1776 in 2003?

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Smiley
Handguns? People in America own everything up and beyond assault rifles.

Like anti-tank missiles and shoulder mount SAM missiles?

[The Emperor Fabulous]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten

How many guns per American again?

Enough to keep us free.

I dunno about you, but I think a heavily armed and trained Army Ranger will take out a old hillbilly with a shotgun.

[Sprayber]

Why does there have to be a revolt if the same result can be accomplished by elections in less than a year?

[Drake Tungsten]

I dunno about you, but I think a heavily armed and trained Army Ranger will take out a old hillbilly with a shotgun.

Well, most Army Rangers are the sons of old hillbillies with shotguns, so I doubt we'd ever see them take up arms against each other. Saying they do, however, I'd just advise you to never bet against a hillbilly when it comes to killin'. Their readin', writin' and general hygiene ain't that good, but those folks sure know how to handle their weaponry.

Not to mention that if 75% of the population is in open revolt, there would be dozens of hillbillies for every Ranger.

[Kc7mxo]

If even half of the population was in active uprising, we'd have a major change in goverment.

The biggest problem with using our military to stop such a revolt is that the vast majority of it, isn't here. And even if they were, theyd be facing the exact same kind of resistance as they're facing in Iraq, only from people they might be sympathizing with.

Fortunately, we don't have to worry about this yet. our goverment is structured well enough that it'd take a lot of change for someone to activalely take over.

A shadow government on the other hand. . .

[Mr. Harley]

You wouldn't be talking about Cheney's spokesman, would you?

[East Street Trader]

It is a bit of a puzzle to understand how Hitler could rise to power in a sophisticated modern state and then persuade an entire nation to help him inflict misery upon themselves and upon lots of others.

And lacking an understanding of that it is not possible to rest easy that it could not happen in your own country.

It seems a reasonable guess that there was a lot of disatisfaction and fear around in Germany before Hitler's rise began. And he plainly managed to provide a focus for that disatisfaction and fear outside themselves and to get a patriotic fervour on his side.

So I guess when he took his first few steps people were willing to put up with some brutality because they wanted to feel more satisfied and less fearful.

And after a while he had got his hands on all the power of the state. So anyone who started not to like the way things were going might have been scared to stand up and be counted about it for fear of the consequencies.

But even so it seems odd that virtually the whole nation were just quiescent while the whole sorry tale played out.

I can't believe that any sort of majority in Germany continued to support what happened which, if true, suggests a revolt based on popular feelings is not very likely.

To set against that the USSR seems to have crumbled pretty well because the whole of the huge population involved just willed it so. One day they got up and went along to the wall and just started taking it down.

And what happened in Georgia recently seemed to be a sort of populist revolt.

Maybe modern means of communication are such that standing up and being counted is easier than it was?

On the other hand the power of the state is certainly not less than in was in Hitler's day. Much stronger I would say.

You pose a good question, I think. I certainly don't know the answer.

It would be comforting to believe that deep disaffection with government could be given effective expression. Because I have immeasurably more faith in the mob than in any politician. But whether that would be false comfort or not I don't know.

My instinct is that a sufficiently vigorous political leader will nearly always manage to prevent the disaffected from apreciating how widespread the disaffection is, and so keep them quiescent. Which would reduce cases of effective popular revolt to cases where political leadership becomes effete or there is a single issue which divides people passionately.

[PLATO]

Originally posted by The Emperor Fabulous


I dunno about you, but I think a heavily armed and trained Army Ranger will take out a old hillbilly with a shotgun.

If you had ever been in the hills of East Tennessee then you wouldn't think that. My money goes to the hillbilly on his home turf (of course that hillbilly probably WAS an Army Ranger when he was 18 to begin with).

I find it interesting that the Iraqi's are thought, in these forums, to be such a threat and that people are discounting the damage that an American resistance could cause. The bottom line on the Army is that they are not going to go in shooting up Mom and Dad's place and making bombing runs on their girlfriend's neighborhood. With 75% support, the government caves in almost immediately.

[Zylka]

STUPID

[CerberusIV]

What are people in the US so unhappy about that they might want to start a revolution. Most of them get more than enough to eat and their material needs sufficiently or amply met. To put it crudely, obese people don't start revolutions, hungry people do.

As in much of europe there doesn't seem to be that much faith that politicians will deliver something better so little incentive to change one set for another in any way more difficult than the ballot box.

Civil liberties won't do it either. Even if it is your neighbour arrested most people will take the easy option of thinking there must have been a good reason. That worked for Hitler in the early days of power.

Whether a revolution is actually possible is really a non question, the issue is whether enough people want one to make it happen. The answer looks like a pretty resounding no.

[mrmitchell]

Nothing will ever get 75% of Americans to agree. Sorry, Uber.

However, assuming the impossible--pigs fly up from frozen hell--then you've got to consider international support for the rebellion as well. I'm pretty sure a lot of countries would love to **** around with the US in anarchy.

[MrFun]

First of all -- you're contrasting a colonial revolution with a domestic revolution.


To what extent can you compare these two as being similar??

[Zylka]

STUPID

See, this is definitely an exception situation where mods who would respond with the above and then lock the thread are beneficial to forum integrity. Maybe there's hope in the young UR, yet.

[Shogun Gunner]

Originally posted by Sprayber
Why does there have to be a revolt if the same result can be accomplished by elections in less than a year?

I was waiting for a voice of reason....

[The diplomat]

Well, if 75% of the general population were revolting, you'd probably have portions of the military that would also support the revolt. So I doubt it would civilians vs. military. It would more likely be some civilians + some miliatry vs. some civilians + some military. So, it would more likely resemble the civil war where you had military vs. military.