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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Pitchforks Are Coming… For Us Plutocrats By NICK HANAUER From Politico Magazine
This is a really good read & he is spot on.
You probably don’t know me, but like you I am one of those .01%ers, a proud and unapologetic capitalist. I have founded, co-founded and funded more than 30 companies across a range of industries—from itsy-bitsy ones like the night club I started in my 20s to giant ones like Amazon.com, for which I was the first nonfamily investor. Then I founded aQuantive, an Internet advertising company that was sold to Microsoft in 2007 for $6.4 billion. In cash. My friends and I own a bank. I tell you all this to demonstrate that in many ways I’m no different from you. Like you, I have a broad perspective on business and capitalism. And also like you, I have been rewarded obscenely for my success, with a life that the other 99.99 percent of Americans can’t even imagine. Multiple homes, my own plane, etc., etc. You know what I’m talking about. In 1992, I was selling pillows made by my family’s business, Pacific Coast Feather Co., to retail stores across the country, and the Internet was a clunky novelty to which one hooked up with a loud squawk at 300 baud. But I saw pretty quickly, even back then, that many of my customers, the big department store chains, were already doomed. I knew that as soon as the Internet became fast and trustworthy enough—and that time wasn’t far off—people were going to shop online like crazy. Goodbye, Caldor. And Filene’s. And Borders. And on and on.
Many of us think we’re special because “this is America.” We think we’re immune to the same forces that started the Arab Spring—or the French and Russian revolutions, for that matter. I know you fellow .01%ers tend to dismiss this kind of argument; I’ve had many of you tell me to my face I’m completely bonkers. And yes, I know there are many of you who are convinced that because you saw a poor kid with an iPhone that one time, inequality is a fiction.
Here’s what I say to you: You’re living in a dream world. What everyone wants to believe is that when things reach a tipping point and go from being merely crappy for the masses to dangerous and socially destabilizing, that we’re somehow going to know about that shift ahead of time. Any student of history knows that’s not the way it happens. Revolutions, like bankruptcies, come gradually, and then suddenly. One day, somebody sets himself on fire, then thousands of people are in the streets, and before you know it, the country is burning. And then there’s no time for us to get to the airport and jump on our Gulfstream Vs and fly to New Zealand. That’s the way it always happens. If inequality keeps rising as it has been, eventually it will happen. We will not be able to predict when, and it will be terrible—for everybody. But especially for us.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchforks-are-coming-for-us-plutocrats-108014.html#ixzz35qMb4eeA
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JustAnotherGen
(38,054 posts)And reading folks.
He gets it.
JustAnotherGen
(38,054 posts)http://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-businessmen/ceos/nick-hanauer-net-worth/
1 Billion Dollars
Recently Nick Hanauer has made headlines when he announced he supports taxing the rich more heavily. He also disagrees with the notion that rich Americans create jobs and that in reality we need to support the middle class if we want to reduce unemployment.
What he supports is interesting too - land conservation, public education, etc. etc.
socialist_n_TN
(11,481 posts)because NZ is experiencing the same revolution. That's what internationalism is all about. In fact, when it comes to the USA I strongly suspect that it will ALREADY be happening in the rest of the world.
PeoViejo
(2,178 posts)..they can divert to Papua-New Guinea and become kings of Cargo Cult.
DinahMoeHum
(23,604 posts). . .or throw them into a stew. . .
PeoViejo
(2,178 posts)
emsimon33
(3,128 posts)The world that these bastards have made with their greed and psychopathy leaves them nowhere to hide--at least, no where very comfortable. And then they would turn that place into a revolution.
WillyT
(72,631 posts)
Brigid
(17,621 posts)At least not to us here at DU. What is new is who is saying it. Perhaps Hanauer's fellow one-percenters will start listening eventually, but I doubt it. This is the most lucid, thoughtful article I have read in a long time. 
even to those of us that don't spend much time here
It's merely the same dynamics that preceded the decisions to try some different pie cuts back in the Great Depression. What ever cooperation the fat cats provided in that was motivated by the same very real concerns for the safety of their heads on their part.
