Dreaming of Guillotines and lynch mobs

[defacto7]

I feel the sentiment and the anger in the discussions of revolution and retribution against the 1%, I understand it and share it. Some are serious, some are half serious, and some just joke along, but one way or another, things are going to break.... If the scenario of seek and destroy is the outcome I wouldn't expect the return of America the beautiful anytime in the next century.

Unfortunately, we have to conclude that the .1% are wealthy enough to run. They will exchange their monetary wealth for real property, commodities and hard assets which they will take with them. The reality is, only the middle wealth will take the heat and the masses will simply fight among themselves until it gets so bad that someone calling him/herself a political saint, a savior, a prophet, a god, a Stalin, a Hitler, Satan, even Jesus will emerge, the tired masses will run at anything that looks like hope, those of faith will have delusions of the end of times...

and the wheel goes round and round and round and.....

We had better find more practical solutions, but don't ask me what the solutions are. I don't know.

[Shandris]

1. In the game Pathfinder, there is a country called Galt that has this very...

...situation going on. It's loosely modelled on the Reign of Terror of Revolutionary France, given a bit of mythology treatment for play aesthetics. But it is an interesting study in warnings.

Look how quick everyone, even here where people are ostensibly on the same side, is to declare someone else a heretic, a troll, a right-winger...for no other reason than disagreeing with people on one facet of a topic. Now add in mob mentality.

And people wonder why I find large-scale social shaming to be a horrible thing to move towards.

[Laelth]

5. Insightful post. Thanks. n/t

-Laelth

[adirondacker]

7. +1000! nt

[wandy]

8. You also point out how the GOP can continue to exist........

This being how people are so quick to declare others a heretic, a troll, a fill in the blank ________.
Exploitation of some of the worst parts of human nature.

[Dirty Socialist]

2. Something very bad has to happen to bring that about

Enter Climate Change.

[blkmusclmachine]

3. ,

,

[Enthusiast]

4. Yes. But. Poor people cannot be expected to pay for counterproductive preemtive wars of choice.

Especially after the Wild West Wall Street gone crazy destroyed the economy. The Bush tax cuts should have expired as scheduled.

Dammit, Obama!

Oh, well. We can always cut entitlements. You know.

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[TBF]

6. The return of America the beautiful -

when was it so? Perhaps for a few decades after WWII after we had wiped out our rivals and they needed to rebuild? We taxed at 90% in the 50s and folks actually felt like they had a chance. By 1980 the other world powers were back in play and again we had to compete. And we are back to the 1% owning everything.

It is going to be a global fight now - and there are many more of the poor than the 1%. Obviously.

I think what some of us see as "America the beautiful" didn't ever really exist, or maybe existed for a few people for awhile.

[defacto7]

14. "America the beautiful"

It was irony. Thanks for picking up on it.

[TBF]

23. I don't know how we get out of it either -

You picked up on a good point about how the 1% will flee. In essence they already have - many have their own private planes and own property elsewhere. They've been allowed to rape and pillage and will take off in an instant if called on it. Their world is global and that is why our resistance must be global as well.

[freshwest]

9. Thanks for the real world thinking.

[woo me with science]

10. I choose, with effort, to keep alive some hope that it can happen peacefully.

FDR was able to accomplish a great deal by rallying the country behind him.

At least on paper, we still have some remaining structures and institutions that would allow a sea change politically, without major bloodshed.

I honestly don't know if it's still possible, given the entrenched corruption of all three branches of government now, our rigged political system drowning in corporate dollars, the omnipresent brainwashing media, the ubiquitous propaganda.slime machine and surveillance machine, and the shadow state that has already shown it will stop at nothing to prevent resistance.

But I will crawl through broken glass to help give power and the bully pulpit to people like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren, in the hopes that doing so will spark a massive sea change among Americans who have been too passive in the face of creeping fascism.

It's worth a try first, anyway.

