Adam has said that, actually, gnosticism isn't cool, which is kind of depressing—everything one hears about it popularly makes it out to be pretty cool. Even Elaine Pagels, sometimes.
Ben's mention of gnosticism reminds me to toss out my periodic query as to whether any of you are up on the writings of Hans Blumenberg and would care to correspond with me on that subject.
You mean the Second Amendment hasn't protected our right to revolution?!?
4: Oh, the right is healthy enough. I'm mostly convinced the capability has been gone for a long, long time.
Wait, aren't we supposed to look down on Chuck Klosterman? Where's my hipster handbook?
I think the linked article is sort of stupid. Any reasonably competent indigenous government is difficult to overflow by a popular revolution. Which is just as well.
If we had a black president, I imagine the chances of a violent overthrow would go way, way up.
Maybe I'm missing something, but that did not strike me as a particularly insightful article. It seems to me to go something like this:
The main reason there's no revolutiuon is lack of impetus. But what if there was impetus? Man, this is a big country, and Boise is far away from DC.
(The reader wonders: unlike, e.g., the Soviet Union -- or the c18 British Empire. Because before continental drift, Philadelphia was real close to London?)
Also, Chuck Klosterman is not a rock-thrower, nor does he listen to rock-throwers.
(The reader wonders: and Chuck Klosterman is everyone? Or is the model of the sort of person who in other times and places effected revolutions?)
I don't get the appeal.
5 Any popular movement strong enough to seriously contemplate revolution could more easily attain power legitimately so what would be the point?
5.--The government has placed an undue burden on my capability to exercise the right to revolution!!!1!
6 - I have a similar kind of attraction to Chuck Klosterman that I do with Modern Love.
This is the premise of Orson Card's new book, of course. He contends that a new civil war is possible because of all the Partisan Rancor of Contemporary Political discourse, as evidenced by the fact that liberals want to use the power of the state to force him to accept gay marriages.
I agree with the thesis, so I'll talk about it, rather than having to go read the article.
The forces that prevent revolution in the US aren't particularly novel, nor have they been foolproof in the past, but they are extremely strong, and they include
1. A strong patriotism that identifies the nation with the constitution, and hence, the current system of government.
2. Wealth enough to meet the basic needs of the populace and hold out hope of luxury for some.
3. Safety valves that allow people with grievances seek change within the system.
4. Relative ethnic homogeneity.
Of these (4) is sure to change. But we are doing a good job of fighting back the current assault on (3) and a return to fiscal sanity might help keep (2) in place.
Shorter me: a returning the government to the Democrats will keep an overthrow of the constitution from becoming a real possibility.
15: Checked into the health of Sen. Johnson of S.D. lately?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16191212/
We're whining about it on another thread.
12: Klosterman is a jackass nonpareil.
8: If we had a black president, I imagine the chances of a violent overthrow would go way, way up.
Trying to predict what the country will be like in fifty years is crazy.
TIM!
My plan worked. Seriously, I was thinking "Hmmm...I haven't seen SCMT around for a while. I bet if I put up a Klosterman post he'll show up."
(That was only part of the reason I posted this, before you get too cocky.)
That guy lacks imagination. Plenty of people loaded up their truck in Boise and drove to New Orleans, job or no. Hell, people drove down to the Mexican border to camp out and look for people crossing.
I mean, if he wants to write a column about how on reflection, he's been completely co-opted by the system and it bugs him because he likes to think of himself as a revolutionary, that's fine. But he doesn't have to draw the rest of us into it.
Are you just mad about what he says about the Lakers, SCMTim?
I dunno. I mean, the Interior West is really, really empty, and there aren't that many troop bases here. In addition, the LDS Church is one of the country's bigger logistical forces - in the flood of 1983 they mobilized over 50,000 people to sandbag in a couple hours. That's small army kind of numbers.
So, first you get the Mormons on your side. They can take the Wasatch front easily. Since they run the local bases, they'll have a few fighter jets (Hill AFB) and chemical weapons (Deseret Chemical Depot holds something like 1/3 of the US stockpile).
Remember, they also have a hundred thousand young men to use as foot soldiers. With that, you can take the neighboring states (although Colorado's combination of population and mountains could be tough). Taking New Mexico would get nukes. Nevada's easy - most of it's empty, everybody else is drunk. Those wussy NorCal'ers won't fight back much.
And Bam - we're halfway done.
I put way too much thought into this. I need to go read something comforting, like Left Behind.
