What do you think? We obviously had the struggle for civil rights, both people of color and women, the prohibition getting overturned, etc.
But I haven’t many recent revolutions. Are people becoming more complacent? Our nation more dividided? Or are there other reasons that might be causing people to feel they are unable to affect change in the way they used to?
The prohibition against marijuana use and gay marriage are being overturned. Some capitalist taboos seem to be on some pretty shaky ground. And before long, about a gazillion Mexicans are going to be able to vote in this country.
Things change.
Change is coming!
As in dimes and pennies.
As I try to point out every time I get the chance, as the government gets bigger, we tend to move from the rule of law to the rule of momentum–the leaderless herd.
The forces of change are hard up against the forces of reaction… The failures of forms which makes one person seek revolution makes one seek out an older and equally failed form, like religion, which has never worked…Change is a constant… Nothing can stop it, and it can only be delayed…And trust me on this, because I have been working for revolution all my adult life… Now, before the civil war, when the republicans were young, it was they who were talking about secceeding from the union… As they gained power that notion was quietly discarded… But there are accounts of the lavish balls in the Ante bellum South, and the institution of slavery had so much support, even from the financial center of New York, that anyone rational, in seeing the situation would have said a hundred years would not have changed the picture…Yet, irrationality gripped those people so that they first lost the election on principal, and then left the union out of stupidity…They had everything going their way…If they had delayed, Lincoln thought he had no means to end slavery, and he was correct in this…To me the advantage is with revolution even while people fear the future more than any single thing in their lives…It is this very fear, of an unknown future that makes people resisting change act so irrationally…I don’t want the past… There was nothing about the past I want to revisit, but having been there I have no reason to fear it as the reactionaries fear the future…I think revolutions always begin with reactions…
People need to know what they are dealing with… Just as Jefferson spelled it out in the declaration of independence, and offered a creditable theory of forms so that anyone could understand, it is this understanding, that people always advance through history by way of changing forms that must be explained…It is wrong to idealize change…People know better, in their hearts…They are absolutely correct to fear change…
Ah Faust, were my underlying motives that obvious? 
While you say they are being overturned, how much of this push is coming from the citizens? It doesn’t seem like the movements are very publicized. Partly because there aren’t as many gays as there were blacks during the civil rights movements, and who cares if we have one more way of getting a buzz?
And Juggernaut, I guess your right. Perhaps at 24, I haven’t been around long enough to see social and governmental changes on as widespread a scale as others. But if there is one constant, it’s change. Let’s just hope those wheels keep grinding, and that the wheel isn’t being worn down by the flood of information.
I’m still unsure of whether or not the internet really helps connect grassroot efforts, or dilutes their effect.
Gays have means to effect change that the black civil rights advocates didn’t. Gays have money and political clout. Same with stoners. They have both marched in the streets, but that was usually mainly for fun.
The internet helps the way any form of mass communication does.
Does it, though? When Martin Luther King Jr. gave his infamous speach, how many TV stations were there? Could people really help happening upon it?
The internet divides peoples’ attention into so many different places, it’s easy to lose focus.
The internet is a better form of communication, for several well-known reasons. It’s interactive and (now) almost universally available. And it doesn’t have to be used in real time, like TV does. And the messages sent aren’t controlled by a few suits in New York.
the herd doesn’t need a leader, it needs consensus, which it will never totally acheive, but should always strive for in order to hold itself together.
momentum means progress. law just steers the course.
why infamous, and you are right about the internet; and more, it might seem useful for organization, but the government could use it to get ahead of organization, and if worse comes to worse to spread a virus that could make any organization blind, deaf and dumb…If change is not so much required that the mythical individual who eats what is advertized and buys off the rack what ever is in fashion -actually behaves as an individual, and does what he or she will without some one telling them it is okay, then it will never happen… The government only allows those organizations that approve of it… The people follow the leader, and the leaders try to sense where the people want to go to get ahead of change… I believe in democracy, but with democracy so long denied, and the people in ignorance organization will just have to wait for enough individuals to drag down the system, and then there will be a chance…
You are talking about building a working democracy with an indefinite life span… Our problem now is to get rid of a system that does not work and cannot be reformed…
A stampede needs no consensus, re: our current situation. The only thing that stops it is to run out of steam or to come up on a cliff or blind canyon.
Running off a cliff is progress?
Yes, if enforced universally, toward good order.
You know you are answering your own argument… No one but you agrees they are running off a cliff…I would say they are going no where fast…
That’d be true if we weren’t printing money as fast as the electronic presses can load it into the Treasury–while we sit our here and moooo.
Well pardner; if you own all the property in the country how does inflation affect you??? Inflation is some smart politicians answer to taxing the rich when the rich are the only ones with any wealth…Inflation robs from everyone on a fixed income… It will inevitably hurt sume one with a set wage more than one who can raise his prices at will… Capitalism cannot live without inflation… The rich absolutely refuse to pay taxes, but they will take being stolen from if those with nothing lose their first… The fact is that capitalism which should be an infinite game has been won, and so the game is really over… Everything worth having is owned by the rich… The government cannot fund its entitlements, and it cannot deny them…If it were possible for the government to treat us all as they have treated the Native Americans, and leave us all to stew in poverty they would do so…They cannot get past the idea that the society has to support all its members…So, don’t expect me to worry about inflation…That is just another method of theft designed to extend the life of Capital… It only hastens its death…
I agree with you. But to go along with my previous example, when there were only a couple of television channels, and the world was not as connected and informed, people could really only gather under a couple of banners for issues that they wanted to fight for.
Now, there are thousands upon thousands of different issues. Given that people can only devote so much of their time for each issue, and given that the number of issues one can fight for has grown exponentially, it makes sense to me that it would dilute their efforts. What do you think?
I think it helps them to focus their efforts. Not every issue is important to everyone. Or even important.
WE DID IT!!!
You people have been living like animals.