Age of Disorder

[David Horn]

(09-09-2020, 07:03 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(09-09-2020, 04:59 PM)David Horn Wrote: I agree that violence will be limited to domestic actions, more like Chicago in '68 than what's occurred so far.  I'm hard pressed to see how this is avoided, frankly.  The PTB are so smug and self-satisfied that a humble willingness to relent to anything short of a direct threat seems unlikely in the extreme.  40 years of riding high and making all the rules tends to warp ones perspective, and this Gilded Age set new records.

In democratic countries, non violence should work most of the time.  One party or the other will get the idea of listening to the people, and the other goes caput.  Autocratic cultures like Russia or China?  You can get awfully deaf to the will of the people.

The Soviet Union did yield to protest, but I don't feel they had the most tone deaf of leaders.  They also reverted in time.  You would have to get really really close to resorting to violence, convince the autocrats that you will go violent, before they are apt to listen.  I cannot see clearly how they will act.

Actually, I'm most worried about the business community -- especially in the US.  After the refocus on profits and only profits back in the Reagan era, followed by the neoliberal love fest under Clinton, it's been a long time since business has been challenged in any meaningful way.  That has to change, or we descend into a neo-Feudalism, with the very wealthy, the well-paid intelligencia that serves them, and the serfs.  I don't see democratic governance in that model.