Quote Originally Posted by tcaudilllg View Post


Actually THAT is naive. There is real danger of a general uprising when people feel 1) that the people in power are not listening, and 2) that there is a power above them which seems out of reach.

The SCOTUS majority is one such power.

The endurance of the conservative majority on the court, coupled with the idiotic voting patterns of Americans (things are going good with the Democrat... let's choose a Republican to keep it going! And oh look: TAX CUTS!! DDD) suggests that the chances of obtaining a new liberal majority on the court are slim.

Liberals are sensitive to the use of pressure to shape emotions -- they're the smart guys after all -- and will not long abide it.

The right tends to respect authority. The left respects it only when it serves its ends.
I stand by my statement

I have not stated that there would not be any uprisings (Britain for example had it's biggest riots in 30 years last year). I stated that you were naive in thinking that any deviation from a continuous and linear social progression is apocalyptic. This was in response to the hyperbole of your opening post. A riot is not the end of western civilisation, general discontentment is not apocalyptic, class war will not wipe out the history and culture of it's civilisation. Societies are far more robust than that, you only need to look at the last hundred years or so and the political changes that have taken place in most countries (I'm thinking Russia, Germany, Britain,Cambodia, Japan,) the ruling politics changed (sometimes sharply) but the civilisation and the culture continued. Was the American civil war the end of western civilisation? No. Were either of the world wars? No. Granted they resulted in massive changes, but in the grand scheme of things they are adjustments.
And this is considering the most extreme outcomes, one thing that is perhaps of note (and please be aware I am no particular student of politics) is that you live in a democratic nation, with stable and progressive institutions. Despite the undeniable influence of those already in
power and those with wealth, there will always be a tipping point of critical mass where dissatisfaction calls for a change. In those nations without proper democratic institutions, this is in the form of revolutions, which either succeed or are crushed, but unless a population is particularly polarised the democratic process within western nations are sufficient to reflect the changes of political sentiment. To get into political office, it matters how much money you raise but more importantly it matters how many votes you get. This is not to say that there won't be uprisings, you need to look no further than Greece, or even here in the UK where last summer we had the biggest riots for 30 years. But considering long term trends none of this is unusual.

I would also like to point out that most of the information that you provide to support your arguements are from online sorces, I would suggest that the way in which you select and interpret information is a clear casse of confirmation bias. Perhaps a more accurate way of gauging sentiment is to actually listen to people in general. Despite this forum not being entirely representative of the whole of western civilisation, in terms of age, insanity etc, it is still useful as an estimated microcosm, with a large number of people from across the political spectrum, from a large number of countries.

If you want to be objective in your predictions, perhaps this is a good place to start.

How many people here do you think are about to embark on a general uprising?
Who would they direct their uprising against?
What would be there demands?
How would they want to end the western civilisation?