The mounting social inequality is fueling protests around the globe. The global ruling class is determined to prevent these protests from employing the weapon that can bring them down — strikes.
Romantic fantasies aside, revolutions happen, not when the 99% get tired of the 1% and rise up, because the 1% will do whatever it takes to maintain power. That's how they got to be the 1% in the first place.
Rather, revolutions happen when the 1% are divided amongst themselves. Often as a result of foreign threat or economic crisis.
The other condition that is necessary for revolution is for the security services to no longer stay on-side. This is why I pay little attention to the Yellow Vests, to the Dutch farmers, etc.. As long as the police and army are willing to break heads when ordered, nothing will come of them.
Sorry to say, but your "revolutions happen, not when the 99% get tired of the 1% and rise up, because the 1% will do whatever it takes to maintain power. That's how they got to be the 1% in the first place," is incorrect. Revolutions happen when people become hungry. Not that, "Oh I missed lunch and I'm starving" but when people who have never known true hunger are suddenly, hungry, truly starving! Do the research, study the French, Russian and American revolutions, and you will find, desperation leads to revolution whereas one class overthrows the ruling class. Here in the USofA, desperation's building, quickly! The ruling elite keeps a blind eye to this, and it will cost them. The question to really ask is this: What kind of leadership will take its place? Just ask the ruling elite in Roman history when it collapsed do to hunger of the masses.
Which Russian revolution illustrates your point? There were 3 between 1905-1917 (The Russian Revolution of 1905-1907, the February Bourgeois Democratic Revolution of 1917 and the Great October Socialist Revolution of 1917). From the interpretations I have read (let's face it, none of us on this forum lived through any of them) they all had to do with the inequities of food production and distribution...in turn leading to desperation...and in turn leading to revolution.
With regard to the Roman Empire....are you saying everyone was so content being well sheltered and well feed that they decided to burn their cities down?
I would not dispute that "divide elite opinion" can lead to social decline. However, with all due respect Finster, you're now equating "social decline" with revolution in order to make your argument. Changing the argument does not prove your point.
Sure, there is divided elite opinion all the time. However, I believe your original hypothesis was that it is divided elite opinion which acts as the main impetus for social revolution.---rather than extreme social inequity (i.e. mass starvation and/or lack of shelter). Your hypothesis appears to be skating on thin ice. Why? Because there is divided opinion among the elite virtually all the time. Even the high ranks of a strict military command has "divided opinion". Divided elite opinion among appointed, declared, or elected political (or business) elite operating as a ruling class would, IMO, be even more ubiquitous. Given your original hypothesis, would it not follow that this divided opinion would manifest itself into a state of perpetual (rather than periodic) revolution? History has shown that it has not.
My history coincides with Feral's history but being a lowly Red Sea Pedestrian we always suffer not because we chose the wrong side but were misfortunate to just be there.
The people like ourselves always lose.
When the Czars destroyed Vilnius in 1794 with the help of Britain , France, the Ottomans and the Austro Hungarians it was the end of Liberal Democracy for a century and a half everywhere including the USA.
Empires hate citizens they thrive on slavery and blindness.
None of that makes your point, either, but there is a difference between relatively inane palace drama and fundamental disagreement over what direction to take or who is to be in charge.
Now as to your reply of "That isn't how the Roman Empire collapsed, but go on.... For that matter, the French, Russian and American revolutions all illustrate my point." I must reply in kind:
HARDLY! From Julian Cribb, an Australian author and science writer and editor (look him up), from his work 'Food or War' (read the book, it's excellent) pages 7&8 "Indeed, our global food supply today is essentially patterned on the Roman system of broadacre single crop agriculture in favored regions, exporting grain and other produce to distant cities... This point needs to be borne in the mind as we explore the frailties of the modern food system... Ominously, when its food system failed in the early centuries of the Christain Era, the Roman Empire collapsed.
"There are numerous popular theories as to why Rome fell, starting with the obvious proximate cause- the invasion of Goths, Huns and other barbarian tribes- imperial overreach (the favored of the historian Gibbon) and the economic mismanagement of the Empire itself. However, history is seldom quite so simple (which you seem to be doing Feral Finster)...
"Simultaneously, the climate changed. Between about 150 AD and 400 AD weather conditions cooled and deteriorated with temperatures reaching unprecedented lows in what became known as the 'Late Antique Little Ice Age'... This had a compounding effect on the Roman food supply and economy and especially on the ability of Rome to pay and feed its legions. Many of these legions were made up largely of local recruits who then mutinied becoming independent war bands, some of which even joined forces with the raiding Goths who devoured the Western Empire…
“If the pathway to war, government failure or the collapse of a civilization can be thought of as a series of dominoes, collapsing one upon another, the fall of the food domino and the climate domino lie very early in the sequence and have irresistible impact and consequences…A major crop failure in any of the great bowls would reduce this to zero and send world bread prices rocketing through the roof for everybody (as is happening today what with the conflict in Russia and Ukraine, i.e. revolts by average people in North Africa and other parts of the world whereas governments are falling like flies), thanks to globalized trading systems and world grain prices that now exist. Since our population is now straining at the very limits of the Earth itself, this risk is more pronounced than ever. Indeed, food insecurity represents as direct an existential threat to our civilization (and the government and business communities who caused this to happen- God Feral Finster, whose holding all those ropes and pitchforks?) in the event of a major disruption- such as a worldwide conflict, a nuclear war or a climate catastrophe- as it did to the ancient Romans. We ignore the lesson of their experience.”
In short Feral Finster, the Roman population came to a point where they would not cooperate in anyway whatsoever whereas Rome fail. Concerning the French revolution, again from Cribbs’ ‘Food or War’ (pg.30) “Food shortages became critical and bread prices nearly doubled from 8 sous a loaf to 14.5 sous- equal to nine tenths of the daily wage of a Parisian labourer.
“The discontent, originating once again in food insecurity and climate impacts, was the fuel for widespread urban unrest culminating in the storming of the Bastille, which ushered in the Revolution (I don’t think it was the French aristocracy which stormed the Bastille, do you?).”
Now as to the Russian Revolution, again from Cribbs’ (pg.33) “However, one of the germinal events leading up to the October Revolution that toppled Nicholas II was a women’s protest in St Petersburg on International Women’s Day, February 23, 1917. Tens of thousands of people, mainly women, paraded along Nevske Prospekt with banners demanding ‘Feed the children of the defenders of the motherland’ and ‘Supplement the ration of soldiers families, defenders of freedom and the people’s peace’, indicating food was very much a live issue in the complex of triggers for the bloodshed that was to follow."
