"Come the revolution..." - a regular joe freaks me out

cross-posted at RochesterTurning.com

My dad bought and worked a small farm in rural western Pennsylvania in the last years before he died.  He was a friendly guy, and the local farmers would come help him when he was having trouble with the Farm-All or whatever.

They often  would say mysterious things in the context of the phrase "Come the revolution..."  Things like, "Come the revolution, we won't have to worry about taxes anymore..."  Eventually my dad got up the courage to ask what they meant, and found out it basically meant (I'm paraphrasing here): "When those damn liberal gay coloreds come to take our guns, we'll rise up."

My dad and I had a good laugh at that, mixed with sadness. Funny because, I mean, come on-- cuckoo!  Sad because they were so adamant that their world view was the right one, and so was their response.

I told the story to my wife, and we've adopted the phrase, but in different contexts.  It's basically our generic phrase to cover any number of doomsday scenarios: global warming, peak oil, economic collapse.  "Come the revolution, we'll be simply NOSTALGIC for these days when the worst we had to deal with was all these poopy diapers."

But I had a suddenly serious conversation recently with someone who had just survived a major layoff at his company. About "the revolution".  This guy is one of the most down to earth folks I've met recently.  He talks like he's salt of the earth, but underneath he's very well-read on history. And he totally freaked me out.

"Hey chief," I said to him, "anything exciting happen recently?"  He said exciting was one word for it, then proceeded to fill me in on the layoffs.  I commiserated, and we joked about how what they ultimately want is just a CEO to hold press conferences, and a CFO to collect the money.

I know this guy isn't a flaming progressive like me, he's more an independent, used to like McCain for prez until recently, etc., so I usually tiptoe around any politics.  But this day I decided to be brave and said, "I just wonder what's going to become of the middle-class. I mean, where's our country heading?"  He grunted. I pressed him. "What do you think?"

He shook his head, "You don't wanna know what I think."  "C'mon."  "It's not pretty."  "Try me."

He proceeded to explain to me that "Basically, all levels of our society and government, from the prez on down, is controlled by business." I agreed. "And what they want is to make as much money as they can.  And you and me and anyone like us that's making above minimum wage is getting in the way of that." Uh-huh, go on.

"So what they're doing is more and more people are, I dunno, shaken out of the middle class into a bigger and bigger pool of poor people. You end up with a few very rich people, and a big big pile of poor people." OMG, is he going where I think he's going?

"Now if you read your history," I told him I'm a huge fan of history, "ok, well, you know when that kind of situation happened in France and Russia and other places in the last couple hundred years, what happened?"  I was silent, but he could tell I was already there.

"That's right. Revolution. They may talk all fancy about it, like it's about liberty and all that, and that may be partly true. But underneath it's all about the little guy getting screwed economically."

"See?" He smiled. "Told ya you didn't wanna know." I smiled back. It was nothing I hadn't thought or read about, but man was it weird coming from him.

I hope we learn from history before it comes to that.

•  It was kind of like

  in the movie "Wedding Singer", when Adam Sandler says, "Even Billy Idol gets it!"

  E.g. it's that obvious now.  

  Freaked me right out.

  by jted on Sun Dec 31, 2006 at 12:37:01 PM PDT

•  Well, I guess it's not just me

  I have thought the same thing for the past six years.
  Do the people running things just totally not get it?
  Who's going to buy their shit?  

  by myrealname on Sun Dec 31, 2006 at 12:41:57 PM PDT

  •  They get it,

    they just think that they will have us suffeciently subdued this time.

    They think they've accomplished all of this slowly enough that when the last straw falls, the camel's back will not break, only bend more.

    They don't think the American People are paying attention.

    And, for the most part, they're right.

    But, when that last straw does fall, the back is going to break, just like throughout history.

    by rage on Sun Dec 31, 2006 at 12:46:26 PM PDT

    •  TV Nation

      I think that they're relying on bad tv programming to keep us lulled to sleep.

      by jted on Sun Dec 31, 2006 at 12:49:28 PM PDT

    •  I guess you are right

      No matter what we do to voice our outrage, no one seems to hear us, and the politicians and businesses keep on screwing us over.  But when entire states (i.e. Michigan) are failing, possibly someone might notice that the system isn't working.

      by myrealname on Sun Dec 31, 2006 at 12:56:34 PM PDT

    •   when that last straw does fall...