The problem is that then you're captive to Mormon interests.
The Iranians will never surrender L.A. Not without a bribe, anyway.
first you get the Mormons on your side.
Um.
Leaving to one side the desirability of any cause that would rally the Mormon army, the Church has become notoriously quiescent about government abuse. (Nevada and Southern Utah were chosen to be downwind of nuclear fallout because the government trusted the Mormons not to kick up a fuss.)
Ben's objection seems decisive, unless you're (whoever "you" refers to in 23, presumably a non-Mormon who joins the Mormon revolution) in a position where you can effectively betray the Mormons to another revolutionary force, and use that position as negotiating leverage.
It's all going to come down to Quebecois fighters infiltrating over the border, isn't it.
22: And the Iraqis have demonstrated it's not that easy to pacify cities.
If there's a great enough economic or biological disaster there's no reason a revolution couldn't happen. Just because Klosterman isn't willing to take a large chance of dying to take someone else out isn't indicative of how desperate people think, feel, and act.
You could totally use an army of Mexican immigrants to take over the West, but you'd never be able to afford $5/hour for each person.
28: maybe they'll burn the white house again!
Quebecois fighters infiltrating over the border
I doubt it.
19: You're like a dealer offering people a "free taste," aren't you?
21: Klosterman's turned an attitude into a career. That's not uncommon, but rare are the cases that are quite so obvious as him. His success is proof of our (the audience's) corruption. Ugh. (And he writes only marginally better than Eric Neel, who may be the worst professional basketball writer on the planet.)
30: good point. You could even use the ones that are already here, saving on transportation costs.
The piece is rather charming, but it gets things precisely wrong: the point is that it is incredibly hard to imagine our government doing the sort of thing that would inspire violent revolution, not that we lack the capacity to carry it out if need be--Iraq is, if nothing else, great proof that you don't need artillery and tanks to make yourself ungovernable. It's worth noting that no democracy has ever fallen when it had a higher GDP than Argentina's in 1976; both because, A, this tends to mean functioning institutions that encourage competing elites to rat each other out to the public, and B, when you have such prosperous societies the risk-adjusted value of a coup is less than pursuing power through mostly-legitimate ways. It just isn't in the interests of the politically powerful to pull the kind of shit that genuinely provokes revolution.
the main reason there's no revolution? Prudence.
But don't take my word for it:
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
(Which isn't to say that our government can't get away with pulling some truly awful shit, especially in foreign policy--but no government anywhere provokes violent revolt among its own citizens for killing too many *foreigners*. Sad but true.)
Hmmm...let's see:
(a) military made up of almost 50% evangelical christians? check.
(b) gov't raids arresting hundreds of people based on arbitrary characteristic who are then shipped off to be detained? check
(c) hateful rhetoric equating political opponents with animals? check
(d) domestic military spying on citizens? check
(e) senator has a stroke, possibily tipping balance in congress? check
paging bob mcmanus
wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross
"paging bob mcmanus"
Yo? Do I have to read fucking Klosterman, fitting him between "What is to Be Done", "Prison
Notebooks", and a little red book? Fucking Lenin landed at the Finland Station, handed Stalin(or whoever he was then) a sheet of paper, and the ten other Bolshies tried to put the nut back on the train. 2 years later they owned Russia.
How did Lenin and Hitler and Mao and Washington and Napoleon and Caesar and the rest do it? They wanted it enough, and knew it could be done.
The Prison Notebooks are a long, lonesome road...
It can always be done. Whether it lasts, or form the new gov't takes will be in question. But I truly believe it could happen here in several directions tomorrow. Or the next day. Lenin only had two cities, and a very ignorant agrarian population, But he and Trotsky used what they had and worked really fucking fast. A weak middle class was critical.
Hmmmm.
Bush could suspend elections in 2008. I thought long and hard about it in 2004. I think it was always a possibility, and everybody in DC knew. Kerry was a sacrificial lamb.
I don't think hilzoy and Klein and Yglesias start forming cells and manufacturing molotovs. They will beg Roberts to save their butts. Then whine about the fucking law. No offense. Bush would have it so easy it sucks.
You always got to be willing, even eager to kill. "Paging bob mcmanus" I am crazy, but crazy is what is required.
You always got to be willing, even eager to kill.
in order to do what?
I am crazy, but crazy is what is required.
By whom? For what?
Saw this movie just last night. Haskell Wexler filmed Jane Fonda in Hanoi. At 81, still working, still one completely unbearable obnoxious lefty son-of-a-bitch.
