Comment Re:OWS was a joke (Score 1) 584
Far more revolutions have ended quickly, with the rebels imprisoned or executed.
Absolutely. Revolution is hard and dangerous. So stop saying you are for a revolution that will kill millions of people unless you are really, really serious about it. So far, I haven't seen anyone that I would call serious about it in the US.
Some folks came close to being serious in 1968-1970 between the riot in Chicago and Kent State. There were too few people to really accomplish much and the people that were really committed to revolution were just a little too far gone to get anything done other than make a few bombs and generally blow themselves rather than others up.
What an occupy movement could have done is to stage a 1968-style sit-in protest and block business from getting done on Wall Street. Sure, after the first couple of rounds with the police arresting hundreds of people it might have gotten more and more difficult, but this would have forced both government and business to stop what they were doing - business of the day - and focus on protecting infrastructure. Armed guards everywhere, ID checks at every door, security, security and more security. The result would have been a lot of security and not a lot of real work getting done - hence at least a part of their objective achieved. It would take more than 30-40 people to do this - it would have taken hundreds.
Look, supposedly this was a movement by "the 99%" against 1% of the country's elite. If that were true there would be no way it couldn't succeed because at some point the guards (part of the 99%, after all) would be joining with the protesters. Once that happened, it would all be over. That's what happened in Russia - the army and police stopped fighting against the protesters and joined with them.
Now, to be real, it is very very unlikely anything like that could happen in the US. People subconciously know which side of the bread is buttered and that their interested lie in the status quo. Some people would actually figure out that an economic collapse like what OWS seemed to be going for would result in millions, hundreds of millions or even billions of people dying. So while it might seem like a good idea for a few moments, it would be quickly shown to be a disaster. So it wouldn't really work. One thing the American Revolution didn't do was try to wrench the social order too much - that is what leads to a lot of people dying. Again, as shown by Russia and a bunch of other places.
An important point is in Russia the elite fled the country. In France today they have decided to tax the rich to support the government - a futile policy that Mr. Obama seems to be leaning towards. Of course, anyone with portable money in France is looking for somewhere to go - check out Google. Stir up things enough in the US and similar things will happen here.
You want a peaceful revolution? First thing right off is don't try to destroy the social order and don't try to collapse the economy that is feeding 300 million people.