That's the likely only reason, since it's hard to imagine or believe they had any real concerns about the social disorder that will arise other than a bigger dent in their profits/wealth it would likely result it.
valerief
(53,235 posts)You won't hear those Bravo Housewives say that.
Uncle Joe
(65,134 posts)It happened because we reminded the masses that they are the source of growth and prosperity, not us rich guys. We reminded them that when workers have more money, businesses have more customers—and need more employees. We reminded them that if businesses paid workers a living wage rather than poverty wages, taxpayers wouldn’t have to make up the difference. And when we got done, 74 percent of likely Seattle voters in a recent poll agreed that a $15 minimum wage was a swell idea.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchforks-are-coming-for-us-plutocrats-108014_Page2.html#ixzz35raJJevr
We didn't need reminding about this, most of us knew it all along.
Louisiana1976
(3,962 posts)
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)The article is great. Hanauer is doing a good thing publishing it with his name on it.
If we think it is information we already know, we need to send it to Republican friends and family who don't know it
Uncle Joe
(65,134 posts)Having said that I don't believe the .01% should be under the mistaken delusion that the vast majority of the rest of us didn't know that a higher minimum or livable wage would be good for the economy.
Part of the problem with being in the . less than 1% is living in a bubble, detached from reality and under the mistaken belief that the uber-wealthy needed to tell us peons what was good for us, the economy and the nation.
Letting them know front and center that we didn't need to be told might at least work toward reducing the size of their bubble even if just by a little bit.
Having said that I will repeat the major premise of my previous post, I highly recommend it and I am spreading it around.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)So forget all that rhetoric about how America is great because of people like you and me and Steve Jobs. You know the truth even if you won’t admit it: If any of us had been born in Somalia or the Congo, all we’d be is some guy standing barefoot next to a dirt road selling fruit. It’s not that Somalia and Congo don’t have good entrepreneurs. It’s just that the best ones are selling their wares off crates by the side of the road because that’s all their customers can afford.
And this:
Republicans and Democrats in Congress can’t shrink government with wishful thinking. The only way to slash government for real is to go back to basic economic principles: You have to reduce the demand for government. If people are getting $15 an hour or more, they don’t need food stamps. They don’t need rent assistance. They don’t need you and me to pay for their medical care. If the consumer middle class is back, buying and shopping, then it stands to reason you won’t need as large a welfare state. And at the same time, revenues from payroll and sales taxes would rise, reducing the deficit.
Both quotes from
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchforks-are-coming-for-us-plutocrats-108014_Page3.html
Laelth
(32,017 posts)-Laelth
Octafish
(55,745 posts)He said, "Police State."
And so I have a message for my fellow filthy rich, for all of us who live in our gated bubble worlds: Wake up, people. It won’t last.
If we don’t do something to fix the glaring inequities in this economy, the pitchforks are going to come for us. No society can sustain this kind of rising inequality. In fact, there is no example in human history where wealth accumulated like this and the pitchforks didn’t eventually come out. You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state. Or an uprising. There are no counterexamples. None. It’s not if, it’s when.
1StrongBlackMan
(31,849 posts)a bunch of the really, really wealthy are hoping for ... a police state. Until they realize that that same police state will only protect them as long as they are really, really wealthy AND willing to make the captain of that police state, eventually, wealthier than they.
Xyzse
(8,217 posts)Particularly in regards to how this system is self defeating.
Where:
"The model for us rich guys here should be Henry Ford, who realized that all his autoworkers in Michigan weren’t only cheap labor to be exploited; they were consumers, too. Ford figured that if he raised their wages, to a then-exorbitant $5 a day, they’d be able to afford his Model Ts."
The idea has always been, if you raise the bottom, it creates an effect where it raises everyone's standard up.
America is increasingly doing the "I got mine, F- everyone else." mentality, which can not last.
Baitball Blogger
(52,345 posts)He is saying the same thing that most rich people fear. Yes, there will be change. It will come easy, or it will come from the same kind of pressure that resulted in the Civil Rights Act.