This morning, after watching Ikiru and parts of Seven Samurai I read that Kurosawa was a lifelong socialist, and flirted with communism in 20s and 30s Japan.
It is like I am surrounded by signs and portents.
Bush could suspend elections in 2008.
This surely would get people "in the streets" in larger numbers than we've seen so far, is the idea that once they were in the streets they wouldn't know what to do?
Because I think that's right, but an angry mob which doesn't know who or what to go after is always what you at first see when people take to the streets, isn't it? And then someone charismatic comes along and tries to direct them, and things go on from there.
I've been hoping a "velvet revolution" kind of scenario would unfold if Bush suspended elections. Perhaps a little closer to the Orange revolution in the Ukraine.
42:To prevent Bush from suspending elections, for one thing. Or if Bush had fallen off his tricycle and suffered brain damage. Cheney would be President. I don't know why coups don't happen. I am not sure what prevents them.
"The price of liberty is eternal vigilance" What does that mean? The threat is more important than the execution. The threat is all.
They suspended habeas because they could. Yoo and Gonzalez gave the Oval Office advice, and the WH said:"We can get away with this. And this. And this." And they got away with it.
I will go away. I was called.
At risk of sounding like a college freshman, Bob, have you read The Rebel by Camus? I always want to brandish my copy at you during these discussions.
Responding to Bob seems to perform a valuable cathartic function for some people. "Oh, so I suppose you want Stalinism, huh Bob? Mass death, huh?"
We'd all face these things differently if we came out and said it: we have very comfortable lives, and as infuriating as the Bush regime has been, it has not affected most of us very much at all (aside from those with relatives who have died -- but I don't remember any references to an Unfogged commenter who went off to serve). We're all complicit with this. We need the oil to keep flowing, we need the military-industrial complex to keep propping up the economy (and, for many of us, the university system), we need the Chinese to keep buying our bonds for all eternity -- not to mention the ways that we benefit from the way lives are kept stunted in places like the south side of Chicago, not to mention the third world.
This whole thing is going pretty well for us, and we'd just like to kind of tweak it and not think about the consequences for everyone else. It's reassuring to think -- even with Iraq, even with Bush -- that it can never end, that it's just invincible.
47:Only read the plague The Plague and Myth of Sisyphus.
Got some Dostoevskian Demons over there waiting.
42:"Crazy" has a lot of applications and a lot of styles. Gandhi, MLK. And Lenin and Napoleon. Rachel Corrie? Is that her name? Haskell Wexler was fired by Michael Douglas from Cuckoo's Nest.
Dean is constantly called crazy. Is Al Gore yet ready for prime time?
I would never want the Good Bourgeious Seal of Approval. For one thing I can't ever seem to spell "bourgeious", no matter how many thousand times I read it.
Alienation and ego. The system is something I use, not something I allow to use me. It is a case of conscience.
We'd all face these things differently if we came out and said it: we have very comfortable lives, and as infuriating as the Bush regime has been, it has not affected most of us very much at all
Not to speak for anyone else, but that a correct description of me, and I seriously don't understand what conclusion you mean for me to draw from it. I am complicit in an unjust system. Therefore I should work to change that system. I am not doing enough such work, because I am a lazy person.
Unfortunately, I think we're much more in danger of slipping the other way: that is, a slow (but accelerating) slide toward fascism.
We're already at the first "They came for the brown non-citizens, and I did not speak up because I was a citizen, and/or not brown" stage, right? I mean, there're people who've been rotting in Guantanamo for like 5 years, with no recourse to the law, and we've done nothing.
They've been dismnantling all governmental checks on corporations, and whipping up fear of the (other brown non-citizen) immigrants for people to blame for their insecurity.
Critics of the government are demeaned and dehumanized, religious fundamentalists have taken over the armed forces...
I am not casting blame, because I certainly haven't done much either, but things are looking kind of grim, no?
48: it's precisely because it hasn't affected us much that I find the talk about the impending fascist takeover so annoying (not bob's, because he does at least seem to mean it and to be sincerely if vaguely contemplating revolution....more the sort of thing you see elsewhere.)
It doesn't affect us that personally and isn't especially likely to, because it is far more politically costly to do these things to Americans than foreigners. Also far more costly to do them to well educated middle to upper class white Americans than your Jose Padillas, your Mohamed Munafs, and to a lesser extent to Marines going back to Iraq on ready reserve and most anyone in the Lower Ninth Ward or in the South Side of Chicago.