And as for the American Revolution, let us examine a passage from Howard Zinn’s ‘A People’s History of the United States’ a very telling passage to boot (pg.85) “During the Revolution, to mobilize soldiers, the tenants were promised land (needed to feed oneself and family). A prominent landowner of Dutchess County wrote in 1777 that a promise to make tenants freeholders ‘would instantly bring you at least 6,000 able farmers into the field.’ But the farmers who enlisted in the Revolution and expected to get something out of it found that, as privates in the army, they received $6.66 a month, while a colonel received $75 a month. They watched local government contractors like Melancton Smith and Matthew Paterson become rich, while the pay they received in continental currency became worthless with inflation.
(And get ready) “All this led tenants to become a threatening force in the midst of war. Many stopped paying rent. The legislature, worried, passed a bill to confiscate Loyalist land and add four hundred new freeholders to the 1,800 already in the county…” It wasn’t the 1% the legislature was worried about, now was it?
Without dissecting the point in detail, by your logic, the Bolsheviks would not have survived nearly as long as they did, having experienced multiple large-scale famines.
For that matter, plenty of other governments and systems, ancient and modern, survived far more devastating famines than anything the French or Russian revokutionaries ever did. (Colonial America was positively awash in food - one reason American cuisine is the way it is, is because Americans had plenty of food and fodder for animals.)
What you say is a facile analysis with no merit. I live in Quebec . I am 74 years old and was born in Quebec and we had a profound revolution and nobody went hungry or starved or went homeless.
We went from Theocracy and Plutocracy to Secular Humanist Liberal Democracy in less than half a century and we are the freest most democratic sovereign nation in North America.
We have five major political parties and an election on October 6 and all I can is a pox on all political parties from left to right.
My American wife does not speak the Lingua Franca but she is treated better here than in many places in Americas where knowing the correct people is more important than knowing right from wrong.
She was born in Nashville and having visited Nashville city and burb I know I do not have ANY freedom of speech in most of White Nashville or rural Michigan where she grew up.
We have Press Freedom and freedom of speech a phenon rarer and rarer as a county that needs to united splits further and further apart.
I ignore almost of what I here in the corporate media of Canada and the USA. Kool-aid and gambling is not a fix for the decay of human spirit and gaslighting will cost us our ecosystem.
The Guardian is covering how Big Oil has Gaslit us from the days of Rockefeller and the oil trusts.
And my understanding is that the Canadian government in Ottawa is a neoliberal poodle of its master in Washington DC. I know nothing of the provincial government in Quebec, but is it even relevant to this discussion?
Trudeau is under attack by his older twin brother who still lives in family mansion on top of Montreal Mountain. He rejects his younger twin who chose to live among us common folk where he taught until he was forty and decided to champion liberal democracy. He won the Prime Ministership in a martial arts ring against a younger and more accomplished martial artist
This is right wing media's coverage of the event.
Well worth 17 minutes even if martial arts isn't your thing.
Let me say that it is time we are informed that it is the American taxpayer pays almost all the freight for new medicines and it is time you stopped paying all the profits to the most conniving amoral and greedy people on the planet and rewarding them for their greed and selfishness.
Good teachers are more valuable than great athletes and great athletes are more valuable than fund managers and corrupt amoral lawyers and businessmen.
IMO revolutions happen when the last two vestiges of "something to lose" (aka comfort) begin to disappear en mass. Those would be food and shelter. Both are quickly becoming unaffordable to most.
It's sad that common folk can't be moved to organize in civil transformation (as happens in functioning republics which have all but disappeared in most 1st world countries) before the chaos scenario of revolution sets in. Common folk are not stupid, just naturally lazy. If you want to be scientific about this phenomena it is really Newton's first law of motion at work whereby "an object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force." That unbalanced force is well documented in Chris's article....and appears to be reaching a critical mass necessary for a revolutionary reaction to occur.
Declining living standards are nothing new, and the ruling classes will break heads without losing a minute's sleep. Or as Jay Gould said, he could hire one half of the working class to slaughter the other half of the working class.
That is pretty much the history of the US labor movement, until the Depression disunited the 1% of the time.
And Lenin said that capitalists would sell Bolsheviks the rope with which to hang them. They’re both clever sayings, but is either one true? Personally, I think the odds favor Gould. Every war involves the working classes of different countries killing each other.
True, I think. I remember John Kenneth Galbraith talking about how revolutions are like the kicking in of a rotten door. The previously existing authority will already have become too corrupt and ineffective to hold on, and revolutionaries will rush into the vacuum.
What can I say. I am 74 and lived through a revolution and it never ends there are always those for whom victory is never enough. They want crucifixions to affirm their Dominion.
We have an election in early October and every party (we have lots of Political Parties) wishes to take credit for the glorious revolution rather than assert the wisdom of Secular Humanist Liberal Democracy.
Perhaps the fragile (if not romantic except to the 1%) fantasy of their fake wealth should be factored in here. These emperor's new clothes are becoming more and more transparent even to much of the 99%, though a substantial part of them have been distracted by Trump and may remain so just to futilely spite the current political regime.
I wonder however if everybody is being sent to their cloakroom to think it over and all we have here is what we want to hear. I respect Chris Hedges and he says hope is futile we are the Borg. We will be assimilated. All I have left in Pandora's jar is hope.
Charles, I'm curious how you define "fake" wealth from other forms of wealth ( as, say, defined by Robert Kiyosaki, author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad)? For the record, Mr. Kiyosaki has defined "financially secure" (a form of wealth) as a state of being immune from the irrationalities provoked by the two main Achilles heels of human response: Fear and Greed. Given Mr. Kiyosakis definition of wealth and your claim of the romantic 99%, are you concluding that the 99% of the population exhibit a false sense of fearlessness and generosity brought on by an illusion of abundance?
Also, how does "the 99%" remain distracted (whatever that means) as to "spite" of the current political regime? I invite you to give an example of this spite. It appears to me that the only emperor that has no clothes (in this country) is our American Republic, not its political elite. Sovereign debt currently measures almost $31T ...and we spend almost $500B a year servicing that debt-- which does absolutely nothing to benefit our collective standard of living which includes our public infrastructure, health care, self defense, etc. for the 99%. Those annual interest payments do appear, however, to strictly benefit the 1% ers . Trump and Biden are both, privately, fabulously wealthy and surely ARE part of the 1% that feeds on the current state of our naked empire. They're part of the same club. Truth be known, I doubt either "regime" leader feels spited in the least.
An overstretched empire which is highly influenced by wealthy, well-connected neocons for whom the unipolar aspiration of American global domination is central to their policy platform, do not calculate the cost of domestic unrest. They are a tail wagging a dog, and there are more than a few opponents in Washington who sit silent while approving a massive war budget.
If strikes become a regular occurrence, anti-war protests have to come to life. This should not be difficult to build if attention is continually drawn to the Pentagon annual budget, the monolithic lies regarding support for Ukraine, and the routine violations of other nations’ sovereignties.
