Our new Indie Games subforum is now open for business in G&T. Go and check it out, you might land a code for a free game. If you're developing an indie game and want to post about it,
follow these directions. If you don't, he'll break your legs! Hahaha! Seriously though.
Our rules have been updated and given
their own forum. Go and look at them! They are nice, and there may be new ones that you didn't know about! Hooray for rules! Hooray for The System! Hooray for Conforming!
How would a revolt in the modern United States go down?
Posts
Not too stupid, too disengaged, mostly because our election system promotes apathy (because neither party perfectly represents more than about 20% of the population)
You can "yeah, sure" all you want. The sources I can find shows that 2008, a record election in terms of turnout, had 64% of the voting public show up at the polls.
Edit: and yes, even Obamacare has majority support, by wide margins, if you don't call it Obamacare. High voter turnout favors Democrats - do you disagree with that? I can prove you wrong if you'd like
Actual polls are all over the map, depending on the issue. Sometimes pretty solidly Democrat, sometimes pretty solidly Republican, and as an aggregate fall pretty well within the "moderate" definition, tipping a bit left or right depending. There is absolutely nothing to suggest that, if only people would wake up and smell the coffee, the Republican party would disappear, and even less than nothing to suggest we're on the tipping point of a popular fucking revolution, or that any measurable portion of the population would support one if it somehow happened.
If that was the case, then why has the GOP invested so much in voter suppression?
Hell, people who profess themselves as republicans end up supporting these things in those types of polls because if you seperate the idea from the political party people make unbiased decisions. Whereas if you say "Well, the Democrats suggested we do X" then many people disagree entirely because of political affiliation, not the merit of the idea.
Sometimes you are the silliest fucking goose that ever honked, Hedgie. I could literally pluck out your feathers and eat you for Christmas dinner.
I love these polls. When they aren't comical in the misleading language, they're entirely misread by Democrats. The message here isn't that Republicans support Democratic ideas, but that tons of people don't trust your party even when they agree with the shit you claim to support.
..... really? This seems like a pretty naive way of thinking. I'm pretty sure the rich and comfortable in Egypt and pretty much every other revolting country in the world thought there was no excuse for a revolt, yet the poor and oppressed did it to pretty good success.... well until it comes to rebuilding that is.
I always find it ridiculous for people to say "non-violence is the only way to do things". What if it doesn't work? Which it hasn't in the past. Or what if the oppression becomes worse? What if the situation starts affecting you as well as the poor, would you finally get off your lazy arse and see how little non-violence sometimes actually does.
As horrible and despicable it is violent revolt does make a mark and it can make quite a difference. Every major revolution so far has been significantly violent, and acting like human beings as we are today are above it is childish.
Nice ad hominem attack. Now answer the fucking question.
No, they demonstrate that sadly, fearmongering works.
Its not a question - it's a dishonest bit of distilled snark blown through a dogwhistle, like a fine mist of bullshit-laced spittle sprayed at me. You got the only response you deserved for posting it.
The misleading questions and push polling are by no means located only on the left. It's pretty terrible on all fronts.
I'm sorry - how the fuck is it dishonest to point out that the GOP has been investing in voter suppression as a key part of their electoral strategy? Or to point out that since the GOP wants less, not more, people voting, it's a sign that they are out of step with the mainstream?
"Both sides are bad, so vote Republican!"
You're not sorry, you delectable holiday centerpiece. It's dishonest because it's dishonest. A = a. It deserves no response other than the one it got, but I am now snickering at how you're pulling the same juvenile shit my 12yr old does when I tell him to stop saying mean things to his sister. "Well I just said that she's a cheating thief, I wasn't trying to be mean."
Basically I'm saying you should go to your room until you stop honking and learn how to speak like a grownup.
Although I generally agree that a "revolt" won't happen, I don't know that its realistic to use "the 1% of angry revolution-minded agitators."
Unemployment is near 10% and effective unemployment (including people who want work but have stopped looking and people who can't get enough hours) is much, much higher. That's just talking about unemployment. If you want to include people who want to see some kind of dramatic shift in government for any number of other reasons, you're looking at a considerable (and incredibly diverse) field.
I do think what exactly a "revolt" is merits some consideration. A successful military coup? Nonsense. A large and arguably successful campaign or coordinated civil disobedience? That's not exactly a "revolt" or "revolution," but a dedicated minority can exert very significant amounts of pressure at certain points in our society. That's not a revolution, but its a far more realistic and plausible outcome, and arguably it has already occurred to a limited extent in response to both Tea Party and OWS protests.
Rigorous Scholarship
No matter how bad things may seem, we're not going to revolt. Our neighbor south of the border would be closer than us, and things are complete shit down there, but even they aren't having a revolt, because Mexico has a strong middle class, and everyone has water and electricity and a free education, much like here.
So if Mexico isn't revolting anytime soon (and it's a shit hole), we're sure as shit not even close or near that precipice in any way I can conceive, now matter how much grousing I see about Congress, or voter suppression, or unemployment.
Edit: Man, this thread went to complete shit in almost record time.
Right, the non-existent, unproven voter fraud. That only effects people who vote for the party not proposing the legislation.
Oh yeah, this is a real tough nut to crack. Someone call Sherlock Holmes and all those other geniuses from cop procedurals, this mysteries too much for our normal brains!
#FreeScheck
#FreeSKFM
I'm not bothering to even go that far down the road toward a response to Hedgie. I recognize that both of us know what issue he was referring to with his dogwhistle comment, but unless you want to back up a step and somehow tie it into this comedy of being on the tipping point of a violent revolution, it's probably not worth your time or mine to pursue.
In short , will you stop telling lies about us if I stop telling the truth about you?
are you Sean Penn?