Marching in the streets is worth a shot but it's not actually going to change this. I did go to a protest before the Iraq war. I'm glad I did, but a lot of the hopelessly bourgeois things I've done since have had more effect. And considering how little most of us are actually doing, it's absurd to even be talking about The Revolution.
44:It is a good week to think about these things. How was Pinochet possible? I have seen little about why the middle-class Chileans didn't stop him.
"Velvet Revolution" my ass. I don't know what would happen. I am not judging, condemning, advocating...I don't know. I read about 1875-1925 and it feels like people were more free. If only in their minds. Where it counts.
Hell, given the material conditions we have to work with, I think it's pretty fucking utopian to even be talking about universal healthcare (Christ will return before we can get true single-payer).
I don't know what kind of revolution we're supposed to have when all indications are that a substantial portion, if not a majority, of our fellow citizens think the things we find revolt-worthy are actually pretty good ideas. It's not like some tyrannical minority is imposing its will on a hapless populace.
50: read it!
I'm also lovin' me some Alexander Herzen (one of the protagonist of the new Stoppard plays, and my plane reading of choice).
As to why coups don't happen here (or in any rich democracy), Bob, it doesn't really seem all that complicated: there's no real payoff. Anyone in a position to mount one already has things *really darn good*, and the chances that the attempt would destroy everything in the process are also *really darn good*. Think about it: everyone really powerful in the US is already rich, or can translate their power into money at will (cf Clinton, who for awhile was "in debt" in a pointlessly technical sense of the term); they generally have the things that they want in life. Moreover, because the wealth of rich democracies is largely constituted not by extractable resources but by a vast web of local knowledge, social networks, and logistical chains, it is quite vulnerable to destruction through even the *expectation* of a shift in the basic rules of the game. So, sure, if you're Bush you try to push at the margins of what's constitutionally legit, but you don't cancel elections or anything like that.
[All of which is largely me channeling Adam Przeworski, who rocks.]
The story linked in 51 is quite good.
I expect that if a fascist movement really happened, most all of us would sit back, be very quiet, and wait for it to end.
Hey, Ogged, remember Majik Johnson?
I do.
62:
Maybe. I honestly don't think I would, because as soon as you learn the details of what happens to strangers it's worse, and when you meet people it affects personally it's still worse, so when it starts to directly affect people you're friends with and care about in a serious way...I think odds are quite good that I know people who were wiretapped. If they were actually thrown in prison or physically harmed, I think I would utterly flip out.
If you read about various nonviolent dissident movements, that's often how they work. Vaclav Havel and Charter 77 and what not, and the civil rights movement's strategy of letting the country see that violence directed against white college kids and putting it on tv.
But it's very easy to deceive yourself about this sort of thing of course.
59:"it is quite vulnerable to destruction through even the *expectation* of a shift in the basic rules of the game."
It all look pretty stable to me. Look I am told socialism is dead. That communism and fascism and many kinds of authoritarianism are unlikely. We have achieved stasis, huh.
It is about hope and faith. We had it real good in the sixties but went for what we could anyway. We failed alot, and achieved some successes. Heads got knocked and people died, and many felt really mean. We didn't destroy it all, even if that was the plan. We took the chances, the risks. It was not that we didn't care. We cared enough to risk it all.
I want more of a revolutionary attitude, and less reformism and incrementalism. Great things are not achieved by inches and one congressional seat at a time. I think great things are achieved by saying:
"Fuck it. Reboot. We can reinstall if it crashes."
See, but we're not talking about firehoses turned loose on crowds in public, in all likelihood -- based on what we see happening now, if we're going to get a fascist state, it'd be more like a Pinochet situation. I don't know if we can know in advance if we'd "flip out" and try to protest, or if we'd "flip out" and try our damnedest to keep from being disappeared and tortured.
From everything I've read, torture is pretty fucking bad, and not easily recovered from.
Since moving to Chile, one of the biggest differences I've noticed is the presence of a significant portion of the population that is willing and eager to take to the streets. All sorts of occasions -- Pinochet's death, the coup anniversary, military holidays -- are cause for building roadblocks and throwing rocks at cops.
What's more, at any sort of protest, particularly university ones (where the campus is occupied by sit-ins for at least a few weeks a year), people start fighting the cops pretty much right away. I| mean, look at the stuff they drive around in.