When strikers are allied with war protestors, the sham party hacks will be verbally fighting, vying for the approval of the pissed off. This could be a moment where U.S. hegemony gets throttled by American voters. If that ever happens, the behavior of the military will be difficult to predict.
That the conflict in Ukraine has been surrounded by a hysterical propaganda campaign not seen since Josef Goebbels should make more people stop and think.
Yes! If pain leads to even a moderate degree of awareness, the sins of social media will be forgiven. Without it, too few would see their beloved land for what it is.
The idea of revolution is NOT a "romantic fantasy"! You sound like those ass-kissing liberals who "hold their noses" and vote for "the lesser evil". Now THAT's a fantasy!
You're not totally wrong but when the number of people who are rising up reaches a certain point and includes many members of the security services friends and families then even they will come to the conclusion that defending the interests of the oligarchs may not be the best choice.
Hedges once mentioned an encounter with the police at the
Occupy Wall Street protests. He was shouting them (the police) down when a fellow protester stated: "We'll need them some day as they need to realize they are also part of the 99% part of the working class" (a paraphrase). Hedges was awakened to a reality which mustn't be missing: We need them on our side, and they will be. When the police are privatized (and it will happen) and their wages and benefits cut, who will they side with?
Of course, security services are not a monolith, and have interests of their own.
In all of this, the Haitian Revolution (a rare successful slave uprising) is most instructive, especially as events in metropolitan France divided and distracted elites and the French Army.
Besides striking another effective measure for us, not only as workers, but (unfortunately) as consumers is the BOYCOTT. For a time, it did work for us to boycott lettuce and grapes to help farm workers. But the boycott movement faded probably because we Americans are too willing to indulge in immediate rather than delayed gratification. Amazon is certainly a case in point: imagine boycotting them on a national level to insist on fairer treatment of their workers. We won't because we like getting our merchandise at the click of a computer key. Yet, if we target, carefully, industries that need reform through widespread boycotts (Walmart is another customer for a boycott), that could be another engine of change. Unlike mass protest marches and strikes, boycotts take time and are not glamorous. But could be very effective. Those who would now organize them, however, must be protected because the ruling class will destroy such very quickly. Strikes + boycotts seem a winning combination. You'd have to give up your fruits and vegetables out of season, though. And keep wearing last year's fashions and not buy the latest iPhone....
One more thought about strikes: they require, for the workers, a strike fund--which, when there were more unions, was maintained by the union and could help the people striking pay their bills and eat and not lose their housing. But without unions now, how will we support the people who stop working? There's little to recommend the poverty and homelessness that could now follow a long-term strike. We'd need to create GoFundMe strike funds. Hmmmm.
I agree, Chris. The time for negotiation, protests, advocacy, and education is over. It's time to fight the corporate beast with the power we have. The same goes for the medical mandates, the imposition of the WEF's agenda on agriculture, and just about every other aspect of the corporate takeover. Derrick Broze has written a book on this called "How to Opt Out of the Technocratic State".
We all need to opt out in every way at our disposal.
oligarchs never seem to learn the lesson: if you make sure that people make relatively fair wages, then severe social and economic disruption is far less likely, people are happier, and they tend to spend which brings money to the oligarchs companies. But they can't seem to stand this state of affairs. So, they end up pushing things until there is economic (at minimum) and/or social collapse (the French Terrror, brutal left wing governments, stalin). Then the pattern repeats. Like a lot of people from the 60s, i know my history but i find myself incredibly shocked by how fast the changes from FDR and the 60s are being rolled back and how brutal they are. It seems to be all part of the general systemic collapse, of which climate change is merely the most dangerous. this is not going to be a pretty century. and as always, i weep for my country.
While FDR was still in office, industrial leaders were conspiring to have him removed, and it was a Republican vow to undue the New Deal since Reagan. Loads of cash poured into over a dozen think-tanks that all had this agenda.
As for the oligarchs never learning...this is capitalism: grow or die. The people, voters and such, are the ones who need to learn.
My grandfather was a passenger train engineer with Frisco who retired in 1960. It was a good job, and the railroads continued to be a good place to work into the 1970s as I recall.
It wasn’t until I began reading the coverage of WSWS that I realized just how bad things have gotten for railroad employees. Really bad compared to the conditions my grandpa worked under.
Of course corporate profits everywhere and across the board come at the expense of the workers. But the difference between strikes at Amazon warehouses, Starbucks etc and rail workers is sheer impact. A nationwide rail strike would bring logistics and everything associated to its knees in a way other strikes have not.
Yes, it would create hardship. Ultimately, it might fail. But at this point, what do workers have to lose? The railroads need skilled workers; can’t run them with scabs or robots.
Chris, how would this quote from David Graeber square with Strike, Strike, Strike?
“The theory of exodus proposes that the most effective way of opposing capitalism and the liberal state is not through direct confrontation but by means of what Paolo Virno has called “engaged withdrawal,”mass defection by those wishing to create new forms of community. One need only glance at the historical record to confirm that most successful forms of popular resistance have taken precisely this form. They have not involved challenging power head on (this usually leads to being slaughtered, or if not, turning into some—often even uglier—variant of the
very thing one first challenged) but from one or another strategy of slipping away from its grasp, from flight, desertion, the founding of new communities.”
― David Graeber, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology
Big Bill Haywood: "If one man has a dollar he didn't work for, some other man worked for a dollar he didn't get."
Thanks, Mr. Hedges. You not only identified the problems we face, but presented clear and timely solutions. My ears pricked up when you mentioned the Taft-Hartley Act. Politicians, no matter the party, who aren't trying to have it revoked aren't on the side of Workers; it's as simple as that.
What needs to be done isn't rocket science, and Americans don't want to be bogged down or confused by complicated theories that require multiple degrees to understand. Organizing requires trust, commitment, clear goals, and knowing who your friends and enemies (the wolves in sheep clothing) are...
"Taxes on the wealthiest individuals and corporations was as high as 91 percent." Not to nitpick here--there have been times in the U.S. when taxes were legitimately more progressive than they are now--but even in fairer times, figures such as "91 percent" refer to marginal tax rates. An affluent individual would pay considerably lower taxes on his income before he reached that highest tax bracket.
Well, one thing we can say for sure, revolution isn't going to help. Neither the French nor the Russian revolution changed much. Russia had a totalitarian government both under the Tsars and the Communist government (noting that communism is an economic system not a political system). They didn't get rid of the totalitarian government until the collapse of the old SovU. As for the French, they have cycled between royalty and republics a number of times since the French revolution (which republic is this one? 5th or 6th?). The American revolution was largely successful simply because it didn't change much. Although there are some interesting exceptions. Congregationalism was the official religion of the State of Connecticut at its inception. That didn't actually change until the mid 1800s.
