Staving Off Revolution, by Charles Hugh Smith

Can revolution be staved off? From Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.com:

If the leadership chooses happy-story PR and toothless reforms for show in the hopes it will all blow over, these subterfuges have the potential to push dissatisfaction beyond the point of control.

Whatever else we might say or think about the leadership class, they tend to have a keen sense of self-preservation. The ability to issue optimistic visions of sunshine and unicorns with a straight face is valuable, to be sure, but so is the ability to sense that the BS is no longer working and something must be done to stave off a potentially career-ending collapse of confidence.

As a general rule, the ability to maintain a delusional confidence that it’s all going to work out just fine tends to end very poorly for the leadership class. However sincerely it may be uttered, let them eat brioche doesn’t resolve the extreme asymmetries that generate revolutionary disorder. Something more is required, something that either reduces the asymmetries of wealth and power or gives the appearance of doing so.

Staving off revolution requires some action that benefits those for whom the status quo is no longer working. While borrowing and distributing “free money” works for awhile, this profligacy generates its own destabilizing dynamics, and so eventually reducing the asymmetries of wealth and power requires the leadership to take a chunk out of the perquisites and spoils of the financial elite.

Since the leadership class is either beholden to the financial elite or has dual membership in both clubs, the leaders are quickly declared “traitors to their class” even as they are acting to stave off the overthrow of the predatory financial elite that pushed asymmetries to destabilizing extremes.

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2 responses to “Staving Off Revolution, by Charles Hugh Smith

  1. Pingback: Staving Off Revolution, by Charles Hugh Smith | STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC – Additional survival tricks

  2. Counter Revolution is the way.

    Revolutions are always hijacked by the so called “elites” and the only good one is the original American Revolution with some of the most brilliant people ever to live, the Founder Fathers.

    We sorely need another one but everyone loves muh comfort or fears what is on the other side.

    What little faith they have .

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