I hope it will come easy.
IrishAyes
(6,151 posts)
tclambert
(11,193 posts)And he pointed out most customers are working people. The rich could buy more stuff, but they really don't. A rich person making 1,000 times what a regular working stiff makes doesn't buy 1,000 times as many blue jeans.
nomorenomore08
(13,324 posts)socialist_n_TN
(11,481 posts)on any reinvestment. The only way capitalism can work is if they can find a healthy rate of return on their investment of capital. When the rate of return on investment in the productive sectors doesn't pay off as much as the Wall Street casino does (even with higher risk), they'll go where the best potential return is. The only way they'll return to the more productive sectors is if they can bring down labor costs (since labor is the highest cost to the capitalists) to the point where they can make a greater return than at the casino. That's the way the system is set up. It's called capitalism.
zeemike
(18,998 posts)They are confident that they have a militarized police force willing and able to bust some heads to keep them safe.
When greed is your creed you can never get enough, and you don't give a shit if millions have to die to get you more.
And they look at Rome, which had vast inequities and lasted for hundreds of years...and they hope it will work here too...or longer if globalization is spread throughout the world with military strenth...as the Romans did.
I hope they are wrong.
socialist_n_TN
(11,481 posts)Even Rome had it's slave rebellion that ALMOST toppled the empire.
Although I certainly hope the rebellion goes more in the way the Russian revolution did rather than the Spartacist one did.
zeemike
(18,998 posts)And feel confident they can do the same because of our hi tech weapons and a police force willing to do the job.
KoKo
(84,711 posts)and a more militarized training program for our police (some say that's why there's such a rise in police abuse) ....we aren't far from seeing much more repression in the future. 
zeemike
(18,998 posts)The only question is whether we will wake up in time to stop it...If not I feel for the young generation that will have to live with it.
Ikonoklast
(23,973 posts)You'll get the answer to your question.
Works the same way today, the tools are different, but the people and the greed is not.
zeemike
(18,998 posts)Our MIC kind of looks like that.
Ikonoklast
(23,973 posts)All it would take is an ambitious general and a cowardly politician in the executive office getting screamed at by billionaires to protect the status quo.
We are almost at the decision point, things can go either way.
The thing that I am most afraid of is another economic shock pushing the house of cards over, we are still in a very, very precarious financial state.
zeemike
(18,998 posts)Where Burt Lancaster plaid just such a general...a great movie and really a warning.
Ikonoklast
(23,973 posts)Sort of actually not quite but there's some truth to it based on a coup that almost sort of didn't quite happen they just killed Kennedy instead.
They took a more direct route...and after that all future presidents would know what the game was about.
olegramps
(8,200 posts)In his work, "Politics" written some 300 years before the Christian era he examined in detail over 100 forms of government and concluded that a democracy was the best form government. However, from his extensive examination he concluded that a democracy can only be sustained by a prosperous and majority middleclass. He showed that the eventual result of the concentration of wealth, a Plutocracy, has through out time eventually resulted in a violent revolution. Who knows what the "Tipping Point" could be if the situation is not corrected. Perhaps the attempt to impeach President Obama would be enough. Perhaps it could be sparked by some unforeseen event.
Perhaps I will not live long enough to witness it, but it can be guaranteed that if the present situation is not rectified that, indeed, history will be repeated.
hedgehog
(36,286 posts)"grass roots" Tea Party!
Stargazer99
(3,517 posts)I know I am fed up and the "French solution" and/or revolt seems like it might be the only way to deal with greed and the immoral state of mind that the 1% so freely indulge in. I'll bet there are others who feel the same way or even more intensley.
truebrit71
(20,805 posts)..it keeps our attention way from what is really going on...
rickyhall
(5,509 posts)they think they can anticipate the revolt by spying on us.