[defacto7]

15. "But I will crawl through broken glass"

We may just have to. I believe there is hope, but to my thinking hope does not hold the larger portion of the possibilities in our present political culture; it's becoming more distant by the day the same way I see the US dimming into history having been cut off before reaching a point of balanced prosperity and human equality. That would have been a feat never before accomplished in the history of humankind. Maybe it was never possible to begin with, but at least hope was there in America's original vision and maybe it's still there even now. There have been times when human accomplishments needed little hope to succeed.

So, yes... it is worth a try, not just for America, but for the sake of humankind.

[Supersedeas]

11. this is why reparations are also improtant to consider

oppressed peoples can be driven to violence

[randys1]

26. Reparations are required, but if we did this the rightwing garbage would be enraged due to their

stupidity and war would ensue

maybe that is a good thing anyway

[jwirr]

12. You point out what the end game will look like. But if we continue to hand over everything to the

rich is the end game going to be any different? The rich are showing no signs of concern for anyone else other than themselves. If there is revolution it will only come because there was no other choice for survival.

[defacto7]

16. Agreed.

I think both of those end games are a matter of survival. In the one we do not fight and do not survive, in the other we fight and possibly survive. The question is then how do we fight? What does the revolution consist of?

[jwirr]

24. Yes, the bundy "revolution" is an example we can learn from. Both their methods and their goals

would end up in some type of dictatorship for the rich. What they teach us is that whatever we do we have to look at the motives of the group and the stated goals. We can never be sure that they are the true values - an example would be bush who led us into wars with lies for oil.

I guess what I am saying is that if we ever do revolt we need to understand that the enemy is within and not very often honest about anything.

[jeff47]

13. "Dreaming" is not the right word.

This level of inequality has never been stable. It gets fixed in one of two ways.

An example of the first way is the New Deal - Laws, regulations and taxes are changed to take more from the 1% to benefit everyone. It's a nice, stable transition, and in the end everyone is better off. Including the 1% - they have more customers and make more money.

An example of the second way is the guillotine, or communist revolutions. It's massively violent. Lots of people are hurt, far outside the 1%, lots of wealth is seized and redistributed, and everyone ends up worse off - the violence and death hurts the overall economy.

We aren't dreaming of the latter. We just know that the latter is inevitable if the former does not occur.

[defacto7]

17. I vote for way number 1.

Way number 2 in 21st century terms is likely annihilation or a return to the dark ages.

(X) Way one
( ) Way two

[Luminous Animal]

18. HAHAHHAHA! Nobody here wants to cut anyones head off. A pathetic appeal to problem that does not

exist.

[defacto7]

20. You certainly are luminous...

Question is, which parts of you are luminous? The part that speaks what everyone thinks or the ad hominem part? Both?

[Luminous Animal]

21. I'm part of this board that doesn't fabricate chopping peoples head off. Your OP is shit.

[defacto7]

22. It seems you have difficulty

connecting the dots. I'm part of this board that reads in context and finds discussion more interesting if it built on more than one string of thought rather than discarding expressions of other members of this board who have their own views. Ad hominem in the only shit here.

[DavidDvorkin]

25. Have you noticed how high modern lampposts are?

And how they're smooth and curved so that you can't throw a rope over them? That's not just happenstance.

[hunter]

27. Want a practical solution? Tax the uber wealthy out of existence.

That's a much more humane solution than beheading them.

I'm not talking about the ordinary wealthy; the big house, the nice car, the vacation house, the annual trip to Europe, that's the ordinary wealthy class.

I'm talking about the uber-wealthy, the oligarchs who have wealth enough to manipulate the political system in their own favor for the sole purpose of increasing their own wealth and power.

They can't save themselves from the Guillotine, their hunger for power and money knows no bounds, but with a few tweaks to the tax system, We the People might.

[Crunchy Frog]

28. What's gonna happen's gonna happen. Just make sure it doesn't happen to you.

Quote from Sound of Music.

[defacto7]

29. I remember that.

It was a quote by the Austrian manager who was pleading for the appeasement of the Nazi Anschluß. He was rebuffed as I recall.