Not making any threats here, just thinking out loud as a historian — do they people brazenly pushing for impunity for the wealthy elites not know what traditionally comes next?
As a non-historian, I kind of wonder how likely eg North Korea or Turkmenistan is, versus French Revolution. In fact, a revolution with a decent outcome seems more of a fluke than many many examples of authoritarian dictatorships lasting decades or even centuries.
I think it will all be fine as long as people can effectively seek redress through the ordinary political process. Nobody has done anything to interfere with that, right?
I keep wondering when the torches and pitchforks will come out, and I keep coming to the conclusion that, if they haven't already, then probably never.
They don't believe it will happen to THEM. They're accustomed to pre-internet fog-of-war immunity where a sleazy operative could make a backroom deal and be functionally anonymous.
Survival of the Richest by Douglas Rushkoff.
You’d think it would be ultimately cheaper to just pay taxes.
The rest of us are pretty sure we don’t want to live in a world holed up behind bars—even a luxurious prison is still a prison.
If only Americans had the collective fortitude exhibited in 18th-century France. They might still have it deep down, but it won't come out until something critical is taken away. Like wifi.
I've been saying this for a long time. The way grievances used to be addressed involved dragging the lord from his manor and beating him severely in front of his family. It's only in modern times that we've permitted things like union negotiations and such to usurp this method.
Considering the wealthy elite of our age don't have the forethought or sense of culture to build megaliths or commission anything of lasting value, it looks like we're skipping the fun intermission and going straight to the "peasants in suicidal revolt against their samurai masters" stage.
I think about this *all the time*
Like did they not learn about how the guillotine came into use as a direct result of skyrocketing wealth inequality????
Massacres come next, and to be honest, I think they’re quite looking forward to that part.
They might not have planned fully for what comes after the massacres, though.
The so-called “originalists” on the court have never had a particularly strong grasp of history.
Their whole approach is one of the greatest frauds perpetuated in the last half century.
They know perfectly well — hence the funds spent on developing robot attack dogs and android cops (they needn’t worry about those turning on them and siding with the populace).
This needs to be a - maybe THE - point of emphasis over the next four months: that Trump's Supreme Court has taken your right to choose, poisoned your water, dirtied your air, tainted your food, made your workplace more deadly, flooded your streets with guns, diluted your vote, and legalized bribery
Thinking out loud as a theologian, if you feel you need flaming moats and water cannons to protect yourself from your neighbors, maybe you need to re-evaluate a whole raft of your life choices.
That's why they need massively militarized police who actively despise and mock most of society. They are counting on them to make examples of enough of the rest of us..
“Surely this time will different,” they whisper to themselves after letting the nanny know that her French verb conjugation lessons are not up to snuff. She WILL NOT be the reason that Chapman does not get into the right preschool.
No. No they don't. Ignorance includes not being able to understand something unless it happens to you personally. History isn't a great tool for learning, if it's knowledge is never learned.
IRL for me. If you can't pay for a lawyer, you get screwed over by the law and the wealthy elites walk away with the spoils. The wealthy elites already have impunity. I don't like what comes next.
I don't know if the implications of that work out well for us: right now, there is a much stronger contemporary right wing tradition of extra-legal violence, while at the same time, LE is primed to come down much harder on even weak signs of left wing violence (e.g. protests).
It’s something I think about regularly. So far most regular people haven’t been impacted in ways they notice. Or they misdirect their anger. But when they figure it out there is a lot less ability to stop what would be a lot of instability, threat of violence, or outright conflict. Worrisome.
I mean, last time a president made a handful of concessions to the working class specifically to keep that from happening a bunch of rich industrialists got together and tried to kill him for it so… no, I don’t think they get what’s going on there at all.
A great deal of misery for the most vulnerable. People forget just how awful things were in the Great Depression before we saw any meaningful change. They're banking on a high pain threshold.
it might be a different ballgame now tho. tech might tip the balance from sheer numbers to “we have drones and a sleek domestic thug force seemed with actual war stuff.” hard to say. i’ve thought what you say for decades, but lately i wonder if it still holds.
The entire right wing media apparatus seems oriented to redirect anything in that direction. If people can believe in prosperity gospel nonsense, then the rich are probably safe for now.
Just change the name of the Sup. Ct to the Plutocrat Protection Review Board, and have the 6 Rs swap their robes for blazers with dollar signs on the lapels
I used to wonder this about McConnell et al.
They play games to weaken the system, but the system is also the source of their power. If things really do break, the blue areas have more people, more money, and I suspect the support of the military. It's sawing off the branch you're sitting on.
They are counting on the usual mob of conservative rurals who rally round the aristos to protect them from the guillotine. That may not work in Paris but in the Vendee...
Red hats are the new Catholic and Royal Army.
Americans have spent so long having our growing stress, despair, and anger intentionally misdirected towards marginalized groups, that I'm not sure what it would take, exactly, for this to change.
If it ever does, though, the whole country would basically explode into violent chaos.
Technology offers the ability to scale up surveillance, torture, and mass murder beyond anything that has ever existed in history. If Israel didn't already exist they'd have to invent it.
They think they will somehow escape this time. A few of the billionaires may escape (which is why they are building bunkers), but won’t find anyone to “serve” them willingly (terrifying to think what their plan is for this). So, natch, us proles will take it out on the 1st collaborators we can find.
That's why I think they're building doomsday bunkers, instead of making the barest attempt to improve their surroundings. Hopefully we get to the chopin' soon, lest we end up with our own version of the Late Bronze Age collapse.