WHEN CRABS ROAR
(3,813 posts)These tired old eyes have seen a lot in the last 74 years, a lot that can't be forgotten easily, we know the problems, the solution lays in a non-violent peaceful, populist revolution, that will happen when enough of the population understands clearly how to achieve results using general strike tactics.
socialist_n_TN
(11,481 posts)The ultimate revolutionary tactic by the working class.
trof
(54,274 posts)truebrit71
(20,805 posts)...he's in a very small minority I fear, the vast majority of his peers belong to the F.Lee Bailey school of thinking, 'He who dies with the most toys, wins'...
hfojvt
(37,573 posts)as if the top 20% won't keep a lid on things.
nomorenomore08
(13,324 posts)
ewagner
(18,967 posts)I posted the link on facebook in hopes (slim probably) that some of my conservative friends will read it.
The thinking is remarkably fresh....and the reasoning is simple enough for a tea-bagger to understand...maybe...
I think the argument will appeal to those who reject of are turned off by the social justice arguments but understand that there is something intrinsically wrong in America and we have two choices : change or revolution...
Maybe the message will get through...maybe..
calimary
(90,017 posts)From the second page:
The model for us rich guys here should be Henry Ford, who realized that all his autoworkers in Michigan weren’t only cheap labor to be exploited; they were consumers, too. Ford figured that if he raised their wages, to a then-exorbitant $5 a day, they’d be able to afford his Model Ts.
What a great idea. My suggestion to you is: Let’s do it all over again. We’ve got to try something. These idiotic trickle-down policies are destroying my customer base. And yours too.
It’s when I realized this that I decided I had to leave my insulated world of the super-rich and get involved in politics. Not directly, by running for office or becoming one of the big-money billionaires who back candidates in an election. Instead, I wanted to try to change the conversation with ideas—by advancing what my co-author, Eric Liu, and I call “middle-out” economics. It’s the long-overdue rebuttal to the trickle-down economics worldview that has become economic orthodoxy across party lines—and has so screwed the American middle class and our economy generally. Middle-out economics rejects the old misconception that an economy is a perfectly efficient, mechanistic system and embraces the much more accurate idea of an economy as a complex ecosystem made up of real people who are dependent on one another.
Which is why the fundamental law of capitalism must be: If workers have more money, businesses have more customers. Which makes middle-class consumers, not rich businesspeople like us, the true job creators. Which means a thriving middle class is the source of American prosperity, not a consequence of it. The middle class creates us rich people, not the other way around.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchforks-are-coming-for-us-plutocrats-108014_Page2.html#ixzz35s6Ixl1R
G_j
(40,569 posts) 
MFrohike
(1,980 posts)He wants to see the minimum wage go up so that safety net programs can be cut.
Tom Rinaldo
(23,187 posts)What he clearly wants is for the minimum wage to go up so that workers can afford to be active consumers supporting a robust economy - that is his primary pitch. To help sell that idea to his fellow 1%ers who worry about how bad it is to have government meddle in the market place he makes the case that if we lift people out of poverty by allowing workers to earn enough money to truly live on, there will be less people who will be forced to depend on government programs merely to survive.
I don't think he is saying cut the safety net. I think he is saying if we fill in most of the cracks in the economy that millions of Americans currently fall through that we will no longer need the safety net to keep growing just to keep increasing numbers of people alive. I don't hear him arguing that there should not be a safety net for those who need one, I hear him arguing that we should increase wages so that far fewer people need a safety net - which would organically decrease the size of those programs.
MFrohike
(1,980 posts)I see a call for smaller government and less government aid to all Americans, not just the poor.
Ikonoklast
(23,973 posts)for those who really need it.
The previously poor are now paying taxes, earn a decent living, and do not need government assistance anymore.
There are less poor people, the bureaucracies dedicated to helping the poor have less to do now, they can be shrunk or given other higher-priority jobs to do.
My take, ymmv.
nomorenomore08
(13,324 posts)Plenty of people at his level still buy into the "free market" myths, or at least profess to.
