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In the American context, hopefully it never comes to an actual revolution, because life for everyone will be much, much worse with little prospect of anything b

• harimau777 8mo ago
  In order for that to happen, there has to be a way for regular people to live good lives without needing a revolution. Unfortunately, the Epstein class has and is doing everything in their power to get rid of those alternatives.
  • pjc50 8mo ago
    America is not going to have a Tahrir Square. It just about managed Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter.
    • pasquinelli 8mo ago
      no one knows.
  • _DeadFred_ 8mo ago
    Fuck that. South Korea constantly worked toward progress and went from generals to democracy. America won a Civil war against traitors like the Epstein class, but we want to just give up today because democracy is hard and what, hope the new dictator class is more benevolent? When has that ever been the case? The US is ours, Democracy is ours. That is why they constantly undermine it. Why would we give up the stronger position that is easier to win from just because they keep trying to undermine it? That makes zero sense.
• mrnotcrazy 8mo ago
  If its a revolution you probably aren't hitting them 40k in the air, your hitting them when they park similar to how Ukraine sent drones after bombers behind enemy lines. I really hope we can avoid any kind of conflict, with the way American's think I could see one or both sides resorting to biological/chemical weapons faster than they start making missiles. There is also no reason to assume what starts out as your side will remain such, revolutions are crazy risky.
  • ericmay 8mo ago
    > If its a revolution you probably aren't hitting them 40k in the air, your hitting them when they park similar to how Ukraine sent drones after bombers behind enemy lines. Right, and you don't need to conjure up anti-tank missiles (sure those could be nice to have) to do this. You could seize a bulldozer and drive it into the airframes, or just shoot them to bits. At this point if you have access to American jets on the ground to destroy them, you've already lost the manufacturing capacity to repair them. > There is also no reason to assume what starts out as your side will remain such, revolutions are crazy risky. Absolutely. Robespierre learned that lesson. Putin is learning that lesson from the perspective of starting a war but not being able to predict the outcome. The status quo is pretty great and we should be very careful and guarded about changing that, especially through violent means. Most things that are problems today can be resolved through legislation and the existing democratic mechanisms. Throwing that out (not suggesting you are suggesting that) would be almost certainly profoundly unwise. It's very much like the Monty Hall Problem.
• mothballed 8mo ago
  Times have changed since then but the first Chechen war heavily works against the theory of your second paragraph. Instrumental was their seizure of anti-tank and heavy weaponry during ambushes of Russian forces entering into Grozny and other chokepoints. Eventually they used these weapons to capture even more heavy weapons and then won a few years of outright independence.
  • Forgeties79 8mo ago
    Right but seizing military equipment and building your own are very different things.
  • pydry 8mo ago
    It didn't exactly matter in the end. Russia eventually encircled them with artillery and pounded them until they gave up and brokered a deal. Their fighting skills and spirit have since been added as an asset on the Russian military's balance sheet.
    • pasquinelli 8mo ago
      it doesn't really matter in the end because the human species will one day be extinct. would the chechens be in their position now had they never fought? impossible to say, counter-factual conditionals are all unconditionally true. though i'm not sure why you'd assume so...
      • pydry 8mo ago
        In exchange for two brutal wars they got 9 years of de facto independence. That's not even very long. You dont need counterfactuals to ask if it was worth it or compare 9 years to the age of the universe. Armed revolutions are often lionized and glorified because they form part of most countries' national mythos - the binding agent holding together most national identities. But, the ugly truth is that most of them are just a tragic waste of human life. Chechnya was very much that.
        • 8mo ago
• Forgeties79 8mo ago
  Everyone with the “only solution is revolution” mentality needs to read this comment. Anyone salivating over/romanticizing armed conflict has never experienced it and can’t fathom how awful it is. I know I can’t, and that’s why I don’t want to find out.
  • applfanboysbgon 8mo ago
    Anyone salivating over/romanticizing surrendering to a dictatorship hellbent on committing genocide has never experienced it and can't fathom how awful it is. I know I can't, and that's why I don't want to find out.
    • temp8830 8mo ago
      With attitudes like this, Americans might just go from exporting revolutions to domestic consumption within a generation!
    • Forgeties79 8mo ago
      So there are only 2 stark options?