Alexander Herzen, speaking to a group of anarchists about how to overthrow the czar, reminded his listeners that it was not their job to save a dying system but to replace it: “We are not the doctors. We are the disease.”
Indeed-I agree with this 100%- it was not their job to save a dying system but to replace it: “We are not the doctors. We are the disease.” Thanks again for keepin' it real Chris!
Of all the statistics shared by Mr. Hedges in this report, the one that made me most aware of the dire situation of our beloved country is that the previous year to the beginning of the Great Depression, the top10 percent richest people owned 23.9 percent of the national wealth but now their worth is 70 percent.
We urgently need a radical change in our form of government. Those readers that frequently complain that Mr. Hedges does not offer solutions here have them loud and clear: Strike and Strike.
I've been retired enjoying my pension for many years (a luxury denied to our youths now) so I have nobody to strike against. My activism has been reduced to strike against our traditional parties by voting only for bona fide progressives and third parties. Also contributing to good causes and exhibiting thoughtful political bumper stickers in my car that have earned me the congratulations from kindred spirits at the parking lots and the middle finger in the road.
We have many interesting theories about the origins of the revolutions and I love to read the informed opinions of our commentators but the important task at hand is to start acting knowing that it will be difficult and the reaction from our capitalist and from the rest of the world will be hard to endure. But history shows us that when a population truly desires a change it will be achieved.
I do believe that a condition for being a revolutionary is to be a romantic. Mao and the Che Guevara are good examples. After all, we need to have some loose bolt in the brain to be willing to fight against almost impossible odds.
Here in America, we had our unionist Joe Hill with his last will and poem, shared also in this report, that invite us to bloom in our love for justice. The instructions left in Hill's last poem were carried out: "And let the merry breezes blow/My dust to where some flowers grow/Perhaps some fading flower then/Would come to life and bloom again." Hill's ashes were put into small envelopes and on May Day, 1916, were scattered to the winds in every state of the union. This ceremony also took place in several other countries.
Wow! What a radical prescription for systemic change you’re proposing. Of course, as always, you make a strong #NEARLY convincing case for a “nationwide strike,” with emphasis on the Railway portion of our otherwise heavily automobile/truck-dependent transportation system.
The “Worker Solidarity” required for such a broad & deep communal Action is highly unlikely even at the state or regional level, however, as we know from even a casual acquaintance with #AbrahamMaslow’s #HierarchyOfNeeds. “Food first, then morals” (Bertholt Brecht,) right?
It’s a “tipping point” in Public Opinion to NEARLY an Albert Finney-like point of saying “I’m mad as hell and I won’t take it anymore” (ref. #Network) that’s a necessary precursor to such radical societal Change.
The “tinder” of intense dissatisfaction is obviously present, but a fiery & violence imbued situation like in the past is simply untenable today.
Ours is a strictly nonviolent #RevolutionOfAwareness to achieve #TruthAndReconciliation (ref. Bollyn.com & #NelsonMandela). Reprioritization is key. Prioritizing “Internal improvements” and extricating our country from imperialistic “foreign entanglements” (ref. #AbrahamLincoln) will cause little to no disruption in #WeThePeople’s vaunted “lifestyles.” “It doesn’t take (much) sacrifice” (ref. James Taylor’s “Shower the People), but it will take some “period of adjustment.” That’s where proper & adequate planning comes in. Aligning with the ideas at SolutionaryRail.com is NEARLY a sine qua non (without which there’s none).
“A Working Class Hero is Something to Be,” and you’re certainly that Reverend Hedges.
I never know what to say my Father in Law was named Eugene after his godfather Eugene Victor. I even have a paper weight too heavy to lift with Eugene Victor's image. Imagine if he owned the newspapers.
Christianity basically holds that humanity lives in sin by a move away from the command(s) of god. This is merely another parody that skirts the more core error of humanity, ie. the fallacious assumption that the thinker is an entity separate from his thoughts. This is the 'original' error (seen as sin). No love, peace or harmony will ever appear socially unless we individually face this personal distortion for its own sake irrespective of whether or not it will change all humanity. Yet humanity at large can not change unless this individual possibility of stepping out of the illusion of self and its society is faced.
The following paragraph from page 32 of the Presidential Emergency Board 250 Report and Recommendations, which spawned a tentative agreement that would take the railroaders economically backward and was rejected by the IAMAW [International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers], is justification for a massive STRIKE, STRIKE, STRIKE:
The Carriers maintain that capital investment and risk are the reasons for their profits, not any contributions by labor. The Carriers further argue that there is no correlation historically between high profits and higher compensation, either in the freight rail industry or more generally. To the contrary, one of the Carriers’ experts maintained that the most profitable companies are not those whose compensation is the highest. The Carriers assert that since employees have been fairly and adequately paid for their efforts and do not share in the downside risks if the operations are less profitable, then they have no claim to share in the upside either.
Romantic fantasies aside, revolutions happen, not when the 99% get tired of the 1% and rise up, because the 1% will do whatever it takes to maintain power. That's how they got to be the 1% in the first place.
Rather, revolutions happen when the 1% are divided amongst themselves. Often as a result of foreign threat or economic crisis.
The other condition that is necessary for revolution is for the security services to no longer stay on-side. This is why I pay little attention to the Yellow Vests, to the Dutch farmers, etc.. As long as the police and army are willing to break heads when ordered, nothing will come of them.
Sorry to say, but your "revolutions happen, not when the 99% get tired of the 1% and rise up, because the 1% will do whatever it takes to maintain power. That's how they got to be the 1% in the first place," is incorrect. Revolutions happen when people become hungry. Not that, "Oh I missed lunch and I'm starving" but when people who have never known true hunger are suddenly, hungry, truly starving! Do the research, study the French, Russian and American revolutions, and you will find, desperation leads to revolution whereas one class overthrows the ruling class. Here in the USofA, desperation's building, quickly! The ruling elite keeps a blind eye to this, and it will cost them. The question to really ask is this: What kind of leadership will take its place? Just ask the ruling elite in Roman history when it collapsed do to hunger of the masses.
That isn't how the Roman Empire collapsed, but go on....
For that matter, the French, Russian and American revolutions all illustrate my point.
Which Russian revolution illustrates your point? There were 3 between 1905-1917 (The Russian Revolution of 1905-1907, the February Bourgeois Democratic Revolution of 1917 and the Great October Socialist Revolution of 1917). From the interpretations I have read (let's face it, none of us on this forum lived through any of them) they all had to do with the inequities of food production and distribution...in turn leading to desperation...and in turn leading to revolution.