It should be obvious why it's this way. The dictatorship created a whole generation that grew up knowing that the military was the enemy and it was good to fight against them. Their parents praised the FPMR, and they heard it. The fact that it was so easy to get beat up by a cop during the dictatorship surely helped to establish a cycle of violence.
This is how I know Jeanne Kirkpatrick is full of shit about right-wing dictatorships being more amenable to transitions to democracy. The roadblock is a way of life in Central and South Americal; and the Miami Cubans might be nuts, but they aren't throwing bombs at buildings.
Homeland security is paying my rent, people. You might get me to join the revolution anyway, but there'd better be some good catering.
I just heard an audio snippet of Bush's speech today on the radio.
He said something about "if we lose our nerve," and his voice broke and got all screechy as he said it--it was the sound of someone who has lost his nerve. I very clear aural portrait of a puny loser, way over his head.
If the cables were to put give this the Dean Scream treatment, put the soundbite into rotation for a few days, bush's poll numbers would drop into the teens.
I was home and watched most of Bush's press conference. He said absolutely nothing whatsoever.
The story in 51 would be even better (though it is good) if there was a wikipedia entry making false claims about it.
I completely agree that you can't know in advance....
If you can get away with doing horrible things to people in secret the remedy is to publicize them. If you can get away with doing them by dehumanizing the victims the remedy is to make the public see they are humans.
None of this requires Molotov cocktails.
68--
how exactly? I thought you were a college teacher somewhere. Are you moonlighting with the TSA?
How was Pinochet possible? I have seen little about why the middle-class Chileans didn't stop him.
For the same reasons you aren't having revolutions in America. Nobody knows how. (Plus, people were somewhat fed up because the economy was crippled by strikes and there were food shortages.) But I think mostly that Chileans didn't know how to fight their government since they hadn't had to do so in generations. Which makes me all the more certain that you wouldn't have a major resistance in the U.S. no matter what happened. At least, not for a few years...
73: I'm on leave, and my husband's working, which is why we're rich now.
As far as todays "consumer culture" goes, I( haven't got there yet. That age of socialism, 1875-1925, well, I may never get out of modernism. Always been stuck with Monet and Mann and Mussogorsky.
But Galbraith and Marcuse and the French situationists are in my vocabulary and it seems we have exchanged comfort for power. Looks to me like there is a despair, a desperation almost universal among classes. And what I see is a seeking for just a little more comfort and security, and a near abandonment of hopes for real power.
That child molester thread looks interesting, and I have to finish Sci-Fi's "The Lost Room" tonight. Fun scavenger hunt, with mysticism. And gotta read, read. Bye.
Nobody knows how.
Exactly. And this
75--
you mean you're on leave and still drawing a salary? Paid to be idle? welfare for intellectuals?
well, if that's not reason enough to man the barricades, I don't know what it will take. I'm not really a rock-throwing guy, but the next time I see a college teacher, I'll hurl something at them (epithet, epidydimus, epithalamion, something).
No, I'm on unpaid leave. My husband, who works for the gubmint indirectly, makes enough money for two.
Man the barricades, but at least be doing it for the right reason.
how about hurling epithalamia? can I do that for the wrong reason?
how about hurling epithalamia?
For no particularly good reason, that reminds me of "I vomit remains at Christian filth." Also, the disappearance of The Poor Man's old comments is a great tragedy.
"Fuck it. Reboot. We can reinstall if it crashes."
I'm pretty sure that is the attitude that got us into Iraq.
It's just that McManus's dream is to troll the senate.
68: Mr B works for Homeland security, and LB works for big tobacco! Complicity in the system runs deep here.
Indirectly. However, unlike LB, he actually believes in the worth of what he's doing, so they probably even out, morally.
86: You forget I'm a consequentialist. Intent means nothing to me. (Technically, intent means nothing in itself.)
Complicity. Yeah.
I briefly stood next to Don Rumsfeld at a Christmas party this year and I didn't go all McManus on him. I could say the party was for a part of DoD that doesn't shoot but even we are complicit. I am not a pacifist, I work for a contractor, and I am in an office that does things that have to be done in every federal agency. Still this justifcation sits uneasy with me.
It's like you two are made for each other.
Aha! So you all thought you could get away with having this thread without me, just because I have a final tomorrow, eh? Well, think again!
First off, that article was bollocks wrapped inside wanking wrapped inside a load of shite. People can go from complacent to revolutionary/reactionary pretty damn quick. If you were a citizen of a united, powerful, imperial Germany in 1900, and somebody told you that despite class conflict and income inequality, bureacratic cronyism and entrenched, undemocratic institutions, there was no potential for popular revolt or violent rightist reaction within the next 20 years, wouldn't you probably think that was the safe way to bet?
