[TreebeardsUncle]

Ok.

People in America are too comfortable to revolt.

What good would a revolution do anyway?

There are a couple useful reforming steps that could be enacted.

These include the following:

Replace the current winner-take all system of voting with proportional representation.

Remove the legal status that corporations have to be considered persons before the law so that liability is not assigned to their owners (credditors), shareholders, and officers. However, this would reduce the earning power of a large part of the population.

People here tend to exagerate small problems and look for excessive responses.

What is going to happen?

not a lot and definitely not quickly

Prepared to be bored, disappointed, and discontent.

[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pretorian', 'A')gainst rich people-- to replace them with those who are revolting.

[Arthur75]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', '
')
The best part is low dog in the modern US sense is better than most any alpha dog from history.

[TreebeardsUncle]

People tend to be more concerned about their current and relative status rather than their absolute and historical status.

Also rebelliousness depends on age. Poor young males are most likely to make trouble. The prisons, military, and the consequences of their own poor judgement are waiting for them.

Anyway, despite some deluded malcontents who frequent these pages and other sites, most people in the states are still too comfortable or too distracted to make trouble.

If you folks are serious about changing things, look to political parties that are neither Democrat or Republican and work to limit the power of large corporations.

The mortgage banking, arms, oil, insurance, and pharmaceutical industries appear to have the most power to me.

Also there are a lot of small-time exploitative dishonest selfish and spiteful players to deal with as well.

G

[careinke]

These folks could eventually spawn a revolution. However, it will probably be non violent.

http://www.campaignforliberty.com/

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('careinke', 'T')hese folks could eventually spawn a revolution.

[careinke]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A') revolution from what to what? What are they revolting against and what would the nation become if they were successful? That is, what is the goal?

[mos6507]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Arthur75', '
')you could say that anything that happen will or has to do with peak oil,.

[Nefarious]

There will be no revolution. Riots and protest are sure to happen in my opinion at an unknown time in the future but a full revolution won't happen. There is no common cause or leaders to rally behind. We all bitch and complain about the situation the country is in but there isn't a unified cause for people to stand behind
We no longer have statesmen to champion the fight for justice and equality and the constitution. We have politicians doing backroom deals for their own self interest doing only enough in the public eye to get reelected when their term is up. There is so much corruption so much haggling so many compromises made that most legislation is a watered down perversion of what was originally purposed. They pass bills that they haven't read or weren't able to read before a vote. Every newly elected official is the same as the old one that left. The more things change the more they stay the same meandering along at a snails pace.
The people are duped time and again by false promises of change and reform. Beautiful eloquent speeches written by a hired gun to hint and appeal to each individuals wants and needs without ever holding to one position firmly. The gullible masses are taken in time and time again hoping this guy will be different. They never are.
Revolution is a very serious undertaking and not done lightly.All legal and legislative measures are used without end until those avenues of recourse have come to a passionate end.
There have been two major revolutions in this country one was our independence from the crown which we won,the other was the civil war which failed both of these revolutions only happened after numerous attempts to reconcile the issues peacefully and within the law.

I'll quote confederate general John Gordon on the matter
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')hus the opposing arguments drawn from current opinions and from the actions and opinions of the Fathers were piled mountain high on both sides. Thus the mighty athletes of debate wrestled in the political arena, each profoundly convinced of the righteousness of his position; hurling at each other their ponderous arguments, which reverberated like angry thunderbolts through legislative halls, until the whole political atmosphere resounded with the tumult. Long before a single gun was fired public sentiment North and South had been lashed into a foaming sea of passion; and every timber in the framework of the Government was bending and ready to break from "the heaving ground-swell of the tremendous agitation." Gradually and naturally in this furnace of sectional debate, sectional ballots were crystallized into sectional bullets; and both sides came at last to the position formerly held by the great Troup of Georgia: "The argument is exhausted; we stand to our guns."

[Kaj]

As always, I think its simply too premature to say there will, or won't be a revolution.

There are too many instances of governments being totally stunned by revolutionary action for me to believe the naysayers. Once a social campaign is in motion, they usually move beyond the control of those trying to check them. It happens time and time again. The conditions for mass revolt are all there: deep social inequality, dissatisfaction with governmental institutions, unravelling of the mythologies of free market prosperity.

But I'm not underestimating the determination of special interests to stamp it all out either. Just look at the amount of Pentagon research that is going into new crowd control technologies. They are certainly hedging against future unrest.

The whole issue is still up in the air. Its comforting to shroud oneself in the mantle of prediction. That prevents you from realising that you are a responsible agent in the situation. But optimism and pessimism are both moot without activism.

There are lots of engaged activists in this world already, and despite what people may think, the number and membership of such groups have risen enormously in recent decades. Obviously, it needs to rise more. Because of the urgency of the world crises, more people need to get off their butts and start joining in. Get involved in an anti-war, trade union, human rights, environmental campaign etc. Start networking, nurture civil society.

Fools will dismiss such activities as irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. But in fact such social movements are the organisational bricks which lead onto bigger things. Collectively, ordinary people have nearly all the power, if only they would realise it.

[SeaGypsy]

Ordinary people have the power to do nothing and destroy the ecosphere at the same time. Pretty Amazing what People Power can do..

[Cloud9]

Isolated individuals can do little, reread your history of the first world war.

[Kaj]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cloud9', 'I')solated individuals can do little, reread your history of the first world war.

[AlexdeLarge]

[SeaGypsy]

"Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought."

-- Pope John Paul II
1920-2005

- "President Bush on Monday defended U.S. interrogation of terrorists, saying 'We do not torture.' He added, 'We freedom electrocute.'" --Amy Poehler on "Saturday Night Live"

- [On freedom's progress): "Here in Baghdad, freedom. In outer Baghdad, free-ish, gradually becoming liberatory. The southern regions, somewhat under-oppressed. The city of Umm Qasr, vaguely unshackled. The Western provinces, still a little kidnappy." --"Daily Show" correspondent Rob Corddry

[mos6507]

Talking to peakoil.com members about the virtue of activism is like talking to a brick wall. There is heavy selection-bias here. When I was at the transition training course in Montpelier nobody said they were regulars of peakoil.com, not even lurkers. That tells me something. There are doers and there are whiners in this world, and peakoil.com is a bunch of schadenfreuders who want nothing more than to watch megadoom proceed from the (perceived) immunity of the doomstead with a good bag of hot buttered popcorn. And here is your mascot:

[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', ' ')There are doers and there are whiners in this world, and peakoil.com is a bunch of schadenfreuders who want nothing more than to watch megadoom proceed from the (perceived) immunity of the doomstead with a good bag of hot buttered popcorn.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', ' ')There are doers and there are whiners in this world

[Homesteader]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', ' ')There are doers and there are whiners in this world

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Homesteader', '
')
Doesn't going to a seminar in northern Vermont count as doing something?