Revolution? You don't really understand revolution... the key pieces of uncertainty that can foment a revolution are missing.
Just last week we saw https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7929817 in which an ex CIA Open Source Intelligence expert shared his view. He explicitly stated, to the UK public in widely read media:
The preconditions of revolution exist in the UK, and most western countries. The number of active pre-conditions is quite stunning, from elite isolation to concentrated wealth to inadequate socialisation and education, to concentrated land holdings to loss of authority to repression of new technologies especially in relation to energy, to the atrophy of the public sector and spread of corruption, to media dishonesty, to mass unemployment of young men and on and on and on. [...] Preconditions are not the same as precipitants. We are waiting for our Tunisian fruit seller. The public will endure great repression, especially when most media outlets and schools are actively aiding the repressive meme of 'you are helpless, this is the order of things.' When we have a scandal so powerful that it cannot be ignored by the average Briton or American, we will have a revolution that overturns the corrupt political systems in both countries, and perhaps puts many banks out of business. Vaclav Havel calls this 'The Power of the Powerless.' One spark, one massive fire.
This speaks to me because personally I was physically in Tunisia for the revolution and it was a powerful feeling. As an obviously foreign anglo-Australian, isolated in the far west of the country where large scale street-level ferment began (weeks before it reached western media), I never felt threatened or unsafe at all. I have also lived in the US .. during which time I saw how much debt and fear, particularly over money and healthcare, ruled the lives of many, how pervasive the systemic imbalances were (homeless alcoholic recent war veterans at the supermarket, through 70% foreclosure rates - that's 70% of all houses in in my suburb), and how inept the response was (ask Google to close the foreclosure map, minor but media-heavy changes to healthcare, etc.)
Sarcasm: Whew. Thank GOODNESS for the Arab Spring. So much democracy arose from it. Those revolutions brought about so much change and made things so much better!
Just last week we saw https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7929817 in which an ex CIA Open Source Intelligence expert shared his view. He explicitly stated, to the UK public in widely read media:
The preconditions of revolution exist in the UK, and most western countries. The number of active pre-conditions is quite stunning, from elite isolation to concentrated wealth to inadequate socialisation and education, to concentrated land holdings to loss of authority to repression of new technologies especially in relation to energy, to the atrophy of the public sector and spread of corruption, to media dishonesty, to mass unemployment of young men and on and on and on. [...] Preconditions are not the same as precipitants. We are waiting for our Tunisian fruit seller. The public will endure great repression, especially when most media outlets and schools are actively aiding the repressive meme of 'you are helpless, this is the order of things.' When we have a scandal so powerful that it cannot be ignored by the average Briton or American, we will have a revolution that overturns the corrupt political systems in both countries, and perhaps puts many banks out of business. Vaclav Havel calls this 'The Power of the Powerless.' One spark, one massive fire.
This speaks to me because personally I was physically in Tunisia for the revolution and it was a powerful feeling. As an obviously foreign anglo-Australian, isolated in the far west of the country where large scale street-level ferment began (weeks before it reached western media), I never felt threatened or unsafe at all. I have also lived in the US .. during which time I saw how much debt and fear, particularly over money and healthcare, ruled the lives of many, how pervasive the systemic imbalances were (homeless alcoholic recent war veterans at the supermarket, through 70% foreclosure rates - that's 70% of all houses in in my suburb), and how inept the response was (ask Google to close the foreclosure map, minor but media-heavy changes to healthcare, etc.)