      I just hope I'm not too old and decrepit to help out.

      by byzantium on Sun Dec 31, 2006 at 09:31:01 PM PDT

  •  kick the can

    Perhaps they're keeping the game in motion (however slow) until they can pull their money out?

    All of this would explain the rise of gated communities.

    by JenThinks on Sun Dec 31, 2006 at 02:59:18 PM PDT

    •  as I see it. . .

      gated communities are/will be an upper-middle-class sort of thing. And not worth much if all hell really breaks loose. Does anyone think a $10/hour armed guard at a gate is actually going to stop an angry mob?

      The real wealthy with any portion of a clue will already be wealthy expatriates somewhere else, and they'll have taken everything portable of value (mainly intellectual property, extremely high end machine tools, fine art, etc.) with them.

      The first serious wave of depression would take the prices on that kind of thing down to the fire sale level.

      Real estate and factories was the last Great Depression. Real wealth is now generally portable.

      by alizard on Mon Jan 01, 2007 at 01:10:51 AM PDT

  •  Even Henry Ford

    knew the best policy was to pay the first assembly line workers well-- well enough to afford to buy one of the cars they assembled.

    Ford knew the more people driving Fords would serve as more or less free advertising-- the result being higher car sales.

    by Superpole on Mon Jan 01, 2007 at 07:31:14 AM PDT

•  Slowly

  people are coming to realize the massive financial problem this country is in because of the corporatism that devalues anyone without enough power to rake in the mega-millions. A couple of days ago on a cable financial channel there were 6 talking heads predicting the financial picture for next year. One and only one kept bringing up all the true but negative facts about the valuation of the US dollar and how fragile it is and why investing in foreign stocks is the only rational decision in the near term. The others were very derisive of that position but they did not bring facts to the discussion, only that was how they felt. Or as Grandma used to say "Too thin to make soup with".

  by OHdog on Sun Dec 31, 2006 at 12:47:02 PM PDT

  •  Cheney has a great deal of

    his public wealth in developing country funds. . . and in the EU.

    by alizard on Mon Jan 01, 2007 at 01:12:25 AM PDT

•  And to accelerate the coming of the revolution

  in a country divided into an increasing proportion of poor and a decreasing proportion of extremely rich there is nothing like a succession of disastrous imperial wars waged for the further enrichment of the extremely rich in which the poor are used as expendable cannon fodder.

  (please excuse the long sentence)

  by Lepanto on Sun Dec 31, 2006 at 12:49:42 PM PDT

•  It's likely there will not

  be a revolution. There will at some point be a revolt and corporate America and the government has been preparing for that event for over twenty years now. All the infrastucture in terms of weapons, manpower, media and organization has been carefully coordinated to quickly smash the inevitable revolt. Resistors will die quickly or starve slowly but will have no reasonable recourse. It will be the infighting among the super rich that will most approximate a revolution because once the poor are vanquished, poverty becomes relative within the new paradigm and power and greed recognizes no finish line.

  by java4every1 on Sun Dec 31, 2006 at 01:01:17 PM PDT

  •  I think you're being profoundly optimistic

    If and when the lid comes off, the wealthy people who really run America won't be around the USA anymore... the portable wealth will go with them (see above), and angry mobs in the streets will be facing a military with no direction from the top and a few police forces.

    What comes after I'd rather not think about... other than to say that within CONUS, there won't be any winners, just a bankrupt nation without assets. Maybe some well-armed bottom-feeders (probably foriegn) willing to give agriculture a try using American or even imported semi-slave labor.

    This also describes how the post-oil Middle East is going to play out when the leaders of the oil monarchies finally decide that the oil cash flow has dropped to the point where it's more risk than it's worth to stick around and 'rule'. Bankrupt country, no assets, massive internal violence among people fighting over the job of running a country in ruin.

    The difference is that I'm pretty sure about how the Middle East is going to play out, I'm not as sure about America, there's a chance that sanity and patriotism might prevail.

