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Comment by ericmay | Hacker News Reader

In the American context, hopefully it never comes to an actual revolution, because life for everyone will be much, much worse with little prospect of anything being better afterward. We should do what we can to avoid one, especially because while it's fun to fantasize about your side being the one to start a revolution, there's no reason to think that the other side won't also think the same way and maybe they'll beat your side and make your life really, really awful.

Secondarily, there's a lot to say about anti-tank and anti-air power in the context of a "revolution". Most of it is pure fantasy including the idea that 3D printed missiles are going to start striking US strike aircraft at 40k feet in the equally absurd fantasy that those aircraft are going to just be bombing American cities and towns and countrysides. It's really just pure Internet-driven fantasy to think that these scenarios are plausible or the least bit desirable in any fashion.

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If its a revolution you probably aren't hitting them 40k in the air, your hitting them when they park similar to how Ukraine sent drones after bombers behind enemy lines. I really hope we can avoid any kind of conflict, with the way American's think I could see one or both sides resorting to biological/chemical weapons faster than they start making missiles. There is also no reason to assume what starts out as your side will remain such, revolutions are crazy risky.

> If its a revolution you probably aren't hitting them 40k in the air, your hitting them when they park similar to how Ukraine sent drones after bombers behind enemy lines.

Right, and you don't need to conjure up anti-tank missiles (sure those could be nice to have) to do this. You could seize a bulldozer and drive it into the airframes, or just shoot them to bits. At this point if you have access to American jets on the ground to destroy them, you've already lost the manufacturing capacity to repair them.

> There is also no reason to assume what starts out as your side will remain such, revolutions are crazy risky.

Absolutely. Robespierre learned that lesson. Putin is learning that lesson from the perspective of starting a war but not being able to predict the outcome. The status quo is pretty great and we should be very careful and guarded about changing that, especially through violent means. Most things that are problems today can be resolved through legislation and the existing democratic mechanisms. Throwing that out (not suggesting you are suggesting that) would be almost certainly profoundly unwise. It's very much like the Monty Hall Problem.

> hopefully it never comes to an actual revolution, because life for everyone will be much, much worse with little prospect of anything being better afterward.

In the situations a revolution comes to exist, it is because life for everyone is already getting much, much worse with little prospect of anything being better. Nobody starts a revolution for funsies, so you're supposing a false dichotomy where the choice is between "plunge into hell for no reason" or "continue living a great life", when in fact the latter is not an option at all.

Exactly. Revolutions are awful things that are only defensible if the conditions are brutal enough. And even then, there has to be the caution that the revolution can be co-opted by infinitely worse people than those that were overthrown (take the Russian revolution, for example)

Also, actual revolutions require a significant chunk of "excluded elite". People who have nothing can generally manage a riot, maybe burn down some buildings until the police open fire, but nothing more coordinated. Revolutions require more money and organization. I'm reminded of how the convicted Jan 6th rioters were a lot more middle-class than you might expect.

No American revolution would succeed without a significant chunk of US military support. Either from above ("autogolpe"), or entire units defecting en masse.

The Russian revolution is not a good example if you are talking about the October revolution. It cannot be stated objectively that it turned out to be worse, and, in fact, for many replacing the czars with the Bolsheviks led to a lot better living conditions.

Tell that to the 60 million people who died in the Holodomor.

Holodomor was the result of several unfortunate events including the Ukranian kulaks burning their produce to protest collectivisation, a natural famine and misjudgement of the State.

If the responsibility of Holodomor lies solely with the USSR, the nexus between the NATO and occupied Palestine are responsible for at least a billion deaths, going by your intellectual honesty standards. I have factored in death due to military interventionism, gun laws, and capitalism related deaths (death from being uninsured, hunger, poverty).

I have no problem with the proposition that the post-ww2 global order is responsible for a billion deaths.

Why not 120 million?

What about the 240 million who died under the tzarist regime?

If you're going to make up nonsense numbers, why stop there?

> Nobody starts a revolution for funsies

They definitely do, see the 1900s.

I think modern day Americans do not understand how bad war is because they’ve been engaged in it for nearly 30 years continuously without directly feeling the consequences.

