"Nothing Less than a Revolution"

Here's Paul Street's latest, "Nothing Less than a Revolution Can Save Us".   Something I and many others have been saying for a long time.   Good read for those with time, he mentions the study published in 2017 by Benjamin Page (Northwestern) and Marin Gilens (Princeton) basically proving through rigorous analysis that the United States political system is not a democracy.

"As Page and Gilens showed in their exhaustive 2017 study Democracy in America:

“the best evidence indicates that the wishes of ordinary Americans…have…little or no impact on the making of federal government policy. Wealthy individuals and organized interest groups—especially business corporations—have…much more political clout…the general public [is] … virtually powerless . . . The will of majorities is…thwarted by the affluent and the well-organized, who block popular policy proposals and enact special favors for themselves . . …Majorities of Americans favor specific policies designed to deal with such problems as climate change, gun violence, an untenable immigration system, inadequate public schools, and crumbling bridges and highways . . .Large majorities of America favor various programs to help provide jobs, increase wages, help the unemployed, provide universal medical insurance, ensure decent retirement pensions, and pay for such programs with progressive taxes. Most Americans also want to cut ‘corporate welfare.’ Yet the wealthy, business groups, and structural gridlock have mostly blocked such new policies [and programs] (emphasis added).”[2]

https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/08/09/nothing-less-than-a-revolution-can-save-us/

Street rightly notes that it's the way it's supposed to be, we've all been duped.  At least most of us.  He also points out that many notable citizens from John Dewey to Eugene Debs to W.E.B. Dubois have warned the rest of us what we're us against.

"This is so not new. Democracy, it is worth recalling, was the Founding Fathers’ ultimate nightmare. They designed a constitutional order meant precisely to keep popular sovereignty at bay, advancing a definition of “liberty” that revolved around the protection of property rights (the propertied elite) against the property-less and property-poor majority."

He indicates that the Revolution won't be pretty, many will die, but that's just the way it has to be.  

"Taking it down will be no walk in the park. Many will die, sadly; vicious regimes of class rule like ours don’t just disappear without a bloody fight. But there is no way to a decent future without a protracted and massive, death-defying popular uprising."

I'm not sure I agree with that.  I know most people when they think of revolution they think of violence, death, sacrifice.  Certainly those that rule us are very capable of making it this way. But I still think there's a way we can have a successful revolution without massive violence from the police/military state.  I've elaborated on that before. 

Either way, Street's right, the only way for major change is to first change who rules us from them to us.  If we can't do that, we can't do anything significant to help ourselves. 

The funny thing is, the younger generations are much more willing to consider a revolution than the older ones, particularly the baby boomers, and especially the spoiled baby boomers.  In fact, they're the ones constantly bashing revolution advocates by saying it's impossible and will include violence and all that.  They're also the ones most likely to participate in our fraud undemocratic elections, thereby perpetuating the system that enslaves us.  Funny how many of the older among us are also the most chickenshit when it comes to getting their hands dirty.