    The thing is, there's no reason other than extreme greed why America is likely to turn out that way. If the ruling classes are willing to kick back some of their gains to the rest of America, we can create long-term economic growth in America that benefits everyone... if the wealthy are willing to settle for a smaller slice of a bigger pie which will make them more wealthy in terms of dollars. . . but less powerful.

    by alizard on Mon Jan 01, 2007 at 01:26:11 AM PDT

    •  there is one complication in revolution

      probably deliberate in structure

      But unlike most nations in the world, the US army is not based on regional units.  Now there are many many reasons for regional units making up the bulk of military forces - to do with morale, cohesiveness etc.

      But when your country starts to fall apart they also create natural fault lines around which to gravitate.

      One of the biggest questions in a US disintegration is what happens to the military.  

      In this regard we have more in common with smart dictatorships, that recognise this is a way to maintain control.

      by ResponsibleAccountable on Mon Jan 01, 2007 at 09:00:26 AM PDT

      •  on the other hand

        a traditional strategy for totalitarian regimes trying to suppress dissent using open military force is to use geographically organized military units as far from where they live as possible.

        By not doing this, no matter which group gets sent where, there's always a chance that there will be soldiers in a military unit ordered to fire into a civilian crowd who have friends and family in that crowd.

        While this could be dealt with via proper use of military records (i.e. who gets confined to base before an anti-civilian military action starts), given the quality of military planning of the current Administration, it can be pretty much guaranteed that nobody will think of this until it is far too late.

        When these people are ordered to open fire, there is reasonable doubt as to in which direction these soldiers are going to be shooting. A few "friendly fire" incidents of this sort and nobody's going to want to try using the military to impose order under an openly totalitarian regime.

        by alizard on Mon Jan 01, 2007 at 04:04:37 PM PDT

        •  National Guard Stops Riots

          At least in the 60's the National Guard (organized by states) got called out for civil disturbances. They killed the kids at Kent State in 1970.

          by peggy on Mon Jan 01, 2007 at 06:14:33 PM PDT

        •  but ultimately

          regional units give a potential military powerbase in a fragmentation of a country - see Yugoslavia...

          hypothetically - do you think Texan regiments would rally around a popular Texan leader if Texas wanted to pull away from a weakened and chaotic US and it looked viable, or rally around Washington?  similar with most states...

          so it is a smart (accidentally or by design) system for making a breakup of the US one extra step harder

          by ResponsibleAccountable on Tue Jan 02, 2007 at 07:48:53 PM PDT

•  part of it is also the yearnings of

  anyone growing old, for a past that will not return, and a body with all the parts working

  and they (45 to 80 persons) are a huge part of our voters

  by ca democrat on Sun Dec 31, 2006 at 01:15:22 PM PDT

•  Once upon a time

  a bunch of rich guys and a few blowhards sat down over a few beers and dreamed up this solution where revolutions didn't have to blow up in people's faces, they could be vented every few years.  They engineered their solution to where rural society had a permanent advantage over cities.  They even worked out a way to keep particularly nasty politicians at each others' throats, and from their own.  

  They didn't want a parliament, dominated by little extremist factions, able to manipulate the results.   They wanted a Senate, with enough power hogged up to keep any one man from seizing too much control.

  But after a few hundred years, they got slack and lazy.  Some guy went off and waged a completely un-necessary war in a far off corner, then came into the capital city, for his victory parade.  The Senate granted him all sorts of powers.

  That country was Rome, and the warrior was Julius Caesar.  To be sure, once they realized what they'd done, some of the Senators murdered Caesar, but the Senate was toast thereafter.  After all was said and done, the Senate made Julius Caesar a god.

  17 centuries later, a few more guys did much the same.  they even wrote an explanation for why they did what they did, the arguments for and against things, called the Federalist Papers.  

  by BlaiseP on Sun Dec 31, 2006 at 01:27:41 PM PDT

•  Come the revolution,.....

  http://www.eagleforum.org/...

  http://www.napavalleyregister.com/...

  A year or so ago some of the so called conspiracy sites were talking about a North American Community, North American Investment Fund, the Amero, etc.

  Question: If the MSM doesn't cover a subject, who does? If the MSM doesn't cover a subject, why not? If conspiracy "nuts" are all you have, how do you justify calling them nuts?

