Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
the ceremony of innocence is drowned;
the best lack all conviction, while the worst
are full of passionate intensity.
Yeats's vision is eerily apt today. And because his vision seems tailor-made to our time, the word "Revolution" is appearing with greater frequency.
In the short time I've been reading dKos, I'm sure I've seen the word more times in the last 20 days than in the 3-4 months before. For starters, see MaryScott O'Connor's
most excellent rant, then try
this diary by Disgusted, in which he/she discusses with greater depth and acumen some of what I'll attempt here. The word is used in proximity to words like "Fascist" and "Hitler," and to names like
Hersh, Chomsky, and
Kennedy rather than beside some mythic
John Galt or anonymous anarchist, which suggests to me that the idea is gaining intellectual ground. So let's talk about Revolution. What do we mean when we say revolution, and what would it look like? This diary is an attempt to imagine it.
Though some uses of the word in the blogosphere are whimsical and figurative, I refer to the word in its most literal sense: "overthrow of a government, form of government, or social system by those governed and usually by forceful means, with another government or system taking its place." Let me be very clear: I don't think we're "there" yet, nor am I advocating Revolution. But let's say there arrives a day when it becomes necessary: a day when speaking out against the Federal Gov't or the Leader or his minions is prohibited and punished, when no pretense of a `free press' is expected or made, when states rights are swallowed up by a monolithic Fed, when checks and balances fail to check and balance, (ccr quote about judiciary not pursuing claims because they're implicated) when elections are mere photo ops to assign legitimacy to corporate or establishment candidates, when the populace is impoverished to support the endless wars (inaugural speech) of the state, and most important, when many, perhaps most, US citizens think that everything is just fine despite these fascist conditions. The right of Revolution is enshrined in our founding documents--under those circumstances, I think we would be justified in exercising it.
But what would Revolution look like in the 21st century of globalism, instant information, and late-phase capitalism? Literature and history provide possible models with which to make some predictions. The suffering characters in George Orwell's 1984 place great hope in a future inevitable proletariat uprising. The "proles" are the uneducated working class--blue collar laborers. The protagonists, who are at the bottom of the educated class, mere steps above the proles, imagine that, because the prole class is so big and suffering so greatly, they will soon overthrow Big Brother. Soon. Any day now. Well, no later than next year. Of course it never happens. The proles had jobs and food and unregulated sex (a tightly controlled pleasure in Big Brother's world), but they were illiterate and could not have formulated the idea that anything was wrong with the state.
So we must take the 1984 model with caution and caveats because Revolution by the trammeled masses is a romantic fantasy. The enslaved masses did not overthrow Rome, nor the serfs their Masters, nor the Irish their English landlords.
Oh, certainly there have been popular uprisings. Think America ca. 1775. France 1789. Eastern Europe in the late twentieth century. Think Tiananmen Square, which gave us one of the most moving photographs of the last twenty years: a man standing alone and holding, of all things, a plastic bag in his hand (not a banner, sign, or rifle), stopped a column of tanks simply by standing in front of them. "This far and no farther," he said with his action. Though that demonstration did not succeed in bringing Democracy to China, it was of the same spirit as the marches that brought down Ceaucescu. These examples are inspiring and I have no doubt that people wield power, but they survive as narratives in our history because they are remarkable; they are the exceptions to the norm that change the course of history. But the hundreds and hundreds of years between these upheavals, when the people did not arise form the steady current of history upon which revolutionary moments are merely ripples. Germans and Italians in the thirties and forties watched (some no doubt horror-struck, but passive nonetheless) as fascists took over their countries; the Russian masses cowed to Stalin's terror in sheer self-preservation, and who can blame them? The suffering poor of America did not rise up in 1929 when the bubble burst, and in fact, they were quite well behaved, all things considered, until 1941 when finally given an enemy to loathe. Most Americans did and said nothing when their Republic was shat upon in 2000, 2004, and 2005.
So I don't believe we'll ever see in the US the kinds of earth-moving, mass population marches and demonstrations that can and have changed history for the simple reason that a majority of Americans see nothing wrong with the State. "The American public" would not rise up, even under the conditions I described above, because they have their SUVs, gas to keep them running, and American Idol. Life is good. They get their news from headlines and sound bytes, from Rush and Fox. They're uninterested in arguments that their Attorney General may be a war criminal. They've swallowed whole the myths of American exceptionalism and benevolence and cheered when Bush declared war on the world on January 20. Revolution would not come from that direction.
Let's imagine another model, then. A general or even a small group of generals with access to troops and weapons stands up to power. Maybe a Brigadier General gets orders from the Pentagon to ship out for Iran and the Commander says, "Hell no! We won't go!" But then what? The Pentagon fires him and his subordinates, arrests them, tries them for treason, maybe executes them. In the Hollywood version of the story, the Brigade would fortify itself somewhere and refuse to allow its General (played by Sean Connery or Harrison Ford) to be taken. A general loyal to the Regime (maybe the rebel general's old friend) would then march his army over to lay siege to the rebels and the 35,000 Kossacks who stand with them. A standoff occurs with some nervous small arms fire on both sides, then tragedy is averted at the last minute by some compromise. Or maybe a Moscow-style coup d'etat with tanks shelling the Capitol building and the White House? Too fantastical. I don't think we could look to the military to Revolt.
Can a relatively small army of pissed off people, acting within the bounds of the law bring about change worthy of the name "Revolution?" I'm interested in your thoughts.