MFrohike
(1,980 posts)It seemed more like "throw them a sop to forestall more drastic moves" than anything deeper. It reeked of noblesse oblige, in that it struck me as a suggestion for the barons to throw the peasants a bone, rather than the peasants acting as the political sovereign they are.
nomorenomore08
(13,324 posts)But even the proverbial stopped clock is right twice a day.
Kablooie
(19,107 posts)To lift people out of government programs and into personal independence is a good thing.
imthevicar
(811 posts)I know what you think: You think that Occupy Wall Street and all the other capitalism-is-the-problem protesters disappeared without a trace. But that’s not true. Of course, it’s hard to get people to sleep in a park in the cause of social justice. But the protests we had in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis really did help to change the debate in this country from death panels and debt ceilings to inequality.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchforks-are-coming-for-us-plutocrats-108014_Page4.html#ixzz35r2dpjap
magical thyme
(14,881 posts)The reason the rest of the 0.01%ers think he's crazy is because, as he says, this level of inequality ends *either* in revolution *or* a police state.
They've already armed and trained the police for a police state. That die has been cast. We just need to hope the police will wake up and realize it's their extended families and neighbors they're tasing and flash bang grenading.
grasswire
(50,130 posts)....have been perfectly prepared for war against their own citizens. Many of them already have gone into policing. Many of them will be sought as privatized policing grows to protect the plutocrats.
DinahMoeHum
(23,604 posts)There may be others who could go the other way and conduct vigilante or underground operations against said plutocrats.
closeupready
(29,503 posts)in the US.
kairos12
(13,588 posts)Start building.
randys1
(16,286 posts)you wouldnt need pitchforks if the idiot middle class and poor on the right would grow up...
we could change everything, fix everything, including and ESPECIALLY our disastrous trade policy
toby jo
(1,269 posts)Our military is so massive it just isn't going to happen unless it is they who lead. They won't, they're being fed.
The revolution will be intrinsic - universal strike style. Nobody goes to work, nobody pays their taxes, nobody shows up for court, everybody hits the streets. And we call it, we own the time, the place, the beginning of it, and the end of it.
Well, at least Nick is paying attention.
nomorenomore08
(13,324 posts)mindwalker_i
(4,407 posts) 
Auggie
(33,150 posts)grasswire
(50,130 posts)Dissenting will be much harder in this militarized surveillance state at home.
Barack_America
(28,876 posts)The upswell would have to enormous to counter those.
Still, I don't doubt that it will someday happen.
DinahMoeHum
(23,604 posts)and serves as a cautionary tale:
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchforks-are-coming-for-us-plutocrats-108014_Page4.html#ixzz35rVtccUt
(snip)
My family, the Hanauers, started in Germany selling feathers and pillows. They got chased out of Germany by Hitler and ended up in Seattle owning another pillow company. Three generations later, I benefited from that.
(snip)
Back then, Germany, like the rest of the world, in was the Depression. It gave rise to Hitler and the Nazis who gave unemployed starving Germans convenient targets to blame for their problems. And it was mostly the middle class (both formerly and what was left of them) that made his rise to power possible.
Lest we forget.
Louisiana1976
(3,962 posts)Raksha
(7,167 posts)closeupready
(29,503 posts)I think that trickle-down has been SO successful and capturing the talking heads in the DC bubble and in the 'free market' of ideas that it's certain to lead to significant social disruption. It has given crooks and our corrupt Congress a plausible theory as a means of covering the fact that they are all in the same bed together, taking the same money, and serving the same uber-masters.
I'm not sure what form that disruption is going to take - I don't think it will be violence - but the momentum behind trickle down is simply too strong after 34 years since Reagan really put it into practice.
Taitertots
(7,745 posts)If the productive gains of the masses went to the mass it would be a golden age for the vast majority of the people on earth.
socialist_n_TN
(11,481 posts)This is the solution. More people just need to realize it.
bklyncowgirl
(7,960 posts)Nicely synthesized a lot of what I've been thinking.
Populist_Prole
(5,364 posts)Not only is it the more just system, but the upper ends will actually benefit as well, but that most 1 percenters are so greedy that they think a prosperous middle class is somehow bilking them out of money right now.