  The links above are not conspiracy types. If you go to the Council on Foreign Relations' own web site, you'll discover exactly what they propose.

  http://www.cfr.org/...

  "I hope we learn from history before it comes to that."  Too late, way too late.

  Come, the revolution...

  by 0hio on Sun Dec 31, 2006 at 04:49:50 PM PDT

•  I hear this regularly from some friends who are

  completely serious.  I told them--I'd join them if they had a plan for AFTER the revolution that made sense to me.  So far, they don't.  So far.

  I got a smile from a news headline saying that U.S. unions and European unions are talking about joining up.  Workers of the World, Unite!

  Interesting, isn't it?  Doesn't freak me out; sometimes it makes perfect sense.  Let's see what Democrats get accomplished in the next two years.

  by Boadicaea on Sun Dec 31, 2006 at 08:51:33 PM PDT

•  Did Paris Hilton study history?

  Something tells me she was a bad history student.

  Just like George W. Bush.

  These people have no fucking idea what's going on under them. They're partying on the fault-line, as the tectonic pressures build and  build.

  To my mind, we won't see anything of the sort in this country until people are actually going hungry.

  Which could happen soon.   When the trucks quit running food, because the diesel fuel costs too much (this has already happened, but in a very small micro way thus far), and when a loaf of bread costs $15 (oh, but there's no INFLATION because they've so fudged the way they figure out the CPI that the incredible inflation we've all experienced in the last 2-3 years doesn't register on the scale) people are gonna start figuring out that it's not rain dripping from their hat brims, but the piss of the rich who have been lying to them all this time.

  The more I learn, the uglier the picture gets.   The more I see, the more I realize the myths of "America" are a pack of lies designed to keep us working for the rich men so that they can milk us dry.

  I mean, why enslave people when you can have them work and make money instead and you can then TAKE that money.

  That's what all this shit is about -- all the massive corporate welfare -- the "military-industrial complex" -- it's all about scaring people into thinking SOMEbody wants to kill us all, or invade us, or something, so we'll WILLINGLY give 30% of the money we make working for the fuckers to begin with BACK TO THE SAME FUCKERS.  

  Now they've managed to get a huge percentage of us living in these big box homes where we have to drive five miles just to get to the damn grocery store, in our cars that they make, using the gas that they pump out of our planet, and we sit in these big box homes bored out of our minds, so what do we do?  We turn on the TV, and we see the window to the world that they provide.

  And we see the world that they want us to see, through those TV sets (that they build and we buy from them).

  And we willingly do ALL of this.  

  They've really got it figured out.  It's pretty astounding.  They've been laughing all the way to the bank for generations now, watching us act like little children with our bigger-screen TV's and our cable-TV boxes (yes, we actually pay THEM to tell us what to think and to show us the world they want us to see.  We now PAY to wear THEIR advertising on our bodies, on our shoes, on our hats).  

  You've got to hand it to them.  

  by theyrereal on Sun Dec 31, 2006 at 09:40:23 PM PDT

  •  I think you've pretty much got that right

    Your analysis appears sound and correct to me. What puzzles me a bit, though, is that if the rich and powerful oligarchs destroy the economic foundations of the U.S.A., we will all suffer, even the very rich. After all, they too have to live somewhere. If everyday life in the U.S. is torn apart by economic stresses, and things start to not work in a serious way, won't that interfere with their wonderful life styles?

    In other words, aren't the wealthy sawing off the branch on which they are standing?

    by dratman on Mon Jan 01, 2007 at 12:28:25 AM PDT

    •  No, they're recreating it

      over in China and India, especially China.

      They're creating a billion new consumers.

      They don't need us anymore.  We whine too much about things like pay, and health care, and pollution controls and stuff like that.

      Over in China it's anything goes!

      And hell, those people don't even have CARS yet!   Think of the possibilities!

      by theyrereal on Mon Jan 01, 2007 at 12:40:26 AM PDT

      •  I know this is snark

        but I sometimes wonder why they think that there is a growing market in places where they know they're not paying people enough to even buy the cheap things that they make?

        by Cmyst on Mon Jan 01, 2007 at 08:29:59 AM PDT

        •  Well that's what's interesting

          to me.