With regard to the Roman Empire....are you saying everyone was so content being well sheltered and well feed that they decided to burn their cities down?
Do not discount the role of the 1905 war and WWI in dividing elite opinion in Russia during those times.
In the case of Rome, we saw civil wars, not starvation, as the cause of decline.
I would not dispute that "divide elite opinion" can lead to social decline. However, with all due respect Finster, you're now equating "social decline" with revolution in order to make your argument. Changing the argument does not prove your point.
Sure, there is divided elite opinion all the time. However, I believe your original hypothesis was that it is divided elite opinion which acts as the main impetus for social revolution.---rather than extreme social inequity (i.e. mass starvation and/or lack of shelter). Your hypothesis appears to be skating on thin ice. Why? Because there is divided opinion among the elite virtually all the time. Even the high ranks of a strict military command has "divided opinion". Divided elite opinion among appointed, declared, or elected political (or business) elite operating as a ruling class would, IMO, be even more ubiquitous. Given your original hypothesis, would it not follow that this divided opinion would manifest itself into a state of perpetual (rather than periodic) revolution? History has shown that it has not.
My history coincides with Feral's history but being a lowly Red Sea Pedestrian we always suffer not because we chose the wrong side but were misfortunate to just be there.
The people like ourselves always lose.
When the Czars destroyed Vilnius in 1794 with the help of Britain , France, the Ottomans and the Austro Hungarians it was the end of Liberal Democracy for a century and a half everywhere including the USA.
Empires hate citizens they thrive on slavery and blindness.
None of that makes your point, either, but there is a difference between relatively inane palace drama and fundamental disagreement over what direction to take or who is to be in charge.
Excellent point WWII.
Now as to your reply of "That isn't how the Roman Empire collapsed, but go on.... For that matter, the French, Russian and American revolutions all illustrate my point." I must reply in kind:
HARDLY! From Julian Cribb, an Australian author and science writer and editor (look him up), from his work 'Food or War' (read the book, it's excellent) pages 7&8 "Indeed, our global food supply today is essentially patterned on the Roman system of broadacre single crop agriculture in favored regions, exporting grain and other produce to distant cities... This point needs to be borne in the mind as we explore the frailties of the modern food system... Ominously, when its food system failed in the early centuries of the Christain Era, the Roman Empire collapsed.
"There are numerous popular theories as to why Rome fell, starting with the obvious proximate cause- the invasion of Goths, Huns and other barbarian tribes- imperial overreach (the favored of the historian Gibbon) and the economic mismanagement of the Empire itself. However, history is seldom quite so simple (which you seem to be doing Feral Finster)...
"Simultaneously, the climate changed. Between about 150 AD and 400 AD weather conditions cooled and deteriorated with temperatures reaching unprecedented lows in what became known as the 'Late Antique Little Ice Age'... This had a compounding effect on the Roman food supply and economy and especially on the ability of Rome to pay and feed its legions. Many of these legions were made up largely of local recruits who then mutinied becoming independent war bands, some of which even joined forces with the raiding Goths who devoured the Western Empire…
“If the pathway to war, government failure or the collapse of a civilization can be thought of as a series of dominoes, collapsing one upon another, the fall of the food domino and the climate domino lie very early in the sequence and have irresistible impact and consequences…A major crop failure in any of the great bowls would reduce this to zero and send world bread prices rocketing through the roof for everybody (as is happening today what with the conflict in Russia and Ukraine, i.e. revolts by average people in North Africa and other parts of the world whereas governments are falling like flies), thanks to globalized trading systems and world grain prices that now exist. Since our population is now straining at the very limits of the Earth itself, this risk is more pronounced than ever. Indeed, food insecurity represents as direct an existential threat to our civilization (and the government and business communities who caused this to happen- God Feral Finster, whose holding all those ropes and pitchforks?) in the event of a major disruption- such as a worldwide conflict, a nuclear war or a climate catastrophe- as it did to the ancient Romans. We ignore the lesson of their experience.”
In short Feral Finster, the Roman population came to a point where they would not cooperate in anyway whatsoever whereas Rome fail. Concerning the French revolution, again from Cribbs’ ‘Food or War’ (pg.30) “Food shortages became critical and bread prices nearly doubled from 8 sous a loaf to 14.5 sous- equal to nine tenths of the daily wage of a Parisian labourer.
“The discontent, originating once again in food insecurity and climate impacts, was the fuel for widespread urban unrest culminating in the storming of the Bastille, which ushered in the Revolution (I don’t think it was the French aristocracy which stormed the Bastille, do you?).”
Now as to the Russian Revolution, again from Cribbs’ (pg.33) “However, one of the germinal events leading up to the October Revolution that toppled Nicholas II was a women’s protest in St Petersburg on International Women’s Day, February 23, 1917. Tens of thousands of people, mainly women, paraded along Nevske Prospekt with banners demanding ‘Feed the children of the defenders of the motherland’ and ‘Supplement the ration of soldiers families, defenders of freedom and the people’s peace’, indicating food was very much a live issue in the complex of triggers for the bloodshed that was to follow."
And as for the American Revolution, let us examine a passage from Howard Zinn’s ‘A People’s History of the United States’ a very telling passage to boot (pg.85) “During the Revolution, to mobilize soldiers, the tenants were promised land (needed to feed oneself and family). A prominent landowner of Dutchess County wrote in 1777 that a promise to make tenants freeholders ‘would instantly bring you at least 6,000 able farmers into the field.’ But the farmers who enlisted in the Revolution and expected to get something out of it found that, as privates in the army, they received $6.66 a month, while a colonel received $75 a month. They watched local government contractors like Melancton Smith and Matthew Paterson become rich, while the pay they received in continental currency became worthless with inflation.
(And get ready) “All this led tenants to become a threatening force in the midst of war. Many stopped paying rent. The legislature, worried, passed a bill to confiscate Loyalist land and add four hundred new freeholders to the 1,800 already in the county…” It wasn’t the 1% the legislature was worried about, now was it?
Without dissecting the point in detail, by your logic, the Bolsheviks would not have survived nearly as long as they did, having experienced multiple large-scale famines.
For that matter, plenty of other governments and systems, ancient and modern, survived far more devastating famines than anything the French or Russian revokutionaries ever did. (Colonial America was positively awash in food - one reason American cuisine is the way it is, is because Americans had plenty of food and fodder for animals.)
Feral, we so easily forget that Bolsheviks means the same 10% who oppressed us from time immemorial.
What you say is a facile analysis with no merit. I live in Quebec . I am 74 years old and was born in Quebec and we had a profound revolution and nobody went hungry or starved or went homeless.
We went from Theocracy and Plutocracy to Secular Humanist Liberal Democracy in less than half a century and we are the freest most democratic sovereign nation in North America.
