When is the time for violent revolution?

Thanks,Maysie...That sounds good.

I'd be right on board with that.

No, they just are ok with the status quo.

Outrage without doing something that actually makes change is wasted outrage.

 There are people who are outraged, concerned and generally dissastisfied with how things stand right now and are just getting down to business and figuring out to do things about things and through that coming up with ideas and ways of doing things that are quite revolutionary relative to the status quo.   Thinking is changing, people are changing and getting on with it.   Pockets of quiet revolution so to speak.   I doubt this type of thing would pass the test of being revolutionary enough, or big enough, or instantly changing enough.  I doubt they particularly care though.  They just generally spend more energy doing stuff rather then expending the same energy bleeping how everyone else should be doing stuff.    

Revolution violent or otherwise into what?  What is the post revolutionary world or society your looking for.   Saying this is bad, this sucks we have to do something is only part of it.  The easier part really.  What are people revolting into?  There has to be some sort of semblance of a post revolution plan. 

Why are you assuming that they won't change things for the better?  

Argh, it's not about politeness.

"You're a fucking stupid idiot for thinking that"

...is very different than....

"That argument is fucking stupid and idiotic"

....even though the sentiment is the same. Yeah it's about semantics, but it's also about dialing down the hyper alpha male culture that babble has. You know, so other voices may join in.

If one's point can be made without insults altogether, all the better. I'm pro-swearing of course.

And the reason personal attacks aren't allowed, such as calling someone a turd-burger, is that we aren't in grade 2 now, are we? In theory, we should all be able to argue like adults without calling each other names. In theory.

the 85% I spoke of, which I got from the NYT, was reported as 90% in the Brasilian press, and that was in 2007 (doh!)

Didn't you see Ken Burch's "cream pie" strategy upthread?

I prefer grape snow-cones in a slingshot myself. 

[Edited to make the correct "Ken" reference.]

That's Thing One

That's Thing Two.

Three Things are too many to fit on a bumper sticker, or into a shared consciousness.

Framing current problems and situations in 19th century terms is not going to get us anywhere. This is unique; this requires new thinking and new action. Violence won't help: only intelligent co-operation would help.... yet violence, there will be.

The thread title?

Oops, Ken Burch, so sorry. I mixed up the Kens.

I will correct my grievous error.

Apologies to both Kens.

And if you don't mind, I might bring this idea to the rabble staff retreat this weekend.

I am calling it for tomorrow at 2:00 am outside the US consulate.

Individuals don't "pick up a gun or pitchfork and die for you". They do it for themselves, if forced to but certainly not for 'you'. I suppose, if certain individuals joined a cause where sacrifice becomes necessary, they would expect all members of the cause to expose themselves to harm equally, rather than "die for you".

This thread has a point, in an abstract way but on the whole is a rather juvenille response to the serious issue of societal change.

Maysie, one could easily write a lengthy essay to respond to your quick, facile, and very misleading comments in these couple of posts directed my way. But I will try to keep this short, with the accepted risk of being misunderstood again, and accused of all sorts of things that have no bearing in reality.

In no particular order:

1. You tell ArghMonkey "..A reminder that those who have structural power (Hint, that's not the organized left or even the unorganized left, and in the North American context, HAS NEVER BEEN) are the ones in positions to effect social change. .."
- maybe you could consider, when you accuse all my ancestors, and the ancestors of a great many other people, of "..stealing, pillaging and destroying" - maybe that, too, was the power structure of the time in action. My particular ancestors came to the Ottawa Valley about 1850, looking for a new life away from the Irish famine, and were very poor and hard-working farmers for a few generations until my father finally, thanks to a veteran's grant after serving in WWII, managed to go to medical school. Please avoid sarcastic comments about my sob-stories, I'm not doing that, or appearing in imperialsit wars, I am just explaining that my ancestors had nothing to do with stealing and pillaging - quite the contrary, as 'poor folk', they were as subject to the stealing of the rich as poor folk have ever been. We could get into, probably, a useful sort of discussion about what exactly the FN people want now, how people who were born here and lived for generations here are supposed to deal with the fact that, indeed, the land we now occupy was taken from the original inhabitants, and what kind of arrangements can we make that would be fair not only to the original inhabitants but to those who had nothing to do with any 'stealing' but now call this home. You need, I think, to remember that a lot of us are actually on your side, and pretending we are some kind of white-skinned monsters all against you is not very clever. I see some very bad people taking over my country and want to fight them - we should be allies, not enemies. You are, I will guarantee you, going to get a much better hearing from people like me who value fairness than your average capitalist who sees fairness-desiring people as just more losers to steal from.

