How Fares Teh Revolution?

Stalled?

Well, I don't want to go quite that far, but maybe so. Since I tend to slow down while I'm here in New Mexico, I'm not really up on all the News of the Uprisings Around the World, but I did hear that the Wisconsin legislature is plowing forward with their anti-union measures and doing it in defiance of the Democrats (still in exile in Illinois) and the People. I heard that the Egyptian military "cleared" Tahrir Square in Cairo with a great deal of violence and that the masses in Iraq are still up in arms -- and apparently still being shot down -- over the absolute corruption of their imposed and managed "democracy."

And then of course there's the continuing slaughter in Libya and the constant dithering over it in the capitals of Europe and the United States. The slaughter in the Yemen. The other Uprisings and slaughters here and there.

The upshot, from my partially disengaged perspective, is that The Revolution is sputtering and best and being turned back on many fronts -- despite some extraordinary rhetorical and documentary efforts on the part of the Revolutionaries and those who support them.

In other words, the rhetorical war is being won rather handlily, but the ground war is not going that well at all, even though there have been a number of apparently victorious removals of tyrants.

A rhetorical device that's making the rounds is this chart demonstrating the direct effects of the Class War that's been underway -- with or without Revolutionary push-back -- for more than a generation.



The Class War hasn't stopped; in fact, the battle has been redoubled by the Billionaires who are determined -- more than ever -- to have their way. In addition, there is a constant litany of "social war" issues being pressed with more fervor than at any time in the past.

As I've said for many years most if not all of the Revolutionary fervor in this country is on the Right, not on the Left, and even though we're seeing some union push-back on the economic front now, for a very long time it has been a matter of holding on to the status quo at best, with very little or no forward thinking, especially not on economic matters.

We're seeing some resistance to the overwhelming corporate influence on Government and the dreadful results that has had on the well-being of the People. The existence of resistance is encouraging, but until the issue is expanded beyond the narrow economic interests of a sub-section of the working population ("Hey! At least they still HAVE jobs!") the Revolution is bound to stall.

In Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere, Revolutionary fervor is being attacked militarily in some places, attacked with minutiae in others. While it's obvious to me that the Revolutionaries have broadened their issues from the purely pecuniary to more fundamental principles of Dignity, Justice, and Community, their opposition is strong and there is no easy path forward. That doesn't mean the Revolutions have failed, but neither have they succeeded.

In another post, I asked whether we were seeing a version of 1848, 1968 or 1989. Indeed, as the Revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt seemed to successfully overthrow tyrants and tyrannical governments, allusions to 1989 were seen and heard with some regularity. But then Libya happened, as well as the stalled Revolutions in Yemen, Bahrain, Iran and so forth, and allusions to 1848 cropped up more and more. A couple of the Revolutions of 1848 were more or less successful in changing the nature of governments to some degree, but most were brutally crushed. The Revolutionary philosophies that came out of the Revolutions of 1848 (especially Marxism) were more important ultimately than the uprisings themselves. And that may be the case now.

But what of 1968, a period of largely student driven uprisings all around the world, that were ambiguously successful. What happened as a result of the 1968 Uprisings is actually very complicated. Governments did fall, troops were called out here and there, and many, many student Revolutionaries were slaughtered (Mexico City was one horrible example.) But in China, the Revolutionary fervor of the young was channeled by the Government into the Cultural Revolution which had the ironic effect of strengthening Mao and the regime while nearly exterminating all opposition.

Something like that took place in America when Reagan and his sponsors cleverly -- brilliantly, really -- co-opted the Revolutionary spirit, language and rhetoric (of "liberation" and "freedom") from the student uprisings and used them to further the corporate/aristocratic factions at the expense of everyone else.

It worked and it is working now. The question is whether it will continue to.

The Rightist argument is wearing very thin. People are at the point of not listening any more. The Left may still be in a quagmire of supporting the support for the Status Quo, holding on rather than moving forward, but even that doesn't hold back the resistance from other quarters.

There are still mountains to climb.

Have We Reached The Tipping Point?

Last night, my local PBS station ran an episode of BBC's Newsnight from Thursday's broadcast in Britain in which Francis Fukuyama, among others, argued that the uprisings in the Arab World are a "1989 Moment" for Arabs and the world in general.