And yet, the backers of the bill can never actually produce evidence of all this massive voter fraud. Funny how that works.
except that 'meant to' implies knowledge of the intent of those forming the bills, which no one here is actually privy to.
Mostly republicans are in favor of ID bills, which will disproportionally affect the voting rights of democratic voters.
These bills would also limit some forms of voter fraud.
These forms of voter fraud seem, by and large, not to exist to any substantive degree.
When the 'unintended' consequence is more or less assured, and the intended purpose deals with something that isn't a legitimate concern, it is kind of hard to take the statements of those who support these bills at face value.
Click here for a horrible H/A thread with details.
Things like students needing to vote in their home district, right, and if they're from out of state, they can't vote on policies that would affect them?
Things like these aren't "unintended secondary consequences" and "to prevent voter fraud." They are voter suppression pretty much plain and simple. I wonder what the alignment of educated population and students are with respects to political party if we exclude wealth status?
What are we looking at, a 5% shift in votes to another party? Hardly worth the time to even pen the paper on such a bill.
The Southern establishment caused an armed revolt that led to the American Civil War for very similar reasons.
Rigorous Scholarship
In my entirely anecdotal experience the "silent majority" that doesn't vote is democratic, but not liberal. They are mostly city folk, because population clusters in the population centers. They think they alone pay far more "too much taxes" than anyone else. They tend to be of average intelligence, but "average" is lower than you think it is. They have done illegal drugs at least once, and while christian are not "good christians™". They want gays in the military, but in a special, separate unit (like the "darkies") and sent on the riskiest missions to save our precious heterosexual master ra-er, yeah, separate units. They are bigoted but hate bigotry and spend a lot of mental effort and gymnastics convincing themselves that their bigotry doesn't exist or doesn't count. They listen to conservative media because it's ALL conservative media.
And most of all, when approached with a question sans previous propaganda and prejudice most of them swing left, but the media spin and their own laziness (laziness is WHY they are the "silent" majority in the first place) at investigation swings them right.
Also, they consume a LOT.
Such a group is only going to revolt after MASSIVE prodding. And let's be real here, we live in an age of unprecedented ability to suppress populations. OWS already demonstrated this when the police deployed some of the more interesting suppression-tech. Revolution is that much harder, and suffering is that much lighter. We have poor and tired and wretched who go to bed hungry but they don't go hungry all day. We have beatings and the occasional murder by an autocratic police force but they are monthly or yearly events, not daily events in every city. Our largest divide is between two authoritarian factions that are convinced the other faction seeks their demise, and are mostly propped up by a newsmedia as modern-day bread and circuses. The "War on (christmas, the middle class, American Values, Freedom, and/or rational thought)" are basically gladiatorial games created to distract us, mostly because we DEMAND distraction.
A Revolt in the modern US? Too much would have to change in too many possible directions to say. But if we just want to make up arbitrary assumptions and write speculative fiction? I'll go with this:
The neo-royalty of the corporate elite continue to grow in power until they repeal the anti-trust laws. They also privatize or destroy the military, all lines of communication inside the nation, and have the government use eminent domain to create a number of new toll roads that are privately-owned but publicly funded. Also taxes are restructured and indentured servitude contracts are legalized so that non-nobility (which will be called "parasites" or "duckies" are taxed into bankruptcy then "voluntarily" enslaved. A healthy prison industry with legal or unofficially-sanctioned abuse plus the already-existent massive prison labor exploitation system ensures that people "choose" slavery or get enslaved to a debtor's prison anyway. Media control means that stories get edited and spun and the filthy debtors and "parasites" are simply receiving what they deserve. The baby-boomer generation dies off quickly because they are old and no longer exploitable (the vote now being controlled by Diebold instead of silly PR campaigns) and the internet is actually mostly censored, because while hackers can re-route and overcome, it usually takes other hackers to contact them.
The revolution? It starts with the PMC's. With the military and police privatized and militarized and the populace essentially enslaved the kleptocrats have nothing left to feed off of except each other. Contract disputes between major players leave the courtrooms and enter the battlefields, and with no other job opportunities left the few citizens still free and not rich join the Corporate armies. The populace remains controlled but steadily more miserable until a city Detroit, bastion of decay that it is, sprouts the weed of revolution. A handful of hyper-charismatic leaders who can't just be bought manage to organize the city as it begins ruling itself and raiding neighboring areas. A lot of shooting and guerilla warfare later some neofeudalist throws a tantrum and drops a tactical nuclear weapon on the city, this silences opposition for a while, until news of the atrocity manages to squeak out. Terrorism, already active in the US, rises exponentially while foreign nations use it as an excuse to alternately fund revolutionary groups in the US and nationalize US corporate holdings (because they're being economically attacked by the US corporations) that they can grab. They don't RETURN the money to the US of course, but at that point the war has become a free-for-all mess of anarchy and slaughter. millions die, the nation burns, and China keeps the same thing from happening to them by sending its surplus male population into the mideast for lots and lots of open war.
Closer to .1%, if that.
Basically there are empirical thresholds that once crossed, predict a high degree of stability within a country.
1) A society that is 90% or more literate.
2) With at least 65 or more Radios/TV's and 120 more newspapers per 1,000 population
3) With two percent or more having telephones
4) With 2,525 or more calories per person per day
5) With not more than 1,900 persons per physician
6) With a GNP of 300 dollars or more per person per year (This isn't adjusted for inflation - so double or triple it)
7) With 45% more of the population living within urban centers.
Or to quote James Chowning Davies, the man who knows his shit about political revolts:
Even with my obviously ludicrous numbers, it still isn't worth it.
Make posts that move the thread forward or don't post.
Actual Play: Mage: the Awakening - At the Edge of All Things