          Henry Ford, who was really a pretty big asshole, was at least smart enough to figure out that if he paid his workers enough to actually BUY one of the cars they were making, a positive-feedback loop would kick in and there would simply be an even greater demand for the product.

          But somebody seemed to forget that in the 1990's.

          I remember in Austin TX once, back in the mid 90's I had a job fall through and I was suddenly left completely unemployed and broke. So I called up a temp agency and they sent me out to the Dell Computer plant, building computers for Michael Dell at $5.75 an hour.  

          It was a real eye-opener for me, because I realized in this "booming economy" here were all these thousands of workers who couldn't even afford to buy the things they were making.  Hell, I don't know how anyone even pays for car insurance on that wage.  

          I think all that's been happening is that the Powers That Be keep finding people who will work more and more cheaply, until now they're at the point where they can hire 15 year old Chinese girls to work 20 hour days for Six Cents an hour.  But as they hit the bottom of that slope (and they have) it's going to catch up and ultimately backfire on them.

          I think for them it's a number's game.  A billion new consumers, in China, don't have to have MUCH disposable income for them to still make a TON of money off of them.  In the meantime, Americans are still buying shit like crazy, because it keeps getting cheaper.

          Pretty soon they're going to have to start paying the Chinese workers more, because Americans are going to be broke, and the Chinese will have to pick up the slack on the consumption end of things.

          Scary.

          by theyrereal on Mon Jan 01, 2007 at 01:57:17 PM PDT

  •  Alright Mr/Ms Cynic...

    I think you're right. Really right. And that was a great post! But I hope it does not become impossible for any person to hold out hope for the ways that Truth and Justice seem to always stay in the fight. For example, they used to own all the TV media before the counter-culture outlets got into the cable spectrum. Now the Powers That Be only own about 98 or 99 percent of the TV media. Progress!

    by The House on Mon Jan 01, 2007 at 06:45:52 AM PDT

  •  A guy named Marx figured this out 150 years ago.

    His ideas were somewhat flawed, and they were perverted by Stalin and other gangsters, but if you go back to the source, it is remarkable how well his ideas hold up today.

    by chimpwatch on Mon Jan 01, 2007 at 08:01:16 AM PDT

  •  It takes so little, but they don't see

    The more I learn, the uglier the picture gets.   The more I see, the more I realize the myths of "America" are a pack of lies designed to keep us working for the rich men so that they can milk us dry.

    You see it, I see it, more and more people in the middle/working class see it. And essentially, until we no longer are able to afford our "stuff", nothing will change. But the thing is -- we're already at that point and most people don't want to admit it. They're borrowing, not budgeting, to get that PS3. Hell, they're even borrowing to pay the utility bill. It is gonna be sooner, rather than later, that they've maxed out those cards and for many they already have.
    A pissed off middle class is a very dangerous thing. The truly disenfranchised often are crippled by learned helplessness. But the middle class, who believed in the American Dream, is going to be pretty ugly when they wake up.

    by Cmyst on Mon Jan 01, 2007 at 09:00:16 AM PDT

•  Look around, beyond the borders

    South America has had a complete devolution or shrinkage of the middle class for many years now. Many countries never even developed one of any size or significance. And then the crisis in the advanced, Western countries got exported to them,laid on their backs to become even worse.

   Look at how many societies down there are turning firmly to the left. Argentina, a fairly wealthy country, perhaps the wealthiest in SA, had a coupleof years ago a financial meltdown. The middle class was pretty well ruined.

   American elite  beat back the Progressives, the Socialists in the early 20th Century, discovered how to undermine and marginalize the Communist Party inthe 1940's and 50's and reduced it to a caricature or pale clone of a Soviet or Maoist sort.

   Now we are trying to establish a leadership of the dispossessed and powerless in our own nation in the feeble skin of an ancient property owner's party, a slaveowner's party that survived into the present.

   No one can safely predict how it will turn out, but it may be peaceful, or it may not. But some sort of big change has to come.  It always does.