Which revolutions in the 1900s were started for fun? Unless you're considering CIA backed coups in that count?

Loads, the various attempts to overthrow the Weimar Republic for one, but many smaller, like the Impresa di Fiume.

Maybe not “for fun” but largely for justifications that pale in comparison to the suffering they unleashed.

Americans ready to go to war because eggs and gas are too expensive, or their trans teen’s top surgery was delayed, might be making similar mistakes. But Americans are good at making mistakes, perhaps supernaturally gifted.

> trans teen’s top surgery was delayed

This is in poor taste given there is a bill right now being debated that bans the exact surgery you’re mocking. It also bans trans Americans from participating in gendered sports. You should find a better example.

Agreed. With all of the efforts to make it difficult for trans people to exist in society, it is quite literally an in-progress attempt at genocide.

At this point the laws in several states go far beyond those topics. The people pushing them just figured on had to start with something that would let them mock any opposition as extremist "gender ideology" and the like.

And sadly federal > state law so that means the reasonable states not enacting these awful policies would have to get in line with nationwide, legal discrimination.

> In the situations a revolution comes to exist, it is because life for everyone is already getting much, much worse with little prospect of anything being better.

Some folks want to hasten "a revolution" because (a) they think it's going to happen 'eventually' anyway so might as well get it over with, and (b) they think they can come out 'on top' and set up the new system the way they want it (because the current Enlightenment-based system(s) suck in their opinion):

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment

> Some folks want to hasten "a revolution"

well some folks are doing that all the time, but only sometimes does it take. what's the difference between one time and another?

>Nobody starts a revolution for funsies,

They do when they're convinced it's a walk in the park.

See the Spanish civil war, which was a two week coup by military worried about conspiracy theories turned into a years long war turned into a 40 year dictatorship (with decades of hunger).

> Nobody starts a revolution for funsies

I mean... we're 4 years into a little Russian jaunt that was supposed to be over in a matter of weeks. And a certain someone just picked a war with Iran pretty much for funsies

I don't want to underestimate the level of arrogance/stupidity that might be involved in sparking a revolution at this point

I wouldn't call either of those a revolution; they're both top-down directed foreign offensives. A revolution is generally domestic and sparked by widespread popular internal unrest, even if it's sometimes led by elites.

Yes, my point is more that entering into a war for funsies is a similarly stupid decision, and we have a whole bunch of guardrails that are supposed to prevent it, but somehow it just keeps on happening

> we have a whole bunch of guardrails that are supposed to prevent it, but somehow it just keeps on happening

Yes but all of these wars are generally much smaller in scope and less frequent than they were 80+ years ago. The current world order has absolutely reduced the amount of warfare happening in the world as well as a conflict’s tendency to increase in size to include more and more belligerent nations. We just don’t see “big” nations duking it out like they used to, though I also should acknowledge that in the grand scheme of things 80 years isn’t that long so the current situation is far more fragile than I think any of us like to believe.

I don’t think anybody is claiming war has been eradicated and I am certainly not looking to diminish the scale and suffering that has happened over the last century when conflict has emerged. But there’s no doubt things are “calmer“ than they have been historically. That’s why all the wars that have been happening over the last 5 to 10 years have been very alarming. It’s bucking the trend.

It is easy to see that South Korea is much better off now as a democracy than under the generals. It is easy to see the Philippines are better off than under Marcos. What countries move away from democracy to become better?

Counterpoint: no matter how bad you think your life is, it's nowhere near as bad as it would be if a civil war occurred in your country.

Even people living a quite miserable life have a lot to lose.

This is obviously true now in places that aren't currently revolting, which is why they aren't revolting. But it can definitely get bad enough that it's worth gambling on the chance of a better life (as well as the chance of a worse life) vs. a guaranteed chance of a horrible life, or imminent death.

In the American context, life is pretty great. Been all over the world. It could get better here but it's still by and large pretty great.

My point wasn't to suggest the options were "hell for no reason" or "continue to live a great life" so to speak, but that the probability of "life gets better" as an outcome is one of the least likely. The most likely outcomes, certainly in a single lifetime, are death, destruction, food shortages, roving gangs of gunmen, religious theocracies, dictatorships, and more.

