Revolution is Impossible
There’s a pretty interesting article in a recent issue of Esquire by a guy named Chuck Klosterman. It’s called You Say You Want a Revolution.
The basic premise is that revolution is impossible in the US. That’s not to say that the President and other leaders couldn’t be killed or jailed, or that our houses of power couldn’t be stormed and taken hold of. Rather, even if those things happened, no one would know what to do about it.
So often in revolutions, someone gets shot at, and eventually someone takes control of the government until someone shoots at someone else. Klosterman notes, quite humorously, that there’s no real equivalent here: who, after all, are you going to shoot at? The police? They’re probably your neighbor. The military? Unless you live near a base, you never see military personnel, and even then, why would you shoot at the nice kids with the shaved heads?
No, more than likely, people will continue to update their blogs and talk angrily about how much politicians suck. (Kind of like what I do.)
I’ve been thinking about this for a long time, actually. Since my younger, more idealistic days I’ve been pondering how a watershed change in government could happen, and I haven’t really figured it out despite literally minutes of trying. Unless some crazed madman storms the white house and threatens the country with nuclear destruction, I don’t think anyone would listen to him. The Secret Service would storm the building and kill him. Or, Congress could pass emergency legislation to handle the situation. Or, should the feds get entirely wiped out, we still have strong and well organized state governments. In short, wholesale revolution in these here United States really is impossible, no matter what your slightly disheveled anarchist friend says.
And that’s too bad. Even if we overthrew the government in favor of one that’s more or less like the current one, at least future governments might think twice about screwing with their citizenry.
(By the way: Raise the Fist, the site in the above link, is worth reading even if you don’t agree with most of what they say. You’ll learn a lot if nothing else.)
All the above notwithstanding, the closest and most effective thing we could get to revolution might be having a state or states secede from the Union. At least then those who secede could form a new government of their own making.
I’m not necessarily advocating revolution, but it would be a nice thing to have more responsibility charged to our elected leaders.
Or, perhaps we could pass legislation that lets us bump off one federal leader per year after a national election. The a-hole who writes the most pork-laden spending package or who kills the most [insert your favorite downtrodden group here] could be lined up on national television and put down in the interests of the Union. That would certainly be a lot easier than a messy secession, don’t you think?