We have five major political parties and an election on October 6 and all I can is a pox on all political parties from left to right.
My American wife does not speak the Lingua Franca but she is treated better here than in many places in Americas where knowing the correct people is more important than knowing right from wrong.
She was born in Nashville and having visited Nashville city and burb I know I do not have ANY freedom of speech in most of White Nashville or rural Michigan where she grew up.
We have Press Freedom and freedom of speech a phenon rarer and rarer as a county that needs to united splits further and further apart.
I ignore almost of what I here in the corporate media of Canada and the USA. Kool-aid and gambling is not a fix for the decay of human spirit and gaslighting will cost us our ecosystem.
The Guardian is covering how Big Oil has Gaslit us from the days of Rockefeller and the oil trusts.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/17/oil-companies-exxonmobil-chevron-shell-bp-climate-crisis
And my understanding is that the Canadian government in Ottawa is a neoliberal poodle of its master in Washington DC. I know nothing of the provincial government in Quebec, but is it even relevant to this discussion?
Replying to the lies you have been fed requires seeing history as it really was.
In 2015 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdUaEE7mr2w&t=135s
This is our Deputy Prime Minister in 2015 with George Soros. There are probably no more anti neoliberal people on the planet.
These are 42 minutes definitely worth 1000 hours of US gaslighting.
The Future of Europe 2015 according to Soros and Freeland our current Minister of Finance.
Zelensky is the President we speak to. We love Biden but we can't trust his country.
I don't think Trudeau would agree with you, but hell, who I'm I, just an ugly old (67) pasty-pale white American who wished he'd been born a Canadian.
Trudeau is under attack by his older twin brother who still lives in family mansion on top of Montreal Mountain. He rejects his younger twin who chose to live among us common folk where he taught until he was forty and decided to champion liberal democracy. He won the Prime Ministership in a martial arts ring against a younger and more accomplished martial artist
This is right wing media's coverage of the event.
Well worth 17 minutes even if martial arts isn't your thing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuSpZ3_5pTc
Let me say that it is time we are informed that it is the American taxpayer pays almost all the freight for new medicines and it is time you stopped paying all the profits to the most conniving amoral and greedy people on the planet and rewarding them for their greed and selfishness.
Good teachers are more valuable than great athletes and great athletes are more valuable than fund managers and corrupt amoral lawyers and businessmen.
IMO revolutions happen when the last two vestiges of "something to lose" (aka comfort) begin to disappear en mass. Those would be food and shelter. Both are quickly becoming unaffordable to most.
It's sad that common folk can't be moved to organize in civil transformation (as happens in functioning republics which have all but disappeared in most 1st world countries) before the chaos scenario of revolution sets in. Common folk are not stupid, just naturally lazy. If you want to be scientific about this phenomena it is really Newton's first law of motion at work whereby "an object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force." That unbalanced force is well documented in Chris's article....and appears to be reaching a critical mass necessary for a revolutionary reaction to occur.
Declining living standards are nothing new, and the ruling classes will break heads without losing a minute's sleep. Or as Jay Gould said, he could hire one half of the working class to slaughter the other half of the working class.
That is pretty much the history of the US labor movement, until the Depression disunited the 1% of the time.
And Lenin said that capitalists would sell Bolsheviks the rope with which to hang them. They’re both clever sayings, but is either one true? Personally, I think the odds favor Gould. Every war involves the working classes of different countries killing each other.
They say I am a genius at logic. Both quotes can be true in a logical universe.
I don’t know if you’re a genius, but you are correct. : >))
Thanks Rob,
They tell me I am but I have some serious doubts.
I saw Pete Seeger live in Chicago. He sang a song from the Book of Ecclesiastes. To everything there is a season turn, turn, turn.
And a TIME FOR EVERY PURPOSE UNDER HEAVEN
True, I think. I remember John Kenneth Galbraith talking about how revolutions are like the kicking in of a rotten door. The previously existing authority will already have become too corrupt and ineffective to hold on, and revolutionaries will rush into the vacuum.
Feral,
What can I say. I am 74 and lived through a revolution and it never ends there are always those for whom victory is never enough. They want crucifixions to affirm their Dominion.
We have an election in early October and every party (we have lots of Political Parties) wishes to take credit for the glorious revolution rather than assert the wisdom of Secular Humanist Liberal Democracy.
Perhaps the fragile (if not romantic except to the 1%) fantasy of their fake wealth should be factored in here. These emperor's new clothes are becoming more and more transparent even to much of the 99%, though a substantial part of them have been distracted by Trump and may remain so just to futilely spite the current political regime.
It does seem that way .
I wonder however if everybody is being sent to their cloakroom to think it over and all we have here is what we want to hear. I respect Chris Hedges and he says hope is futile we are the Borg. We will be assimilated. All I have left in Pandora's jar is hope.
Pessimism of the intellect. Optimism of the will. Keep on truckin'.
Thanks
So much education so much stupid.
Do we stop pretending and just house train?
Charles, I'm curious how you define "fake" wealth from other forms of wealth ( as, say, defined by Robert Kiyosaki, author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad)? For the record, Mr. Kiyosaki has defined "financially secure" (a form of wealth) as a state of being immune from the irrationalities provoked by the two main Achilles heels of human response: Fear and Greed. Given Mr. Kiyosakis definition of wealth and your claim of the romantic 99%, are you concluding that the 99% of the population exhibit a false sense of fearlessness and generosity brought on by an illusion of abundance?
Also, how does "the 99%" remain distracted (whatever that means) as to "spite" of the current political regime? I invite you to give an example of this spite. It appears to me that the only emperor that has no clothes (in this country) is our American Republic, not its political elite. Sovereign debt currently measures almost $31T ...and we spend almost $500B a year servicing that debt-- which does absolutely nothing to benefit our collective standard of living which includes our public infrastructure, health care, self defense, etc. for the 99%. Those annual interest payments do appear, however, to strictly benefit the 1% ers . Trump and Biden are both, privately, fabulously wealthy and surely ARE part of the 1% that feeds on the current state of our naked empire. They're part of the same club. Truth be known, I doubt either "regime" leader feels spited in the least.
Your reply seems like a mishmosh of deliberate or perhaps just careless misunderstanding.
No one is immune from Fear and Greed, least of all the 1%.
Romantic 99%? Not my claim.
A fair %age of the 99% voted for Trump out of spite for the neoliberals and a fair number voted for Biden for fear (whence comes spite) of Trump.
As to your last sentence, have you listened to the recent utterances of either lately?
An overstretched empire which is highly influenced by wealthy, well-connected neocons for whom the unipolar aspiration of American global domination is central to their policy platform, do not calculate the cost of domestic unrest. They are a tail wagging a dog, and there are more than a few opponents in Washington who sit silent while approving a massive war budget.