Comes now the tipping point that the Busheviks were forever yapping about forcing on the Middle East through wars and deception, brutality and connivance. This is it. We're in it. Now. Not through Bushevik force, but through the natural aspirations of miserable Peoples.

"A nation can be reborn as a citizenry." As Simon Schama puts it.

And who would have thought it would happen in the Middle East? Who would have thought the uprisings in the Middle East would trigger/inspire others to rise up as far away as Madison, WI?

"You have people whose dignity, like that vegetable seller who set the whole thing off in Tunisia, whose dignity is simply trashed by a state that's simply arrogant and unresponsive." says Francis Fukuyama.

Well. Yes. That's kind of how it goes. Ultimately, this tipping point and these uprisings are about Dignity, as I've said over and over again. And the absence of Dignity for the Common Man is not limited by any means to the authoritarian regimes long propped up by the United States in the Middle East. Not at all.

The Uprisings have been going on all over Europe due to the mindless imposition of Austerity measures demanded of governments by the various financiers who obviously rule governments world-wide in contravention of the People's Will. These Austerity measures the financiers are demanding -- putting the entire economic burden of the global financial collapse on the backs of the poor and marginal and the working class, while absolving and holding harmless the High and the Mighty -- have inspired revolts everywhere, most recently, again, in Greece, where the streets have frequently turned violent. By putting the economic burden entirely on those least able to absorb and pay it, the Powers That Be -- governments in collusion with the Financier/Rentier Class -- are playing with fire. By denying Dignity to the poor, the marginal, and the working class, they are mindlessly triggering the next phase of Revolution against them.

Lacking functioning crystal balls, we can't know at this point how these uprisings and the fall out from them will turn out. We don't even understand where these uprisings, revolutions and revolts are grounded. The universally expressed conceptions of Dignity and Justice simply don't register among the Powers That Be. They are not just nonsensical to those in the Palace, they are non-existent nonsense.

A Koch (or a Koch handmaiden like Scott Walker) has no idea what Dignity and Justice mean to a prole any more than the Sultan of Araby can possibly imagine what it means to a common Street Arab.

The notion is incomprehensible to the powerful -- whoever and wherever they are.

Of course, even with some of the insights we see on "Newsnight" or wherever -- and there are other segments of this show worth watching at the link provided above -- our media is essentially useless as the course of revolt and revolution unfolds around the world today. Not only can the media not keep up with the flow of events, its principal interest is in shaping and controlling those events for the benefit of themselves and their sponsors, be they government or corporate. They are finding they can't do it in these many cases.

Al Jazeera shows the way on reporting what's going on. They are still playing catch up, not leading at all. As for much of the rest of the media, they don't seem to have a clue, any more than than the propagansist state media of the Arab Autocracies has had any idea what is really going on.

Another view: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/02/26/949976/-The-Tipping-Point:-Ten-Wake-up-calls-for-Americans-from-Coffee-Party-USA

Or Is It Like 1989?

The Revolutions of 1989



Did somebody mention the "Ceausescu Solution?"



Tiananmen?



Or will it be something like we've never seen before?

On the Egypt Thing

I spent most of yesterday watching the uprising in Egypt live on Al Jazeera, really the only comprehensive and reliable English language coverage available, and for most Americans, it is only available on the internet.

I was mezmerized.

It's very important, of course, to convince Americans that these kinds of Street Insurrections don't work, and to convince them that they better not try it, no matter how bad things get in this country. Jibbering natives overseas may be able to pull off something like this, but no American should ever think that something like this can work in a civilized country like the Good Ol USA.

From what I've seen of American media on the Egypt Thing, that's been pretty much the universal message: "Don't you get uppity and try this yourself. It will not work."

Back to the coverage; there is anxious anticipation that Mubarak will indeed give up the Pharaoh's Throne in due time, which may be very soon indeed.

And as Egypt falls, attempted American hegemony in the Middle East will fall to pieces. There are uprisings in Jordan too, the Yemen, Lebanon, Algeria, etc. The paranoiacs in Israel must be shitting bricks.

And they've got nukes.

This is no time for popcorn.