HughBeaumont
(24,461 posts)It of course could NEVVAHRR be teh preshius infallible and uncorruptible St. Free MARKETZ that's the problem. NOOOOOOOooO!!! If gubmint would just let the CEOs just do what they want and pay what they CAN (because they're SOO poor!) everything would be clouds shitting rainbows on 'Murica!! "Yew libs are so stuped and want to trun The Untied Statists uf Murica into a commewnist socaltits paradice". "Raise minimum wage, get maximum unemployment!" "Y not just rayse it ot a hunnert dollarz n hour, or a thousand or a BILLIN??"
Worse yet, they talk to YOU like YOU'RE the stupid one. That's what galls ME above everything.
CrispyQ
(40,969 posts)Lay off dozens of workers & to hire more VPs & Directors.
Fortinbras Armstrong
(4,477 posts)And as far as anyone could tell, it made no difference. Which says to me that it was wholly unnecessary.
CrispyQ
(40,969 posts)Why don't those jobs get outsourced?
Fortinbras Armstrong
(4,477 posts)
alterfurz
(2,681 posts)Maybe if we listened to it, history would stop repeating itself. -- Lily Tomlin
[Intro]
Hey you!
We got your war
We're at the gates
We're at your door
[Hook]
We got the guillotine
We got the guillotine, you better run
[Verse 1]
We want to thank you for flying with us
We know you coulda stayed home, just cried and cussed
May all your guns go off if it's time to bust
May all they tanks have time to rust
They got the armies turning bullets into gold
They got the hookers turning tricks in the cold
And every time the police kicks in a door
An angel gas break dips in the O
And even if a d-boy flips him a O
It ain't enough to buy shit anymore
Sleep in the doorway, piss on the floor
Look in the sky, wait for missiles to show
It's finna blow cause
They got the TV, we got the truth
They own the judges and we got the proof
We got hella people, they got helicopters
They got the bombs and we got the, we got the
[Hook]
[Bridge: Silk-E]
Don't talk about it
It won't show
Be about it
It's 'bout to blow
[Verse 2]
I just spit the dope lines, I don't snort 'em
Tell the boss to call police to escort him
You don't write all them lines, you just quote 'em
Get offline, plug in to this modem
No, you can't out-vote 'em
The rules is still golden
Only jewels we holding is if we guarding our scrotum
If you press your ear to the turf that is stolen
You can hear the sound of limitations exploding
Please sir, may we have another portion?
We're children of the beast that dodged the abortion
Neck placed firm 'tween the floor and the Florsheim
We'll shut your shit down, don't call it extortion
Caution -- we're coming for your head
So call the Feds and get files to shred
Every textbook read said bring you the bread
But guess what we got you instead?
[Hook]
[Outro: Silk-E]
Let's keep it banging like a shotgun
We in a war before we fought one
Now if you're tired of working from day to day
A common enemy, we got one
Now keep it banging like a shotgun
We in a war before we fought one
Now if you're tired of working from day to day
A common enemy, we got one
nomorenomore08
(13,324 posts)Living in Oakland (which I don't anymore) does have its perks.
Louisiana1976
(3,962 posts)valerief
(53,235 posts)1StrongBlackMan
(31,849 posts)
Puzzledtraveller
(5,937 posts)we will swap one oligarchy for another and think we are getting somewhere, we do this every 4-8 years.
Kablooie
(19,107 posts)It should be about economics.
Talk of fairness will make the guys who can do something about the problem plug their ears.
Put it in terms of making a stronger economy and more profits for all and you will get their attention.
That's the real bottom line.
Blaukraut
(5,998 posts)and a sense of fairness. Everything has to be presented through the lens of economic opportunity for them. (make more profit by giving the unwashed masses more spending money).
Kablooie
(19,107 posts)
GeorgeGist
(25,570 posts)The 2013 GDP was $49000 for every man, woman and child in the US.
If normally distributed, the average family of 4 would have nearly $200,000 annual income.
