True true. That said, I was listening to a podcast the other day about the Russian Revolution and apparently Lenin, who was exiled in Switzerland, never anticipated the Bolsheviks would take control of Russia in his lifetime and he even made speeches saying so.
Yet, things unwound fast. Hence his famous quote, “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”
I'm with you though, I wouldn't hold my breath. :)
We romanticize revolutions. The problem is most revolutions have been quite shitty for everyone involved in history. The French Revolution, American Revolution and the Color Revolutions are actually the exceptions to the rule, historically.
Were they shitty for the descendants of the victors?
What’s the latest on the Arab Spring? The Iranian Revolution? China? Russia? Venezeula? North Korea?
Tearing down institutions doesn’t always turn out well!
You beat me to it. That’s why it was considered a sacrifice to fight. It was something you did to benefit your descendants.
Like the Bolsheviks, the Ayatollah, Mao, Chavez, Kim Il-Song, Pol Pot, etc?
… Castro, Ceaușescu, etc?
The revolution against Ceaușescu was a positive though. Many Romanians will attest.
Yeah. Of course things got better. My point is just that thinking revolutions are good things as a general rule is just silly. By count, most liberty-minded people would not think most revolutions were good. That's my point. It should cause someone to question the whole romance of the idea.
I agree, revolutions are bloody and messy, and lots of people die. I'm not sure if hyperbitcoinzation as a revolution would be similar to past political revolutions. Could even be worse.
The presence of evil in this world does not mean good men should do nothing. I am not naive. I know the good guys don’t always win. But they never do if they don’t fight.
How many of these repressive regimes have historically been overthrown through diplomacy?
Yeah, I think the idea we need to overthrow Western democracies in revolutions is absolutely fucking crazy. I’m not going to mince words here. FUCKING. CRAZY.
Define western democracy.
Are you lumping the Constitutional Republic in with that?
Are you indicating the values in the founding documents of the countries in question, or how they operate now and at some theoretical point in the future?
Where is the line between a functional “democracy” and a totalitarian state?
At what point does oppression move from acceptable to unacceptable?
What about the consent of the governed?
Is forced “democracy” intrinsically different from a totalitarian state?
I'm definitely not and what followed the Russian Revolution was decades of horror. The repercussions of it are arguably still being played out in Ukraine today.
As a Brit, I disagree with the American Revolution being a positive though (joke).
