result that they like. There is no reason to believe that they will get the revolution they desire, they may end up with one that is very different in every bad way. Even if it starts the way they think it will, the results can go in many random directions from there, most of which they would not like.

Second, a revolution is very unlikely, what is more likely is that the suffering and exploitation will be racheted up slowly as people learn to tolerate it, with a massive load of propaganda about "restoring freedom" and "American values". This is what has happened over the last 30 years as the "we can't afford it" meme has been used everywhere to gut wages, benefits, pensions and retirement security, schools and other public services, as well as the manufacturing base to the economy, a little slice at a time. We are not fully a third world country yet, there still is a middle class. They can fix this and have a plan to do so, a little slice at a time.

[coalition_unwilling]

16. Wonderful reply. Would it be OK with you if I copy and paste liberally into

the FB thread in question?

[lunatica]

12. An Iranian friend of mine said that what takes 500 years to advance civilization to modernity

takes only a fraction of time to turn back all those a 500 years. She was talking about her country, but I see it happening as we speak. It all depends on who is in power.

[coalition_unwilling]

17. Another wonderful reply. Would it be OK if I cite you (and your friend) on the

FB thread in question?

[lunatica]

18. I always thought her words were very wise

You're welcome to them.

[dawg]

13. 47% of the country would blame President Obama ...

for anything that went wrong in a Romney administration.

[porphyrian]

15. "It's a trick...get an axe." n/t