More Disposed to Suffer
while evils are sufferable
Few things in history are more sure than the fact that Thomas Jefferson was an asshole. A slave-owning, child-denying, racist, rapist asshole with hardly any personally redeeming qualities. Don’t mistake my quoting him here as an endorsement of him, only a reference to his writing which, despite coming from an unrepentant racist hand, was sometimes correct anyway.
The Declaration of Independence featured a list of reasons why the United States was at a political impasse with Great Britain and had no choice but to secede. As is the case with all bombastic political manifestos, it only told half the story and put a spin on it because in addition to ostensibly being addressed to King George III, it was an appeal to other foreign powers (read: France) to come to our aid in the inevitable war it would spark.
Most of what we remember about the Declaration is its lofty language about all Men being equal (the laughable duplicity of which statement being noted by literally everyone since, coming as it did from slave-owning Bourgeois aristocrats). “We hold these truths to be self-evident” and “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness" and so on. Most of this was just rhetorical dressing to cover the Colonists’ naked outrage at being constrained by the Crown from obliterating the other 4/5 of the continent and the people living there in the name of Progress.
Indeed, as important a document as the Declaration of Independence is taken to be, there aren’t many groundbreaking philosophical points to be found in its paragraphs. Even in 1776 its content wasn’t nearly as revolutionary as the movement that spawned it, and in 2022 it’s essentially nothing but quaint folklore.
Honestly, the one thing that can be found in there that I think is of any real value isn’t the flowery language about God-given rights, or the “train of abuses” of the Cown, or even the political theory that underpins the secession itself. It’s this simple phrase:
Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by altering the forms to which they are accustomed.
As we in the US are constantly reminded on newscasts and social media, we are living in a time of extreme political polarization. Our various political wings lack not only the desire, but often the ability to talk about our issues in any meaningful way. Everyone is someone’s arch-nemesis. Voting blocs that share 99% of their interests are tearing themselves apart over the 1% they don’t share. Public discourse consists entirely of political point-scoring, gotchas, soundbytes, empty posturing, broken promises, and curse words.
It’s inevitable in situations like this that the hardline elements of every political tribe (except the Democrats, who are the existential opposite of “hardline” anything) start dialing up their rhetoric to ever increasingly incendiary levels. And so it is in our era with Libertarians, Anarchists, and State Communists holding down their ends of the political quadrant graph with calls for “Revolution”.
While all of these groups have their differences, one thing their extremities share is a recognition that the current system isn’t just “dysfunctional”, but entirely incapable of meeting the challenges of the world as it is. These groups might fight each other to the death over everything else, but they agree that what needs to happen has, at heart, nothing to do with voting. The system of today must be demolished to make room for the system of tomorrow — there is no path from here to there within the bounds of the law.
Many Leftist spaces are filled to the absolute top with outrage at the system paired with exasperation that it hasn’t fallen apart yet and bewilderment and frustration that no one is rising up to make it fall apart. People ask what we’re waiting for, whether it’s time yet to start burning things, what the hold-up is. A lot of the sniping that goes on between various sects and clans is, I think, borne of this pent-up revolutionary fervor.
So why hasn’t there been a revolution yet? Some say it’s a meaningless question - how could there be a revolution in a nation as militarized and with as much surveillance as ours? There are simply not enough people with enough guns to pull it off, and besides, there are probably at least as many people with at least as many guns who are just itching for a chance to fight on the side of the state, anyway. Others say we just haven’t organized enough, we haven’t laid out a plan, and we don’t have the resources needed, so everyone who might be open to the idea still relies too much on the status quo.
Personally I think the answer is more obvious and more boring than either of these. I think it goes back to what Jefferson said up there about people being more disposed to suffer. Revolutions throughout history have all had some level of organization and armament, yes. But beyond those considerations, they have really been sparked for one reason: because life under the doomed system reached a nadir where continuing to live was worse than dying.
Every revolution, at the beginning, has looked hopeless on paper. There’s never a point where people collect enough munitions and food stocks to finally push them into action. That just isn’t how it happens. There’s a lot to be said for those considerations in terms of how sustainable and ultimately successful a revolution is, but people don’t march out into the streets looking for the lifeblood of the state because they feel safe enough to risk it. They do it because the entire notion of “safety” has disappeared anyway, so there’s nothing to risk.
So if you’re asking where the revolution is, ask yourself what you could lose if there was one and it failed. If your answer is “more than nothing,” or if you suspect most people’s answers would be “more than nothing,” then you know where the revolution is. Until enough people get to the point where the evils we suffer are no longer sufferable, there’s really no point in wondering why they haven’t thrown themselves and their families into almost assured destruction.
It’s also worth mentioning that this dynamic is why the USA is almost certainly destined for at least a phase of outright goose-stepping Fascism. Because while the path to a better world leads through the dissolution of the existing order, the only thing Fascists have to do in order to get to their horrific dystopian dream is to keep us on the track we’re already on and enhance the existing order.
And if nothing else gets us to the point of having nothing left to lose, that will. Eventually, painfully, traumatically, but surely. That’s why it’s so important to spend every moment between 50 years ago and the final notch on the Fascism dial preparing. Not preparing for “the revolution,” but preparing to survive Fascism. Yes, stockpile weapons. Yes, stockpile food. Definitely, build networks of friends and trusted acquaintances. Definitely, collect fuel and blankets and shelter. Many people are already in desperate need of all these things — when we all need them, we may be pleasantly surprised that preparing to survive turned out to be preparing to revolt after all.