   To truly know something substantial about this, you simply have to take part in it, somewhere, somehow, for a sustained period, not a week or a month around the elections every couple of years. Don't dismiss it as an impossibility in America. It is not an easy question to answer in either direction.

  by Pete Rock on Sun Dec 31, 2006 at 09:55:40 PM PDT

•  I think they're provoking us. They WANT us to

  try it.  w is just itching to kill 100 million of us.

  by Andy Lewis on Sun Dec 31, 2006 at 10:12:15 PM PDT

•  Revolution Coming

  We're a year into Peak Oil now.  It's all downhill from here at least as far as petroleum is concerned.  That's gonna make it all harder and more expensive from now on and should put a royal crimp in things.

  As for revolution, I don't know.  I heard "Come the Revolution" in the 1960s and  didn't believe it.  I'd met and learned from some of the people who had built Debs' Socialist Party at the beginning of the 20th century and didn't see anybody of that kind of caliber among the 60s kids.  If those folks couldn't make the revolution happen then I didn't understand how lesser folks could do it in the 1960s.  Today, too, I don't see anybody of the caliber of those old Socialists either.

  The crises about to engulf us are going to be climate and resource related and not particularly amenable to most political solutions.  We do not, as yet, have the mechanisms by which to effect the changes we need and revolution is not going to change that.  Hard to be on the barricades when the rising sea level is washing over them.  We are going to be more concerned with fuel and food than changing the government although an international climate crimes trial for Exxon execs has real possibilities.

  by gmoke on Sun Dec 31, 2006 at 10:20:54 PM PDT

•  When I was a teenager,

  (in the 60s) we said, "Come the Revolution" all the time.  We meant a time of positive change when we would conquer the military-industrial complex.  It was a good thing and we looked forward to it.

  So what does it mean that when folks say it now, you mean a horrible anti-utopian time?  

  I'm not willing to give up.

  Jim Webb said in an interview (and I'm sure he's said other times and places) that we were becoming the America of the 1890s.  The commentator didn't know how to respond to that.  But we overcame the Robber Barons, and we can overcome this.  We are a good and decent people, even if at the moment our leaders are not, and if we buck each other up, and work together, we will overcome, as we have overcome so much in the past.

  Or maybe I'm just overwhelmed by the spirit of the New Year.

  by Tenn Wisc Dem on Sun Dec 31, 2006 at 10:23:01 PM PDT

•  Great diary my friend!

  This is exactly right and come the revolution, I'm with you guys.

  Funny thing is, a year and a half ago when I first came to dkos, this is what I was thinking, but I thought no one else was. Or would. Boy, was I wrong.

  by Gorette on Mon Jan 01, 2007 at 04:42:38 AM PDT

•  A 21st Century Revolution

  What would it look like?

  Well, we could ruin our own nest. If the middle class is squeezed downward and there's armed insurrection, mobs of angry citizens could eventually swarm on the homes of the wealthiest - and then what? Take their vehicles?

  The capital, the financial wealth that exists is, in many cases, only an expression of confidence in the economy. In a stock market crash, where does the money go? John Kenneth Galbraith answered that question this way: It goes the same place your lap goes when you stand up. And assets held in dollars will quickly plunge in value if we physically dismantle our own infrastructure.

  But there's another kind of revolution.

  What if we started to aggressively conserve? You name it - energy, water, capital. What if everyone stopped shopping at Wal-Mart, at any big box? It wouldn't take 100-percent compliance, just maybe 70 percent or so. We could interrupt the feedback loop.

  It's not like business isn't giving America what it asks for - they're delivering exactly what the public signals it wants: Experience. Schadenfreude. Calories. Violence. Sex. We signal our desires, the corporations outdo one another to meet them. You want a big car? Everyone's got an SUV for you, with $5,000 cash back and 0% financing.

  If the bottom 70 percent of the country could learn how to coordinate its actions in the slightest fashion, it would have so much power it is unimaginable. Wal-Mart could be destroyed in a week. All the public would need is some way of communicating with itself...

  by The Raven on Mon Jan 01, 2007 at 05:29:57 AM PDT

  •  You ask, "and then

    what?" as if the revolutionary mobs would be rational and simply go home.  The diarist referred to some past revolutions where the entire structure of the society was uprooted.