If strikes become a regular occurrence, anti-war protests have to come to life. This should not be difficult to build if attention is continually drawn to the Pentagon annual budget, the monolithic lies regarding support for Ukraine, and the routine violations of other nations’ sovereignties.
When strikers are allied with war protestors, the sham party hacks will be verbally fighting, vying for the approval of the pissed off. This could be a moment where U.S. hegemony gets throttled by American voters. If that ever happens, the behavior of the military will be difficult to predict.
That the conflict in Ukraine has been surrounded by a hysterical propaganda campaign not seen since Josef Goebbels should make more people stop and think.
Yes! If pain leads to even a moderate degree of awareness, the sins of social media will be forgiven. Without it, too few would see their beloved land for what it is.
Revolutions for the common good happen when working stiffs organize confidence in themselves. https://mronline.org/2020/01/29/fight-for-all-or-lose-it-all/
As I said, romantic fantasies aside....
The idea of revolution is NOT a "romantic fantasy"! You sound like those ass-kissing liberals who "hold their noses" and vote for "the lesser evil". Now THAT's a fantasy!
You apparently misread my comment, and I said not a syllable about lesser evils.
Thank you
Your Imperial Feline Majesty
You know I remember a line of Irving Layton's and can't remember where I saw it.
"What is it about ignorance that make your possessors seem so strong?"
I can't understand binary in a universe of gray.
"Vanity , Vanity, all is Vanity." Not Irving Layton but close
Well said.
You're not totally wrong but when the number of people who are rising up reaches a certain point and includes many members of the security services friends and families then even they will come to the conclusion that defending the interests of the oligarchs may not be the best choice.
Hedges once mentioned an encounter with the police at the
Occupy Wall Street protests. He was shouting them (the police) down when a fellow protester stated: "We'll need them some day as they need to realize they are also part of the 99% part of the working class" (a paraphrase). Hedges was awakened to a reality which mustn't be missing: We need them on our side, and they will be. When the police are privatized (and it will happen) and their wages and benefits cut, who will they side with?
Of course, security services are not a monolith, and have interests of their own.
In all of this, the Haitian Revolution (a rare successful slave uprising) is most instructive, especially as events in metropolitan France divided and distracted elites and the French Army.
Besides striking another effective measure for us, not only as workers, but (unfortunately) as consumers is the BOYCOTT. For a time, it did work for us to boycott lettuce and grapes to help farm workers. But the boycott movement faded probably because we Americans are too willing to indulge in immediate rather than delayed gratification. Amazon is certainly a case in point: imagine boycotting them on a national level to insist on fairer treatment of their workers. We won't because we like getting our merchandise at the click of a computer key. Yet, if we target, carefully, industries that need reform through widespread boycotts (Walmart is another customer for a boycott), that could be another engine of change. Unlike mass protest marches and strikes, boycotts take time and are not glamorous. But could be very effective. Those who would now organize them, however, must be protected because the ruling class will destroy such very quickly. Strikes + boycotts seem a winning combination. You'd have to give up your fruits and vegetables out of season, though. And keep wearing last year's fashions and not buy the latest iPhone....
One more thought about strikes: they require, for the workers, a strike fund--which, when there were more unions, was maintained by the union and could help the people striking pay their bills and eat and not lose their housing. But without unions now, how will we support the people who stop working? There's little to recommend the poverty and homelessness that could now follow a long-term strike. We'd need to create GoFundMe strike funds. Hmmmm.
I agree, Chris. The time for negotiation, protests, advocacy, and education is over. It's time to fight the corporate beast with the power we have. The same goes for the medical mandates, the imposition of the WEF's agenda on agriculture, and just about every other aspect of the corporate takeover. Derrick Broze has written a book on this called "How to Opt Out of the Technocratic State".
We all need to opt out in every way at our disposal.
oligarchs never seem to learn the lesson: if you make sure that people make relatively fair wages, then severe social and economic disruption is far less likely, people are happier, and they tend to spend which brings money to the oligarchs companies. But they can't seem to stand this state of affairs. So, they end up pushing things until there is economic (at minimum) and/or social collapse (the French Terrror, brutal left wing governments, stalin). Then the pattern repeats. Like a lot of people from the 60s, i know my history but i find myself incredibly shocked by how fast the changes from FDR and the 60s are being rolled back and how brutal they are. It seems to be all part of the general systemic collapse, of which climate change is merely the most dangerous. this is not going to be a pretty century. and as always, i weep for my country.
While FDR was still in office, industrial leaders were conspiring to have him removed, and it was a Republican vow to undue the New Deal since Reagan. Loads of cash poured into over a dozen think-tanks that all had this agenda.
As for the oligarchs never learning...this is capitalism: grow or die. The people, voters and such, are the ones who need to learn.
My grandfather was a passenger train engineer with Frisco who retired in 1960. It was a good job, and the railroads continued to be a good place to work into the 1970s as I recall.
It wasn’t until I began reading the coverage of WSWS that I realized just how bad things have gotten for railroad employees. Really bad compared to the conditions my grandpa worked under.
Of course corporate profits everywhere and across the board come at the expense of the workers. But the difference between strikes at Amazon warehouses, Starbucks etc and rail workers is sheer impact. A nationwide rail strike would bring logistics and everything associated to its knees in a way other strikes have not.
Yes, it would create hardship. Ultimately, it might fail. But at this point, what do workers have to lose? The railroads need skilled workers; can’t run them with scabs or robots.
Chris, how would this quote from David Graeber square with Strike, Strike, Strike?
“The theory of exodus proposes that the most effective way of opposing capitalism and the liberal state is not through direct confrontation but by means of what Paolo Virno has called “engaged withdrawal,”mass defection by those wishing to create new forms of community. One need only glance at the historical record to confirm that most successful forms of popular resistance have taken precisely this form. They have not involved challenging power head on (this usually leads to being slaughtered, or if not, turning into some—often even uglier—variant of the
very thing one first challenged) but from one or another strategy of slipping away from its grasp, from flight, desertion, the founding of new communities.”
― David Graeber, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology
Big Bill Haywood: "If one man has a dollar he didn't work for, some other man worked for a dollar he didn't get."
Thanks, Mr. Hedges. You not only identified the problems we face, but presented clear and timely solutions. My ears pricked up when you mentioned the Taft-Hartley Act. Politicians, no matter the party, who aren't trying to have it revoked aren't on the side of Workers; it's as simple as that.
What needs to be done isn't rocket science, and Americans don't want to be bogged down or confused by complicated theories that require multiple degrees to understand. Organizing requires trust, commitment, clear goals, and knowing who your friends and enemies (the wolves in sheep clothing) are...
"Strike-Strike-Strike." Nothing like having to hit the reader on the head with viable social activism. The general public appears to be a dull lot.
