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Democracy is the opiate of the masses. No need to rebel, here, just select one of two hand picked identical candidates with no substantial policy differences o
by VLM 12y ago
Democracy is the opiate of the masses. No need to rebel, here, just select one of two hand picked identical candidates with no substantial policy differences outside unimportant hot button social issues, no need for mob violence to change leadership when you can vote (just remember not to "waste" your vote on a 3rd party non-hand picked candidate, because they're not under our thumb!)
The inequality problem sets in when you expel most of the labor force from the economy. The economy no longer has space for them, no longer needs them, no longer will let them in to participate. I'm sure the teeming masses of bored angry resentful aspirational young men will never respond violently like they always have in the past. Nope no demagogues will become leaders, LOL. Assuming there's no revolution, what happens to the economic refugees when the population is 99% refugee? They'll need some way to get the requirements of living, which seems to involve currency and an economy, or they'll die. But they have the perma-economic-death-penalty so they can't participate, and we'd like to think the 1% won't kill them, so immovable object meet irresistible force.
Being in the UK Charlie has absolutely weird ideas about gun ownership and rebellion. True a 18th century napoleonic war with civilian gun owners on one side and the conventional army on the other would be just a bit one sided. The actual result would look a lot more like Afghanistan or Iraq or Vietnam or Somalia, you know, the places where the army lost the war? When an angry well-enough armed population dramatically outnumbers the army, the army loses. Maybe a couple million civilians will die, but the army is still going to lose in the end. Then out come the guillotines for the 1% leaders for their war crimes or revenge or whatever. Sure would be nice to avoid this outcome, but we're not even trying, not in the least, if anything we're not steering away from the brick wall we're stomping on the accelerator. Talking about 18th century strategy being all thats possible is almost intentional disinfo, which is weird coming from Charlie.
Gonna be a fun century!
- knowaveragejoe 12y agoI could not disagree more with most of what you've said here. The beginning seems to rely on the assumption that no change occurs in politics anymore - "we" are simply being screwed and that's the end of it. This is precisely the view of someone who isn't involved and is informed entirely by outrage-porn articles. This also belies the frankly uninformed worldview that it's "us" and "them", which could not be farther from the truth. Later you imply that armed revolution would actually lead to a reasonable outcome. Clearly you have never heard the phrase "meet the new boss, same as the old boss" and are unaware of the perhaps dozens of examples throughout recent history where this fits the picture to the T. You are also ignoring the reality of the conflict in Afghanistan, where the military enjoyed remarkable success against a foe that is more resourceful, elusive and better armed than that vast majority of the even the most hardcore, gun-toting, anti-government survivalists here in the US. I'm also sensing based on your willingness to adopt violence as a potential "solution" that you don't have the faintest clue what armed conflict, let alone combined arms warfare, is actually like. There is a reason we avoid it. This sort of sentiment is not only totally unproductive but it's possibly contributing to the problem by adding non-solutions to the noise. Here's a question for you - can you quantify what the metaphorical brick wall we're supposedly careening towards is?