Is Revolution The Only Viable Solution?

[Robin Of House Hill]

3 minutes ago, The King in Black said:

For better or worse these are people's choices and these are legitimate elected governments. And nowhere are conditions so bad there needs to be a revolution. Except Turkey.

And here is the problem.  If, in three years, we are just like Turkey, it's too late to do anything about it.  Besides, by then, it will be the new normal and no one will care.

[Robin Of House Hill]

1 minute ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

So... American's who supported the interment of Japanese-American's... weren't and aren't humans?

You're changing the premise.  We were discussing those who were unbalanced.  That is not the same as who is or isn't human.  Also, we haven't agreed on how we define human.  Are we talking about the species, or qualities we define as human?

[The King in Black]

3 minutes ago, Robin Of House Hill said:

And here is the problem.  If, in three years, we are just like Turkey, it's too late to do anything about it.  Besides, by then, it will be the new normal and no one will care.

But sadly democracy works that way. When we decided that everyone gets to vote - and don't get me wrong here , everyone must get to vote - we compromised that whatever decision the majority came to would be implemented. Even if it is something as baffling as re election of majority  (Rep)Congressmen who did jackshit in their years. Now , the prospects of Republicans controlling all three branches is scary. But let's keep in mind we do have checks and balances to keep them in checks. Time and again courts have shot down Trump's orders. There's Marches for women and science. Their plan to kill Obamacare failed miserably. The current situation gives us enough leeway to hold them accountable (and Hillary did get majority votes mind you )

 

 

This is very America centric though , for that my apologies. Europe is a different beast. 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

31 minutes ago, Robin Of House Hill said:

If holding the belief that people who have done no wrong, should be caused harm, simply because of who they are, isn't unbalanced. what is?

Robin,

This is what you said.  Humans have been creating "the Other" for thousands of years.  It's wrong and I wish we wouldn't do that.  Nevertheless, it appears to be part and parcel of humanity.  In  Yuval Noah Harari's Book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind he pointed out that most in most tribal societies the name the group gives itself equates to "real humans".  

I'm not saying Nazis are people who should be defended.  I'm saying that they are people, and we should recognized the fact that they are people, and that as such we have the potential to behave as they did.  

[Robin Of House Hill]

17 minutes ago, The King in Black said:

But sadly democracy works that way. When we decided that everyone gets to vote - and don't get me wrong here , everyone must get to vote - we compromised that whatever decision the majority came to would be implemented. Even if it is something as baffling as re election of majority  (Rep)Congressmen who did jackshit in their years. Now , the prospects of Republicans controlling all three branches is scary. But let's keep in mind we do have checks and balances to keep them in checks. Time and again courts have shot down Trump's orders. There's Marches for women and science. Their plan to kill Obamacare failed miserably. The current situation gives us enough leeway to hold them accountable (and Hillary did get majority votes mind you )

 

 

This is very America centric though , for that my apologies. Europe is a different beast. 

Somehow, I can't take comfort in the fact that they appear to be so incompetent that they can't achieve their objectives.  It is too risky to assume they won't learn. It's also disheartening that democracy doesn't have better self-protection facility built into it.  It assumes that one side, or the other will relinquish power, and a President that says he is thinking of changing the libel laws to curtail the press, doesn't sound like one who is amenable to a peaceful transition of power, especially since the entire Republican Party seems willing to allow anything that keeps them in power.

6 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Robin,

This is what you said.  Humans have been creating "the Other" for thousands of years.  It's wrong and I wish we wouldn't do that.  Nevertheless, it appears to be part and parcel of humanity.  In  Yuval Noah Harari's Book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind he pointed out that most in most tribal societies the name the group gives itself equates to "real humans".  

I'm not saying Nazis are people who should be defended.  I'm saying that they are people, and we should recognized the fact that they are people, and that as such we have the potential to behave as they did.  