"Taxes on the wealthiest individuals and corporations was as high as 91 percent." Not to nitpick here--there have been times in the U.S. when taxes were legitimately more progressive than they are now--but even in fairer times, figures such as "91 percent" refer to marginal tax rates. An affluent individual would pay considerably lower taxes on his income before he reached that highest tax bracket.
Well, one thing we can say for sure, revolution isn't going to help. Neither the French nor the Russian revolution changed much. Russia had a totalitarian government both under the Tsars and the Communist government (noting that communism is an economic system not a political system). They didn't get rid of the totalitarian government until the collapse of the old SovU. As for the French, they have cycled between royalty and republics a number of times since the French revolution (which republic is this one? 5th or 6th?). The American revolution was largely successful simply because it didn't change much. Although there are some interesting exceptions. Congregationalism was the official religion of the State of Connecticut at its inception. That didn't actually change until the mid 1800s.
Alexander Herzen, speaking to a group of anarchists about how to overthrow the czar, reminded his listeners that it was not their job to save a dying system but to replace it: “We are not the doctors. We are the disease.”
Indeed-I agree with this 100%- it was not their job to save a dying system but to replace it: “We are not the doctors. We are the disease.” Thanks again for keepin' it real Chris!
Of all the statistics shared by Mr. Hedges in this report, the one that made me most aware of the dire situation of our beloved country is that the previous year to the beginning of the Great Depression, the top10 percent richest people owned 23.9 percent of the national wealth but now their worth is 70 percent.
We urgently need a radical change in our form of government. Those readers that frequently complain that Mr. Hedges does not offer solutions here have them loud and clear: Strike and Strike.
I've been retired enjoying my pension for many years (a luxury denied to our youths now) so I have nobody to strike against. My activism has been reduced to strike against our traditional parties by voting only for bona fide progressives and third parties. Also contributing to good causes and exhibiting thoughtful political bumper stickers in my car that have earned me the congratulations from kindred spirits at the parking lots and the middle finger in the road.
We have many interesting theories about the origins of the revolutions and I love to read the informed opinions of our commentators but the important task at hand is to start acting knowing that it will be difficult and the reaction from our capitalist and from the rest of the world will be hard to endure. But history shows us that when a population truly desires a change it will be achieved.
I do believe that a condition for being a revolutionary is to be a romantic. Mao and the Che Guevara are good examples. After all, we need to have some loose bolt in the brain to be willing to fight against almost impossible odds.
Here in America, we had our unionist Joe Hill with his last will and poem, shared also in this report, that invite us to bloom in our love for justice. The instructions left in Hill's last poem were carried out: "And let the merry breezes blow/My dust to where some flowers grow/Perhaps some fading flower then/Would come to life and bloom again." Hill's ashes were put into small envelopes and on May Day, 1916, were scattered to the winds in every state of the union. This ceremony also took place in several other countries.
Wow! What a radical prescription for systemic change you’re proposing. Of course, as always, you make a strong #NEARLY convincing case for a “nationwide strike,” with emphasis on the Railway portion of our otherwise heavily automobile/truck-dependent transportation system.
The “Worker Solidarity” required for such a broad & deep communal Action is highly unlikely even at the state or regional level, however, as we know from even a casual acquaintance with #AbrahamMaslow’s #HierarchyOfNeeds. “Food first, then morals” (Bertholt Brecht,) right?
It’s a “tipping point” in Public Opinion to NEARLY an Albert Finney-like point of saying “I’m mad as hell and I won’t take it anymore” (ref. #Network) that’s a necessary precursor to such radical societal Change.
The “tinder” of intense dissatisfaction is obviously present, but a fiery & violence imbued situation like in the past is simply untenable today.
Ours is a strictly nonviolent #RevolutionOfAwareness to achieve #TruthAndReconciliation (ref. Bollyn.com & #NelsonMandela). Reprioritization is key. Prioritizing “Internal improvements” and extricating our country from imperialistic “foreign entanglements” (ref. #AbrahamLincoln) will cause little to no disruption in #WeThePeople’s vaunted “lifestyles.” “It doesn’t take (much) sacrifice” (ref. James Taylor’s “Shower the People), but it will take some “period of adjustment.” That’s where proper & adequate planning comes in. Aligning with the ideas at SolutionaryRail.com is NEARLY a sine qua non (without which there’s none).
“A Working Class Hero is Something to Be,” and you’re certainly that Reverend Hedges.
Lew A (Lincoln) Welge
#CREATORS (Conspiracy Realist Educator Activist Truther Organizer Reader Socializer)
LewWelge.com
P.S. #WeThePeople are All more NEARLY to greater #Wellness when aware Nutrition Exercise Attitude (of gratitude &) Rest Lengthens Youthfulness.
I never know what to say my Father in Law was named Eugene after his godfather Eugene Victor. I even have a paper weight too heavy to lift with Eugene Victor's image. Imagine if he owned the newspapers.
Instead of Citizen Kane.
Who was Patty Hearst's grandfather in the great scheme of things?
Hint:
It wasn't Orson Welles. Orson Welles played him on the Silver Screen.
Citizen comes from France's reign of Terror and Citizen Robespierre.
Kane comes from the Bible as in . Am I my brother's keeper?
America has no recall of its history and culture.
Why has God forsaken his children?
Christianity basically holds that humanity lives in sin by a move away from the command(s) of god. This is merely another parody that skirts the more core error of humanity, ie. the fallacious assumption that the thinker is an entity separate from his thoughts. This is the 'original' error (seen as sin). No love, peace or harmony will ever appear socially unless we individually face this personal distortion for its own sake irrespective of whether or not it will change all humanity. Yet humanity at large can not change unless this individual possibility of stepping out of the illusion of self and its society is faced.
No!!!! Just Roman and Greek Christianity. Early Christianity was matriarchal not martial.
The cross was a symbol of sacrifice not a gallows.
In Hoc Signo Vinces didn't mean find martyrs in Hebrew it meant sacrifice for others.
The following paragraph from page 32 of the Presidential Emergency Board 250 Report and Recommendations, which spawned a tentative agreement that would take the railroaders economically backward and was rejected by the IAMAW [International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers], is justification for a massive STRIKE, STRIKE, STRIKE:
The Carriers maintain that capital investment and risk are the reasons for their profits, not any contributions by labor. The Carriers further argue that there is no correlation historically between high profits and higher compensation, either in the freight rail industry or more generally. To the contrary, one of the Carriers’ experts maintained that the most profitable companies are not those whose compensation is the highest. The Carriers assert that since employees have been fairly and adequately paid for their efforts and do not share in the downside risks if the operations are less profitable, then they have no claim to share in the upside either.
An excellent call to action!