Sure, the US isn't Germany, but if you'd been in Uruguay in 1953, would you have thought that the military would seize power in 20 years, responding to what was initially a relatively minor leftist insurrection?
Lots of stuff can happen in relatively short periods of time, even in self-satisfied capitalist oligarchies.
Klosterman and his colleague need to read Bill Buford's Among The Thugs if they really believe that "I'm no rock-thrower" nonsense.
So anyhow, revolution in our lifetime? Probably not -- but some of the earliest preconditions have been met. We'll just have to see how well the banksters can keep duping the sheeple for the next 5 years or so.
Also -- I like to remember the proper spelling of "bourgeois" by the mnemonic "'E owe I" -- as in "Do they owe us a living? 'Course they do, course they do!"
Ok, I've been thinking more about this, because breakdown of civil order fantasies are fun (actual breakdown of civil order would almost certainly be disastrous for me, just because of living a sheltered life etc.).
Let's say Josh Marshall (who I'm picking because he a) lives in New York and b) has a large audience) put up a post some day just saying: Take to the streets. Tell everyone you know, and then meet in six hours at location x to march on location y (digression: what exactly would you march on in New York? The best I can come up with is the NYSE. Is there some Federal building I'm not thinking of? Marching on City Hall also has some appeal, except in an actual breakdown of civic order I assume any group I'd be a member of would be trying to co-opt/be co-opted by the New York City government). Will explain as soon as possible.
Assuming that factors like time of day the message is posted are around optimal, approximately how many people do you think would show up without even knowing what the emergency is? If they did know? If it was coordinated with other cities?
Doesn't Josh Marshall live in Washington?
I loved a long excerpt from Among the Thugs I heard read on NPR, I think on TAL.
92: What about: Nov. 30, 1999; April 16, 2000; Feb. 15 and March 20, 2003? Sure, each of those events took a lot of shoe-leather organizing and institutional support, but if people already knew "it was going to go off", and if the source was trusted to convey the information about when and where, I think you could get a decent crowd together. Say a couple of thousand in NYC if there wasn't any particular thing that people were just itching to take to the streets about, and maybe 50,000 if everybody already knew that they should be keeping their balaclavas and running shoes handy. It would really depend on the context though. If we're talking about a "long, hot summer" scenario, where there's a high degree of general dissatisfaction among the young and disenfranchised, and a triggering event like a police shooting or the arrest of a popular hero happened, it could get pretty brutal, pretty fast.
93: You had me worried for a minute, but no.
Oh, I meant to add that Marshall says something about plate tectonics so that one would know the site hadn't just been hacked.
My memory of the WTC thing is that public outrage and minor disobedience (like going for a walk while the neighborhood I lived in was under lockdown) was actually pretty easy to get going.
James Chowning Davies theorized that:
Revolutions are most likely to occur when a prolonged period of objective economic and social development is followed by a short period of sharp reversal. People then subjectively fear that ground gained with great effort will be quite lost; their mood becomes revolutionary.
I think this is oversimplifying, but I wonder what would happen if our country's creditors were to call in our debts. I doubt this will happen, but I think it's possible. And it could lead to people in the streets. With iPods, of course.
Hell, we riot when the Wal-Mart runs out of the new Ninetendo (or whatever the hell it is this year). Imagine what would happen if, say, the ATMs stopped working.
And it could lead to people in the streets. With iPods, of course.
And no guns! Get prepared people.
Yeah, gswift, good idea. Just don't be standing in a crowd when we all start shooting.
I'm imagining ads for the new iPistol, an integrated 9mm-cellphone-mp3 player-blackberry that also fires lasers automatically at Mexicans. The ads are done in the iPod style, silhouettes on a neon background, revolting away. "Backorder yours today!"
Imagine what would happen if, say, the ATMs stopped working.
I was in Paris during a strike of the workers who changed money in and guarded the ATMs. Generally, people managed quite well. By the seventh day, there was a little grumbling, of course.
I'm finding this handwringing over the supposed loss of our virile revolutionary spirit a little bewildering. Isn't faith in the democratic process, especially when it seems to be working, a good thing?
I'm not saying that it couldn't happen, though I believe all y'all hippies need to learn to shoot first while you're tying on your little banners, but... look, the fact that people aren't actively contemplating a revoltion is a good thing. Civil wars aren't fun, and the other side has control of the military, and even the most radical among us almost got off the computer long enough to light a little candle in 2002.