  • mothballed 8mo ago
    From my experiences with the YPG in the Syrian Civil War --- You'd be surprised how many people that have seen combat absolutely loved it. There was one guy that would go in a state of ecstasy while being shot at, literally expressing happily "ha ha they try to shoot me" and this is a guy who had seen many of his comrades die. Once you accept you are dead it's actually far less mundane than normal life, while at the same time you have a fairly straightforward sense of meaning and purpose. Plus life is much simpler -- 99% of (that) war is just standing guard, smoking cigarette, drinking tea, moving sandbags, etc, much less complicated than say something like trying to juggle a dentistry practice while driving the 2 kids to school events and then going home to patch drywall on the house. There's a reason why Hemingway wrote "There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter." Going home just to have a toddler scream at you for the wrong color cup or walking into the grocery store and just effortless picking one of 1000 brands of cereal just seems so -- hollow -- afterwards.
• applfanboysbgon 8mo ago
  > hopefully it never comes to an actual revolution, because life for everyone will be much, much worse with little prospect of anything being better afterward. In the situations a revolution comes to exist, it is because life for everyone is already getting much, much worse with little prospect of anything being better. Nobody starts a revolution for funsies, so you're supposing a false dichotomy where the choice is between "plunge into hell for no reason" or "continue living a great life", when in fact the latter is not an option at all.
  • mkoubaa 8mo ago
    Exactly. Revolutions are awful things that are only defensible if the conditions are brutal enough. And even then, there has to be the caution that the revolution can be co-opted by infinitely worse people than those that were overthrown (take the Russian revolution, for example)
    • pjc50 8mo ago
      Also, actual revolutions require a significant chunk of "excluded elite". People who have nothing can generally manage a riot, maybe burn down some buildings until the police open fire, but nothing more coordinated. Revolutions require more money and organization. I'm reminded of how the convicted Jan 6th rioters were a lot more middle-class than you might expect. No American revolution would succeed without a significant chunk of US military support. Either from above ("autogolpe"), or entire units defecting en masse.
    • b345 8mo ago
      The Russian revolution is not a good example if you are talking about the October revolution. It cannot be stated objectively that it turned out to be worse, and, in fact, for many replacing the czars with the Bolsheviks led to a lot better living conditions.
      • mkoubaa 8mo ago
        Tell that to the 60 million people who died in the Holodomor.
• giancarlostoro 8mo ago
  Or worse. Neither your side nor your opponents side wins, an unknown threat swoops in and takes over and now you have a drastically worse system than either “side” would have at least tried to implement. Instability is a great opportunity for Russia to swoop on in, or China. The next American Civil War hopefully never happens because it will end worse than anyone realizes.
• mentalgear 8mo ago
  For anyone that thinks a "civil war" scenario might be fun, I recommend watching Alex Garland's 'Civil War' - a highly realistic portrait of what an inter-US war would actually look like.
  • cjbgkagh 8mo ago
    I did not find that movie to be realistic at all but I can see why other people do. I think it it’s far more likely to be a CIA faction led ‘attempted coup’ similar to the 2016 on in Turkey. I think Turkeys coup was likely run by their secret police as a way to flush out dissidents and heavily suppress them. So I would expect a Jan 6 but with more of a real actionable plan created by informants and doomed to quickly fail followed by a de-MAGAfication program similar to de-Baathification in Iraq or de-Nazification in Germany.
• swiftcoder 8mo ago
  > Most of it is pure fantasy including the idea that 3D printed missiles are going to start striking US strike aircraft at 40k feet Nobody is really talking about hitting supersonic jets at 40k feet, nor even destroying a fully-armoured tank. More about making your opponent think twice about deploying close air support, and have move cautiously with their APCs and supply trucks. We can see some version of this playing out in Ukraine, and I guess it is possible that FPV drones have pretty much invalidated the role a DIY missile launcher would play
• cjbgkagh 8mo ago
  It’s practically impossible for an indigenous insurgency to be effective without state backing, so the real question is who would be willing provide such support and under what circumstances. Similar to how France supported US independence as a way to hurt the UK. Or the UK supporting Native Americans to attack the US (war of 1812). Being able to effectively organize enough to create home grown weapons and fight an insurgency is a signal to a 3rd party that you are organized and committed and worthy of further support. From there it can snowball.
• littlestymaar 8mo ago
  I whish I coule upvote you more than once: as shitty as your country may feel to you, it's not remotely close to how bad it would be in the advent of a civil war (which come pretty much after any revolution). Even if “your side” won in the end, you'd have lost a lot in the process.