As far as building things goes, stick this into your process - the country was taken in (low level, long term, generally undeclared) battle by a gang of imperialists (big time, i.e. Hudson's Bay Co, Catholic church), who then populated it with worker peasants to create their fiefdom's wealth. As the movement for democracy spread around much of the world during the 1700s and on, the Cdn peasant workers joined in the same fight, and over the next couple of hundred years made some strong gains in making Canada a democratic county, actually one of the most progressive and prosperous in the world - this would be the 'building' I referred to. Nothing during this process was 'stolen' from anyone - it was, as they say, carved out of the wilderness, the coast to coast transportation system, modern democratic infrastructure, well-educated, hard-working citizenry who expected 'peace, order and good government' - nothing stolen from anyone. It was not perfect, it is not yet perfect, the wouldbe oligarchs have always fought viciously to retain their fiefdom, and the opposition of the European-ancestry wannabe elite was the main opposition my ancestors faced whilst creating this country as it is now known in the modern world - but until the 70s we were making some pretty strong gains - and I might point out to that in terms of getting some recognition for the wrongs done FN people, it was during the last of these years that better attempts were made to come to some arrangement suitable to everyone. When the wouldbe-feudalists, in the form of capitalists, became dominant again in the 70s and since, your cause was set back, as the capitalists do not give anything to anyone - capitalism is all about taking.
2. You say the history we are taught is 'lies, all lies' - which strikes as more than a bit ironic then when you accuse me of sounding like a right wing teapartier - the 'history as lies' stuff is much more related to halfwitted white supremacists than are my very justifiable (not to mention simply true) comments about the ancestors of me and many other Canadians about building this country, which is simply true, whether or not you want to get into who 'owned' the country before my ancestors (and those of many others) got here. History as taught in schools is actually mostly true. They do spin it a certain way, and leave out some stuff that ought to be included to give a somewhat sanitized picture of certain things such as the treatment of the original inhabitants - but you don't do yourself any good on the credibility index to dismiss it all as 'lies all lies' because they leave out some things, which is not only demonstrably false, but a pretty petulant and extremist position to say the least, worthy perhaps of a highschool shouting match but hardly, I would think, of Rabble. Again I would remind you - I am, I think, one of the good guys, on the side of truth and recognizing the bad stuff done by the people from Europe who first came to what we now call North America a few hundred years ago. I have often written of, and condemned, the genocide carried out by those first Europeans against all the original inhabitants of both north and south America, and many other parts of the world - and again, to try to throw me in the same 'they're while males all the same!' group as those who did this is not the kind of talk that is going to win friends etc.

3. and your assumption of some great superiority when talking to me - or many others - through childish rhetorical things like '*holds my head' or 'um', letting your reader cleverly perceive you see yourself as the all-knowing teacher talking to halfwits of some kind who are incapable of seeing the gospel as revealed by Maysie et al or simply refuse to - you expect to win friends doing this? You don't care? You really think I am your enemy and/or too stupid to jump on your bandwagon and adopt the Official History as you and whoever have written it so you just dismiss me with name-calling and 'in crowd' sneers? You're well on your way to making me not your friend - which is probably not the greatest of ideas - not me personally, but the many like me who are quite willing to come to some reasonable compromise with FN people who, we quite agree, have been badly treated - but it was not me doing bad things, and I have a limited capacity for assuming guilt on behalf of others (which is, I might note, a central trick of various groups to keep people under control, and I have an immediate sort of suspicion anytime anyone tries it in my direction with no grounds), and I have no intention of giving you or whoever you are associated with the farm because you lost some battles a few hundred years ago to people only very distantly having anything to do with me.

Maybe you could try another perspective - the capitalist warlords who did some pillaging and looting a few hundred years ago were fought back by some democracy-seeking whities over the years, and this *new* group of people who are now running Canada (well, theoretically the last few years) are willing to try to help people who were mistreated in the past - not especially because we owe anyone any debt, but because we just in general believe in treating people fairly and doing the right thing.  

Well, as I said, I could go on at length, but I better leave it for now.

- I would certainly be willing to have a go at a talk like this, as I think the topic is of some importance, if anyone wants to do it, and it keeps to some kind of civil and intelligent level. But aside from that, in a more general sense, I don't really see why some people seem to see 'thread drift' as a problem, in general, if the general topic seems to have been dealt with and there is a kind of natural extension going on - just like any conversation any of us every have. You admin types could probably think about the difference between 'drift' and 'hijacking', which are not the same thing, and I have been subject to threads where hijacking occurred that did not overly please me.