How Long Before the New Revolution?

definitely within the next fifty years, no doubt. maybe twenty. we're reaching a crisis point very very quickly...

 

Perhaps when the election is stolen in '08.... Or when martial law is enacted after the next attack... Soon?

 

Too long.

 

It's not going to happen anytime soon. The vast majority of people are more concerned with what make of trainers/sneakers they have on their feet than with the state of society around them. Who cares about some poor brown Iraqi when you can go out and buy the latest Nokia.

 

when

-people stop believing that a piece of paper (money) is really worth the food on their tables
-the third world says "f*ck you" to the entire first world (specifically the banks)
-when activists start being seen as people with sense, not a bunch of vegan treehugging hippies
-when the aforementioned crisis point hits, people will lose trust and faith in society, they will stop caring about their shoes and start caring about where the next meal comes from. This is when the imaginary basis of society dissappears and people realize that all there is them survival and the other people trying to get it,

personally i hope that in the predicted 90% of the earth's land population dies out that either society has totally collapsed (meaning that the remaining humans have to live in a anarcho-primitivist manner) or no human being is left. Either way the earth is left enough time to repair itself in. A big cycle.
Our culture will leave behind the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, and the White House, just as previous excessive hedonistic cultures have left behind Stonehenge, the Pyramids, the Easter Island heads, or the legend of Atlantis. A big cycle, evolution, stagnation, failure restart.

 

probably not so much a revolution as a corrupt colapse of the old and existing order. along more or less the same lines as what happened in rusia with the decline in dominance of it's pretense of pseudo-marxism.

the corporate mafia is stretched out along a middle eastern bridge of pearls. will it be undone by this and how soon? i don't know. on either count.

i wouldn't want to jinx anything by making wild guesses. some things will chainge though. some for the better. some for the worse. life goes on.

=^^=
.../\...

whatever happens politically, in another twenty years most likely, anyone of average income, if the concept of income still means anything, which is also uncertain, won't be able to afford to drive. gas stations will be going or gone out of bussines because their wholsale costs will exceed what the retail public will be able to pay for their products and services.

and the dollar, yah, it's pretty much collapsed now from over printing and the keep pumping out more of them.

i don't know what will happen or how. i've guessed so wrong so many times before that i'm hesitant to be certain about much of anything. the range of what is no longer imprabable is SO wide.

yes, i do think there is a good chance of people who can't even imagine not being emotionally attatched to them now, will be forced to give up many of the delusions at the root of what they currently mistake for civilization.

what exactly will be the shape of the resault of that is by no means certain though. what america pretended to be, fell, when raygun threw f.d.r.'s "socialism' out with the bath water. it may take another decade or two for the die hards to realize that. and in that time, many things could chainge, or turn around. if they don't turn around and bite us first.

there is no certainty as to which will happen. either could. people seem to always try to continue what they are familiar with as long as they can. precisely by doing so of course, they create and alter conditions such that at some point it becomes no longer possible to do so.

that much is predictable. but that is as much as i presently feel confident of certainty that it is.

it does look like a time of suffering is ahead. food and water shortages and today's powerful and advantaged places not escaping them.

so i guess we should probably enjoy our steaks and turkey dinners now, while we still can, so at least we'll have fond memories of them to look back on as we're starving, if that's what it comes to, as indeed it very well could.

but maybe we could forestall that day a little bit, by not driving our suv's every time we head for the 7-11/am-pm at the end of the block.

=^^=
.../\...

 

not soon enough. times have changed man. there's not to many of us left. it's sad. most people are worried about making tons of money and what they can get/do with it. it still blows my mind that people in government (trying to cover all bases with that word) get to set their own salaries, health ins., etc.. guess who pays for that? if we all collectively stood up for our rights i believe we can make a difference. remember england?

 

Why should it take a new revolution? Why can't change be accomplished through our existing forms of government?

 

You may not need a represtative government anymore. But I do.

So you are proposing revolution Skip, what are you promising the people...more empty promises?

What are those tools?

 

If you are implying that computer keyboards are the tools. Moderators and site owners have tyrannical power on the internet.

The only power computer users have is the ability to go somewhere else.

I can't uproot my family and home, everytime some little power hungry little jerk wants to ban me.

 

i agree, but what's wrong with vegan treehugging hippies?

if pro is the opposite of con, is congress the opposite of progress?

 

well, if the southeast US doesnt get rain soon, it could fall into anarchy. the atlanta area only has 3 months of drinking water left. imagine what would happen if people ran out of water? chaos. killing neighbors for a 12 oz cup of water, trampling people to get to the organizations who bring water to those in need. and when the govt cant fix that problem, people will begin to wonder what else they cant fix

and we need congress. without them, the executive branch would be much much more powerful than it already is. its all the checks and balences

 

this is a very interesting concept. it would of course require the drafting and adopting of an entirely new from the ground up constitution to impliment. that of course is not a bad idea either, although the same risk of overlooking details that we are now 'paying the devil' for their having been overlooked in creating the one we have.

two minor quibbles with your "no more"s though:

this would not eliminate a congress or a need for one, but rather replace it with another KIND of congress, but still a kind of congress none the less. which is to say, a 'congress' of these 'proxys'.

whether or not the label proxy is appled, whether or not they ever physically meet face to face, this also HASN'T eleminated lobying.

it would be a whole new and different playing field for lobying, but, don't kid yourself that every 'proxy' wouldn't be lobbied, just members of the kinds of congressess we have now are.

and while different, and interesting because it might more people more of a voice in/on issues that interest them, i see no reason to assume it would be any less, or more, corruptable, then what we have now.

being new, the proccess of corrupting it, would of course have to begin all over again from zero. but you can pretty much bet your lifesavers it would.

elemination of political parties and campaigning is indeed a plus.

so those ARE the two plusses, more direct citizen access to issues on which they are intersted, and thus more likely informed, and of course bypassing of the mechanism of partisinship, which would remove much of the incentive for creating prejudices as wedge issues to politically devide and concor with.

there are indeed many ways in which soverignty can be controlled or at least influenced by those subject to it, and more effectively, without partizenship to muddie the waters.

plurality voting is one. but i do like the idea of issue based representation in place of geographic or homonginized pseudo-representation of population en mass, which of course, can never be truely representative of anyone, let alone all the wonderous and infinite diversity of us.

there are of course opportunities for political shinanigans in such a system. as indeed there will always be in any system we can devise, discouver, or find revealed to us.

it's along way from being foolproof, and it might take me a while to figgure out if i, or anyone would actually feel more that it could be truted. what the ins and outs of how to prevent, or at least delay and frustrate, the various ways in which it COULD be corrupted. and which, it almost goes without saying, would begin their inevetable assaults of doing so, every bit as soon as it was implimented. just as they would and have, any other.

=^^=
.../\...

 

When the shit really hits the fan, and not a moment sooner. At least in the U.S. anyway. Whether it be by an ecological crisis leading to crop failure and mass hunger, or an economic recession worse than the great depression, that's what it would take to get us off our collective butts. If third world conditions are forced upon us only then will we rise up. And if things continue on their current course then such disasters are not just possible but likely.