Ser Scot,

There is a significant difference between othering people because of who they are, and what they do. I'm not questioning that they are people.  I'm questioning the restraint being urged when opposing them, because a principle is more important that stopping harm.  That's why they win, and are only overthrown by force, usually a lot of it...as a last resort.  Marches for science, or women's' health, or any number of other causes, won't work.  The Trump people simply don't care about such things and the Republican Party is complicit because staying in power is the only thing they care about...in addition to depriving others of things they have.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Robin,

So, start shooting now?  That's your position and those who are killed in the crossfire, the innocents that will be killed in the crossfire, because you know it will happen, are just broken eggs in the course of making the omelette?  I hear your passion, I do.  What I cannot accept is that pre-emptive escalation is proper given the rather drastic consequences that will follow when people reach for their weapons.  

[Free Northman Reborn]

39 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Robin,

So, start shooting now?  That's your position and those who are killed in the crossfire, the innocents that will be killed in the crossfire, because you know it will happen, are just broken eggs in the course of making the omelette?  I hear your passion, I do.  What I cannot accept is that pre-emptive escalation is proper given the rather drastic consequences that will follow when people reach for their weapons.  

Well now. Seems like you are taking the classic position of the pacifist in any revolutionary scenario. In every conflict in history there have been those who urged restraint and those who urged that the sacrifices would be worth the eventual gains. To me it is not so much a principle of "revolution is never the answer", as it is a case of "it is really some over-the-top hysterics to even be thinking about so called "revolution" in the current environment".

[DunderMifflin]

I'm not exactly preaching restraint but more in the way of advice. The side that seems to currently want to engage in violent revolution is pretty much the same side that advocated giving up their right to weapons for the previous 8 years. So when you want to go to war in a country with millions of guns laying around, "punching those nazis that voted the way I don't like" is  not going to do much but get you hurt. Fists vs Guns is not a good idea.

[Swordfish]

bit f a riot going on in downtown PDX at the moment, but not much revolution really.

 

 

[Robin Of House Hill]

3 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Robin,

So, start shooting now?  That's your position and those who are killed in the crossfire, the innocents that will be killed in the crossfire, because you know it will happen, are just broken eggs in the course of making the omelette?  I hear your passion, I do.  What I cannot accept is that pre-emptive escalation is proper given the rather drastic consequences that will follow when people reach for their weapons.  

Actually,  I was thinking more along the lines of general strikes, massive civil disobedience.  Primarily things that impact corporate bottom lines, which might force the few enlightened Republicans to cease supporting the Trump administration, possibly to the extent of impeaching and convicting him.  Under this scenario, if anyone starts shooting, it will be the government.  After that, all bets are off.

[Altherion]

13 hours ago, Ormond said:

Well, the author of the article is much more tentative in his conclusions than in what you quoted. He really seems to think we are in a time where the future is more unpredictable than usual.

And personally I am skeptical about the "elites" "lying" more in the last few decades than they ever have. Much of what people perceive as "lies" are things they don't want to hear --and one of the things people most don't want to hear is the message that things are complicated and solutions to problems are not always quick and easy, which is a message they are likely to hear from real experts on most issues in academia. The problem with real lying in "academia" these days comes from the penetration of corporate values into most non-elite colleges and universities (where the huge majority of students actually are.)  It seems to me that most university administrations these days are full of people who are quite willing to lie to students about how quickly they can finish a degree, how easy a program is, etc., just to get them enrolled. I don't think there are very many faculty out there lying to students, though part of our job is to get them to think about issues they would rather not deal with and question their own untested assumptions about the world.   

I agree about the future being more unpredictable than usual: the problems are obvious, but there is practically no information about what shape the solutions might take.

Regarding the lying and misdirection: I don't mean that professors lie to their students. This might occasionally happen, but it is far too rare to be relevant in this context. Misleading claims about the ease of obtaining a degree and also about the likelihood of a specific degree leading to a decent job are indeed more common, but this is still too localized a phenomenon to affect society as a whole. In fact, even the issues which conservatives excoriate universities for (e.g. the propagation of concepts that incite hatred such as the idea of "white privilege") are merely adding insult to injury.

No, the crucial point on which the lying in the past decades has been worse than before is "the economy." As time went on, it came (and is still coming) closer and closer to mean "the fortunes of the elites", but very few people in positions to disseminate this information actually did so. The vast majority of our leaders structured policy to optimize "the economy" and the vast majority who had far-reaching voices cheered them on and claimed that this is a Good Thing.