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)The fact that arguments about empathy and service to human beings are immediately disregarded as completely irrelevant shows how malignantly the corporate messaging is perverting us.
We are supposed to have a government, "of, by, and for the people." People are the reason we have governments. People create governments to serve us, not the other way around. The welfare of people should NEVER be irrelevant. It should be our priority.
We need more than adjustments to the flow of money. We need serious challenges to the sick assumptions and obscene priorities that make this kind of predatory behavior by the wealthy not only acceptable, but expected in our nation.
Kablooie
(19,107 posts)But to be fair, there are one percenters who do retain compassion.
I think it has to do with the reason people got rich.
For example many rich actors, and other people in the arts are Democrats because they believe in supporting people.
If you're an entrepreneur or banker the accumulation of wealth is your goal in life and a cutthroat attitude is needed to become successful.
This avarice kills empathetic qualities in a person.
For some artists becoming rich was never a real goal.
Instead they are driven to do what they love.
The money comes because they do their job so well and is a nice perk but was never their goal.
For these people even if the job didn't pay well they would still do it.
When this is the case they can retain human feelings towards others in spite of being wealthy.
ms liberty
(11,237 posts)Doctor_J
(36,392 posts)I see no sign of that.
socialist_n_TN
(11,481 posts)They won't see it coming and, quite frankly, neither will most of us. A revolutionary mass movement appears to come suddenly (as the article says, someone sets himself on fire or bus rates are raised), but it builds under the surface for a while. So we won't really know what spark sets it off, but we just need to be prepared when it does.
That's where a vanguard group comes in and why a vanguard group is so important. The vanguard are the ones who are prepared to guide the anger of the masses in the correct direction, i.e., the wealthy capitalists and more broadly, the system itself. If there is no vanguard pushing in this direction, there are a couple of other ways the anger can go, into fascism or into Bonapartism.
Doctor_J
(36,392 posts)Suppose an IED or some such thing were to go off at Fox "News" HQ. What would follow - a quick succession of similar acts of rebellion, or...nothing? If the "spark" were to happen next week or next month or in November assuming the Repukes take the Senate, will it catch fire?
As we saw in Nevada right wingers are allowed to get away with pretty much anything, including pointing rifles at federal officers. But I have a feeling that any pushback against the right will be met with the full power of the state, and formulating a revolution under such conditions will be very tough. It would be nice, as my time on Earth is running a little short and I'd love to see a realignment before I go, but a long shot IMO.
socialist_n_TN
(11,481 posts)And if it is some sort of IED going off at Fox Noise, that would actually be counterproductive. It needs to come from the working class probably via some sort of strike action that is brutally repressed.
As to the RWers getting away with pretty much anything, that's par for the course. The fascists are the attack dogs of the capitalist system, so they're always in lock-step with the power structure when it comes to repressing the people and especially the working class. Look at Ukraine for the model of anything that happens here. Or in western Europe for that matter.
Now is the time for organizing and propagandizing against this situation. People need to know the history. The VERY FIRST people the fascists come after are not social or racial groups, but unionists, communists, and socialists because the owners and their attack dogs (the fascists) know that any sort of effective resistance will come from those groups.
octoberlib
(14,971 posts)I've posted it on here before but re-posting for those who haven't seen it.
DeSwiss
(27,137 posts)
K&R
Helen Borg
(3,963 posts)It won't involve sharp blades. Bullets and grenades, probably...
loudsue
(14,087 posts)kick it up.
alfredo
(60,301 posts)Rather die than give up one filthy copper.
IrishAyes
(6,151 posts)The French aristocracy never saw it coming either.
Laelth
(32,017 posts)-Laelth
Fortinbras Armstrong
(4,477 posts)In which he describes trickle-down economics, "The promise was that when the glass was full, it would overflow, benefitting the poor. But what happens instead, is that when the glass is full, it magically gets bigger, nothing ever comes out for the poor."
He also wrote,
Some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralised workings of the prevailing economic system. Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting.
JaneyVee
(19,877 posts)Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin
(135,713 posts)