On revolutionary fantasies
Noted Bernie Sanders supporter Susan Sarandon had this to say about the prospect of a Donald J. Trump presidency:
Christopher Hayes
✔ ??@chrislhayes
"Some people think that if Trump is elected that will bring the revolution." -- @SusanSarandon #inners
5:36 PM - 28 Mar 2016
Let me tell you a bit about revolution.
As anyone who reads my profile on Twitter knows, I'm a son of Cuban émigrés.
Both my mother and father were sick of the Batista dictatorship. My mother was sanguine about the possibility of a Castro takeover. My father was a bit more perspicacious.
The Revolution happened, and within a couple of years my lower middle class father had his barber shop expropriated by the Communists. Private enterprise was an enemy of the people.
My family escaped Cuba, but I have no doubt that the stress brought about by the loss of of his livelihood and fleeing to a new land led to his ill health later in his life.
I have pictures of my dad when he lived in Cuba. He was a big, strapping man, full of life and vigor. Within a year of arriving in New York City, he suffered a heart attack and stroke. I never knew the man in those pictures.
People like Ms. Sarandon who speak cavalierly about "revolution" are the same type of people on the Right who speak about sending troops to every brush fire war across the globe. They have no knowledge on what they're speaking about, but they think their fantasies accord them a special insight.
Revolutions are brutish, violent things. Revolutions are more often like Petrograd 1918 than Berlin 1989. Unless you have no other choice, they're not things to be wished for.
The likes of Ms. Sarandon think that we're like Paris in 1789, pushed to the brink, ready for revolt.
We're not. We're the richest country in the world. Aside from the screeching on the fringes, most people are content with their lives. And the idea that a country which can't muster above a 40% turnout in off-year elections would be ready to take to the streets to overthrow a Trump presidency is laughable in the extreme.
If those of us on the left were more concerned with voting in every election rather than engaging in revolutionary fantasies, we wouldn't be in the current parlous state. People like Ms. Sarandon prattle on about revolution; it won't be their bodies on the front line.
http://www.thepeoplesview.net/main/2016/3/28/on-revolutionary-fantasies
= new reply since forum marked as read