[Robin Of House Hill]

I'll just leave this here, if anyone is interested.

http://www.salon.com/2017/05/01/historian-timothy-snyder-its-pretty-much-inevitable-that-trump-will-try-to-stage-a-coup-and-overthrow-democracy/

[Jo498]

5 hours ago, Altherion said:

No, the crucial point on which the lying in the past decades has been worse than before is "the economy." As time went on, it came (and is still coming) closer and closer to mean "the fortunes of the elites", but very few people in positions to disseminate this information actually did so. The vast majority of our leaders structured policy to optimize "the economy" and the vast majority who had far-reaching voices cheered them on and claimed that this is a Good Thing.

I'd add that there has been also some extraordinarily blatant lying in foreign policy. This might not have been all that different in former times, but e.g. the Eastern bloc did have weapons of mass destruction. Although there might have been similar lies about some of the proxy wars, I was too young in the 1980s to have been aware of similar propaganda going on but I don't think it was disinformation and propaganda on a scale we have had for the near/middle East wars in the last 15 (or maybe rather 25) years.

It is more a gut feeling, but I'd say that overall in former times people might have been aware that they were lied to by the government as well as by experts etc. and that each party and faction obviously used selective information and occasionl lies to further their causes. But now all seems to have added up so that the barrel overflows and there is a (not entirely unjustified) general feeling among "the people" that unassailable elites are doing what they want and don't even pretend to care anymore for the common man they vowed to represent. (Or that they are powerless and the real power is wielded by experts and banksters who very not even voted into public office.)

[Robin Of House Hill]

The dictator wannabe wants to ensure single party rule.  Still think a revolution isn't needed?

http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/02/politics/donald-trump-shutdown-tweet/index.html

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

1 hour ago, Robin Of House Hill said:

The dictator wannabe wants to ensure single party rule.  Still think a revolution isn't needed?

http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/02/politics/donald-trump-shutdown-tweet/index.html

If he had the power to enact something like this, then sure. It's just the gasbag gasbagging. There's nothing behind his blather. He can't just add Senate seats at a whim.

[Robin Of House Hill]

1 minute ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

If he had the power to enact something like this, then sure. It's just the gasbag gasbagging. There's nothing behind his blather. He can't just add Senate seats at a whim.

So let's just wait until it is too late to do anything?  History suggests that won't end well.  Remember, Hitler didn't start off with absolute power. Trump, now, has more power than when Hitler started his rise to power.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

6 minutes ago, Robin Of House Hill said:

So let's just wait until it is too late to do anything?  History suggests that won't end well.  Remember, Hitler didn't start off with absolute power. Trump, now, has more power than when Hitler started his rise to power.

How do you think he'd enact something this extreme? He's just going to march 25 appointees into the Senate and declare them to be elected officials? There's no way he can enact this. 

[Altherion]

10 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

If he had the power to enact something like this, then sure. It's just the gasbag gasbagging. There's nothing behind his blather. He can't just add Senate seats at a whim.

For the record, nothing in that article suggests that he wants to add Senate seats. What he appears to want is to get rid of what remains of the filibuster. This is an interesting topic, but perhaps we should discuss it in the US Politics thread rather than here?

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

7 minutes ago, Altherion said:

For the record, nothing in that article suggests that he wants to add Senate seats. What he appears to want is to get rid of what remains of the filibuster. This is an interesting topic, but perhaps we should discuss it in the US Politics thread rather than here?

My apologies. I stopped at his tweets, and I thought that's what he was proposing. In that case, this is something the Senate can clearly choose to do, right? Exercise the supposed nuclear option, as it's called. Whether or not they will be willing to do this in order to get legislation passed for Trump's wall or not is another thing altogether. I'm assuming that's what he's after.

[Swordfish]

1 hour ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

My apologies. I stopped at his tweets, and I thought that's what he was proposing. In that case, this is something the Senate can clearly choose to do, right? Exercise the supposed nuclear option, as it's called. Whether or not they will be willing to do this in order to get legislation passed for Trump's wall or not is another thing altogether. I'm assuming that's what he's after.

Yes.  There is literally nothing to see here.

I think we've reached the point where regardless what Trump says, it's going to be spun as catastrophe by many.