The US for example is in no position or need of a "revolution". Reform, sure. Most revolutionaries are just in it for their own power grab, at your expense.

Times have changed since then but the first Chechen war heavily works against the theory of your second paragraph. Instrumental was their seizure of anti-tank and heavy weaponry during ambushes of Russian forces entering into Grozny and other chokepoints. Eventually they used these weapons to capture even more heavy weapons and then won a few years of outright independence.

Right but seizing military equipment and building your own are very different things.

It didn't exactly matter in the end. Russia eventually encircled them with artillery and pounded them until they gave up and brokered a deal. Their fighting skills and spirit have since been added as an asset on the Russian military's balance sheet.

it doesn't really matter in the end because the human species will one day be extinct.

would the chechens be in their position now had they never fought? impossible to say, counter-factual conditionals are all unconditionally true. though i'm not sure why you'd assume so...

In exchange for two brutal wars they got 9 years of de facto independence. That's not even very long.

You dont need counterfactuals to ask if it was worth it or compare 9 years to the age of the universe.

Armed revolutions are often lionized and glorified because they form part of most countries' national mythos - the binding agent holding together most national identities.

But, the ugly truth is that most of them are just a tragic waste of human life. Chechnya was very much that.

> You dont need counterfactuals to ask if it was worth it or compare 9 years to the age of the universe.

yes you do.

to say something was bad to do is to say it would've been better to have not, and that is a counterfactual.

It’s practically impossible for an indigenous insurgency to be effective without state backing, so the real question is who would be willing provide such support and under what circumstances. Similar to how France supported US independence as a way to hurt the UK. Or the UK supporting Native Americans to attack the US (war of 1812).

Being able to effectively organize enough to create home grown weapons and fight an insurgency is a signal to a 3rd party that you are organized and committed and worthy of further support. From there it can snowball.

Or worse. Neither your side nor your opponents side wins, an unknown threat swoops in and takes over and now you have a drastically worse system than either “side” would have at least tried to implement. Instability is a great opportunity for Russia to swoop on in, or China. The next American Civil War hopefully never happens because it will end worse than anyone realizes.

Everyone with the “only solution is revolution” mentality needs to read this comment. Anyone salivating over/romanticizing armed conflict has never experienced it and can’t fathom how awful it is. I know I can’t, and that’s why I don’t want to find out.

Anyone salivating over/romanticizing surrendering to a dictatorship hellbent on committing genocide has never experienced it and can't fathom how awful it is. I know I can't, and that's why I don't want to find out.

With attitudes like this, Americans might just go from exporting revolutions to domestic consumption within a generation!

So there are only 2 stark options?

From my experiences with the YPG in the Syrian Civil War --- You'd be surprised how many people that have seen combat absolutely loved it. There was one guy that would go in a state of ecstasy while being shot at, literally expressing happily "ha ha they try to shoot me" and this is a guy who had seen many of his comrades die. Once you accept you are dead it's actually far less mundane than normal life, while at the same time you have a fairly straightforward sense of meaning and purpose. Plus life is much simpler -- 99% of (that) war is just standing guard, smoking cigarette, drinking tea, moving sandbags, etc, much less complicated than say something like trying to juggle a dentistry practice while driving the 2 kids to school events and then going home to patch drywall on the house.

There's a reason why Hemingway wrote "There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter." Going home just to have a toddler scream at you for the wrong color cup or walking into the grocery store and just effortless picking one of 1000 brands of cereal just seems so -- hollow -- afterwards.

This is a large component of the alt-right, isn't it.

> much less complicated than say something like trying to juggle a dentistry practice while driving the 2 kids to school events and then going home to patch drywall on the house

There is genuinely a group of people who'd rather fantasize about mass murder than do chores. Every now and again one of them actually picks up a gun. Then some school kids never have to go to events, or anywhere, ever again.

I have some sympathy for people who can't adapt to peace. When I was a kid one of my neighbours was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Calvert ; I knew him as an old man who drank too much and never talked about the war. This is not an excuse to restart the war.