104: but being a revolutionary is fun. And a good way to get laid.
Oh, so it's all about the chicks. It makes so much more sense now.
I think there is certainly some story to tell about willingness to take to the streets both being valuable in itself for holding elected official accountable (credible threats and all tha jazz), and that the spirit behind it is a valuable thing to have in a national ethos. Or at least, I can imagine someone persuasively laying out an account along those lines.
You know, now that I think of it, I'm one of the least complicit people I know. Fuck all y'all -- I'm one of the righteous ones.
See... I don't see how a willingness to take to the streets is a credible threat. Didn't accomplish a whole hell of a lot in terms of stopping the Iraq fiasco, and it certainly accomplished a lot less than voting in a bunch of Democratic congresspeople did. If we had a parliamentary system with votes of no confidence and the like, it might make sense, but we don't...
And if one were cynical, one might encourage one's opponents to do something comparatively useless (take to the streets, vote for Nader) rather than something that could have an impact (stuff envelopes for your local candidate, man a phone bank, publicize corruption of incumbents...)
85: Until September 30 I wrote deportation orders* for a living and Alberto Gonzales was my ultimate boss--and I miss those days.
*I wrote decisions & orders saying people could stay too. And I think I did more good than harm. But complicity, you betcha.
Was there no way you could have "accidentally" gotten Gonzales deported? Because that would have been really excellent
I'm pretty sure he was born here, duder.
That's where the "accidentally" comes into play, Stanley.
"We didn't cross the border; the border crossed us! Again!"
(What I'm advocating is the elimination of Texas as a state, if that's not obvious to everyone.)
119: Grand. I waited until 'Smasher was drunk on Calle Ocho and now it's time for the revolution. To the, um, calles. Todos. Por favor.
A right-wing revolution, definitely. We came close in the late 60s in Britain (Stirling and others), and the French were close in the early 60s (Algerie Francaise, OAS, etc). And I think that all the factors listed for why a revolution isn't possible in the US also applied in 60s Britain and France.
Alternatively, an orange revolution-type event; it's not impossible that it could make the US (or at least DC) ungovernable. Although, as in Ukraine, expect plenty of government supporters to be bussed in to crack heads.
Do you really think Kotsko has enough income to pay tax on it?
I am not very complicit directly, but my ability to live a non-complicit lifestyle largely comes from having a family with lots of tainted money. My lack of complicity is unearned, mostly a matter of moral luck.
(Raises hand) Totally complicit, inextricably entangled. But, not a lot of family taintedness -- indeed 2/3 of my siblings (the preacher and the academic) live what I think of as fairly noncomplicit lives.
There should be an asterisk after the first sentence of 126 directing the reader's eye to the following footnote:
* But what were the paths that led me to this juncture, and how did I decide to follow them?
Like Stanley in 118, Roth delivers not his best work in Plot Against America. Still it kind of addresses the difficulty in recognizing transformation when it happens to your country.
I don't know Roth's œvre too well; but I sure liked PAA.
Do you pay income tax?
I do,* but the amount of money I save my clients in taxes more than makes up for the taxes I pay. Fight the power!
*I know this wasn't directed at me.
Ugh: working to undermine the System by helping rich people avoid taxes.
Ugh: working to undermine the System by helpingrich peoplelarge multi-national corporations avoid taxes.
Fixed, and even more noble!
120/121: La gente disunida/siempre se divida?
Have you read Operation Shylock? Incandescent.
PAA is the only Roth book I have read since Pornoy. Wait, strike that -- I read American Pastoral, I think it was, and enjoyed it greatly.
(Checking his Wikipædia page) -- it would appear I have also read Our Gang, which is more recent than Portnoy.
Also: a good friend of mine grew up in Weequahic and her mother went to HS with Roth.
It's a little early to be having a caffeine-induced fit, isn't it Clownæ?
It's never too early for hysteria.
128: The Plot Against America was the first Roth I read (just recently -- also the first novel I've read in a long time). It was ultimately unsatisfying, but now I want to read one of his better ones.
I'm also finally reading Middlesex.
141: It's not as good as Beginningsex.
Har har. I actually want to know what Middlesex is like. Adam?
I actually want to know what . . . sex is like. Adam?
I think you're asking the wrong dude.
Sex is... a type of cake.
B, we can discuss this privately, away from these crude ruffians.
Again with the har-de-har.