    So, to answer your question, if we reached that boiling point, where desperate, angry, hungry mobs had taken over, there would probably be a complete change in government structure, if nothing else.  These people wouldn't view themselves as soiling "their" nest; they would view themselves and throwing over a system in which they had no stake.

    Supposedly, the middle class has been declining for the last 20 years; I wouldn't know how much more it has to shrink in order for revolutionary conditons to exist.

    Your idea about other actions is great--if only the bottom would work together.  Employers have sucessfully ingrained the notion that employees are lucky to have a job and possibly some benefits, so employees shouldn't complain about anything.  Unfortunately, the employees just take it.

    by dfarrah on Mon Jan 01, 2007 at 06:40:09 AM PDT

    •  Its not the size of the middle, but the concept

      As long as people believe that upward mobility is possible, they will have a stake in the system. The gang of corporatist looters currently running the show are not doing their part to keep up appearances.

      by Snarcalita on Mon Jan 01, 2007 at 09:46:15 AM PDT

      •  that's part of the problem, they do believe it

        studies exist that show that people (in the face of all data to the contrary) believe that they a. are middle class--when they are so clearly are not, b. that they can become middle to upper class, c. that they too might be rich some day....

        so you're right--as long as the majority of us believe that, not much is likely to change....

        and/or they believe that "if the gubmint would just get out of the way, i too could be rich..."

        craziness, i know...

        good diary, rec'd.

        by make a difference on Mon Jan 01, 2007 at 10:44:05 AM PDT

•  The phrase means something different where i come

  from

  it usually goes "Come the revolution... X will be first against the wall" where X is a person or group being talked about and the last half (X will be first against the wall) goes unspoken...

  ...and it is far more leftist in usage... so you would probably hear some latest extreme behaviour by some member of the Bush admin and say something like: "Come the revolution..."

  it is usually a bit tongue in cheek in its usage

  i find it fascinating that this mantra of leftist Europe has become a calling card for right wing lunatics...

  ...but on the subject of revolution I think there is an interesting historic narrative arc playing out here... the US was very lucky to avoid falling into the kind of communist revolution that created the Soviet Union, following the public chaos of the early part of the century and the Great Depression - remember this was at a time when ordinary men and women were still very positive and optimistic about what was going on in the Soviet Union and long before the main atrocities were known about (and before many had even happened)

  ...the history of labor's struggle against the forces of a rich well armed elite, and brutal oppressive policing to bust unions and break the back of the working man is one of the great untold stories of American history

  ...but what stopped it was the nations greatest ever President:  FDR.  His New Deal was nothing short of the program that saved America.  The elites in this country would have been incapable of saving themselves from revolution without it.

  And with the current junta so clearly intent on unraveling the new deal it is not surprising that the risks of a collapse of this society loom ever larger.

  Come the revolution...

  by ResponsibleAccountable on Mon Jan 01, 2007 at 08:58:00 AM PDT

  •  I must have loaned

    my copy out because I can't find it on its accustomed shelf, but Howard Zinn's People's History of the 20th Century says that FDR's aim with the New Deal wasn't necessarily to create the great middle class boom but to tamp down the revolution. (Quoting from memory so would willingly accept any corrections.) I know that my grandparents and great-grandparents, closer to that time, were pretty happy about it anyway.

    Is there a communist experiment that hasn't fallen into corruption? I mean, if you're going to break all the eggs in the basket, shouldn't there be a better outcome than the party leaders living like kings while the regular folks stand in bread lines in the name of the revolution?

    -5.88, -6.82

    by Debby on Mon Jan 01, 2007 at 08:25:06 PM PDT

    •  not that i am aware of

      like most authoritarian utopian fantasies it is a brittle and brutal system - which is why i think FDR ranks as the greatest President in history, as he headed that off for the US, and the rest of Europe should have more gratitude for that at times - as having a strong US standing was what stopped the potential adventurism into Western Europe of the Soviets

      by ResponsibleAccountable on Tue Jan 02, 2007 at 07:46:05 PM PDT

•   and other places in the last couple hundred year

  1st came gun control...
  rural folkz know guns are not just for hunting,
  unarmed folks arent gonna take on fascists

  by OMwordTHRUdaFOG on Mon Jan 01, 2007 at 04:57:13 PM PDT