>This is a large component of the alt-right, isn't it.

I couldn't tell you. YPG was dominantly left-wing and looked up to the former communist 'Apo'. I imagine the phenomenon is fairly politically universal.

>There is genuinely a group of people who'd rather fantasize about mass murder than do chores. Every now and again one of them actually picks up a gun. Then some school kids never have to go to events, or anywhere, ever again.

Yes there are people like that. Although most of the Kurds I met started fantasizing about fighting ISIS only after Islamic theocrats starting murdering and raping their population. I doubt many of them who gained a taste for combat were doing chores one day and started fantasizing they could live under a tyrannical regime so they'd have an "excuse" to "restart" the war.

Personally I don't think soldiers in need of a war have to fantasize too hard to come up with a morally acceptable outlet. I wouldn't look down on those who fought against the Russians in Ukraine or against ISIS in Mali because they need an outlet for their escape from civil life.

re right vs left: the usual metaphor here is red-brown alliance.

I think the point of the hurt locker was to show us how unhinged that existence is, at the end of the day.

nobody needs to read a comment, tbh, any comment.

revolutions are like earthquakes or pandemics: created by forces beyond our control and a matter of when, not if. people romanticizing or anti-romanticizing armed conflict online doesn't even enter the frame <zizekian sniff>.

I think the last couple of elections have shown us how powerful online discourse can be. I don’t think it makes sense to pretend internet discourse doesn’t bleed heavily into the real world. Look at the influence QAnon, for instance, has had on the MAGA movement and the Republican Party at large.

i think exactly the opposite and your comment literally made me laugh out loud, but there's a wide range of views out there.

I understand we disagree here but telling someone you’re laughing at their views is incredibly rude. If you don’t want to have a respectful discussion then we can both just move on.

sorry, i really didn't mean to offend you. i really didn't convey the tone i was going for well.

what i've learned in the period of time between the last couple elections is how astroturfed online discourse is, and when that astroturfing fails to manage opinion effectively--i'm thinking here about the israeli genocide against the palestinians--cruder forms of supression are used. and then if public opinion continues to be "wrong", well, just nothing happens, the button of public opinion isn't wired to anything.

online discourse has been shown to be powerless.

For anyone that thinks a "civil war" scenario might be fun, I recommend watching Alex Garland's 'Civil War' - a highly realistic portrait of what an inter-US war would actually look like.

I did not find that movie to be realistic at all but I can see why other people do. I think it it’s far more likely to be a CIA faction led ‘attempted coup’ similar to the 2016 on in Turkey. I think Turkeys coup was likely run by their secret police as a way to flush out dissidents and heavily suppress them. So I would expect a Jan 6 but with more of a real actionable plan created by informants and doomed to quickly fail followed by a de-MAGAfication program similar to de-Baathification in Iraq or de-Nazification in Germany.

> Most of it is pure fantasy including the idea that 3D printed missiles are going to start striking US strike aircraft at 40k feet

Nobody is really talking about hitting supersonic jets at 40k feet, nor even destroying a fully-armoured tank. More about making your opponent think twice about deploying close air support, and have move cautiously with their APCs and supply trucks.

We can see some version of this playing out in Ukraine, and I guess it is possible that FPV drones have pretty much invalidated the role a DIY missile launcher would play

I whish I coule upvote you more than once: as shitty as your country may feel to you, it's not remotely close to how bad it would be in the advent of a civil war (which come pretty much after any revolution).

Even if “your side” won in the end, you'd have lost a lot in the process.

In order for that to happen, there has to be a way for regular people to live good lives without needing a revolution. Unfortunately, the Epstein class has and is doing everything in their power to get rid of those alternatives.

America is not going to have a Tahrir Square. It just about managed Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter.

no one knows.

Fuck that. South Korea constantly worked toward progress and went from generals to democracy.

America won a Civil war against traitors like the Epstein class, but we want to just give up today because democracy is hard and what, hope the new dictator class is more benevolent? When has that ever been the case?

The US is ours, Democracy is ours. That is why they constantly undermine it. Why would we give up the stronger position that is easier to win from just because they keep trying to undermine it? That makes zero sense.

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