With such strong encouragement, it's just so hard to stop. But I'll try. For you, B.
With such strong encouragement, it's just so hard
Har-de-har.
Confession: I read "Middlesex" as "Middlemarch" and thought, just for an instant, what the fuck, B, you're really supposed to know that.
now I want to read one of his better ones.
Try American Pastoral and/or The Human Stain.
Right now, my standard is something that's (a) absorbing enough to make the train/bus ride go by fast and (b) not a theological or philosophical treatise.
At about 3/4 of the way through, I can say, yes, Middlesex was probably overrated. I am still enjoying it, despite the inflated rating.
Middlemarch is really so much better that I think Eugenides should have had the decency to avoid the inevitable association in his title.
There's a global shortage of should-have-had decency.
154 -- I liked Beginningmarch better.
Middlesex was enough to convince me not to read any more Eugenides. In the first place, it's a trendy type of novel: spanning three generations and recording the immigrant experience. Zadie Smith's White Teeth has a kind-of similar structure, if you've read that, but is executed very well (up until the end—I think I've said before here that she doesn't exit gracefully). What's the word that Eugenides repeats throughout—pudenda?
she doesn't exit gracefully
This seems to me like a weird opinion to hold.
Jackmormon - please be so kind as to check your email. Thanks!
The end of White Teeth is really clunky's what I mean.
160 -- I know what you mean -- I just think it is a weird sentiment.
151: Middlemarch is one of my favorites, in fact. Rest assured.
Never read Middlemarch but it just occurred to me to wonder whether its title has anything to do with the famous line from Julius Cæsar?
Does Middlemarch meet my stated standards? I always intended to read that, back in my dutiful English-major days.
It was ultimately unsatisfying, but now I want to read one of his better ones.
I hear a big collection of his earlier work is coming out under the umbrella title My Geschiksa.
I have a copy of middlemarch right here! I intend to read it someday.
God forbid you ever review one of my books, ben.
Middlemarch is the most intelligent novel I've ever read.
I think it was Seth Lerer's book on error that made me want to read Middlemarch, but I could be wrong.
I have to admit that I stole the "My Geschiksa" joke from a friend. I hope this means that someday I can review one of slol's books.
Does Standpipe have a post on that joke on his blog?
I have a secret plan that is awesome.
Don't tell me that you, our resident able to read Heidegger in Germanist, don't recognize a pun on "Geschick" and "shiksa" when you see one. (I thought it would be more efficient to have it be My Shiksal, but the emphasis isn't quite right.)
Does anyone else not know what joke BWo is making, but think about the pop song whenever they read "My Geschiksa", the one I don't know the title of but its chorus consists of a couple of people singing "My, ***" where each asterisk represents one syllable of a female name, don't know what the name is though? You could sing "My Geschiksa" to the same melody. FWIW.
On second thought, I may just have had too much coffee.
I ruined sb's plan by explaining the joke.
I've got to stop doing that.
Is too dark to read Heidegger in Germanist.
Huh. I (who don't know much about Yiddish) was assuming (prior to reading 172) that "Geschiksa" was some kinda variant spelling of "shiksa". Might have been clearer if you spelled it "Geschicksa".
Schicksa, the razor that only works on blonde hair.
175: or "Delilah". Who actually was a shiksa.
No revolution has successfully overthrown an elected government without at least partial support from the military by either staying in the barracks or some units joining outright. Maybe the time is now, while our triggerpullers are otherwise engaged.
Why must one equate "changing things in any meaningful way" with violence?
That said, I've sometimes had feelings along similar lines, but about street protests. Europeans constantly wonder out loud why Americans aren't marching in the streets demanding the overthrow of their corrupt and generally hated masters.
It's mostly, I think, because we don't think it will work. We think of protests as sometimes inspiring but usually ineffective theater. I had an interesting conversation with a Swede about this once, in which he explained to me that Europeans don't think that way at all: Europeans think of massive nationwide street protests and general strikes as something you can really use to overthrow your government if incremental methods fail, often without even using a great deal of violence.
So I started thinking about why that is. A lot of it is just that the United States is so damned big and sparsely populated. If the country were the size of Massachusetts, or even of Texas, and had something more like an urban population density, I could maybe see it working. But to most Americans, people marching on Washington are people who are far, far away.
The fixed schedule of elections has some effect. You can't bring down a government in the parlimentary sense; if you force people to resign, you create a lot of weirdness rather than just an opportunity for someone more in tocuh with The People.
