Wow, I agree and disagree. How to know when the kitchen is on fire? Most revolutions of the past 200 years have been a disaster. We live in a constitutional democracy that supports incremental improvement. The alternative is almost certainly, probabilistically, worse. Entropy and all that.

Well if you look into the kitchen and see smoke and flames then you have a fire in your kitchen...I cannot understand why you think this a difficult decision to make.

Where do you get the idea that most revolutions have been a a disaster? Your concept that only incremental improvement is valid seems counterfactual and naive. You are just dismissing anything that you do not understand out of hand without even considering it.

I think the point people are trying to make is that while revolutions can be good, most of the time they have been bad. Very bad. From the Reign of Terror, to the November Revolution, to Pinochet, to the Khmer Rouge, to Rwandans in central Africa, life has not been good for commoners during and after revolutions. (And I'm being kind by not listing the really bad ones.)

Add to all this the fact that they fail with alarming regularity, and America's collective lack of enthusiasm for that option is perfectly understandable. I mean, historically speaking, for the average person, revolutions either failed, and you were worse off. Or revolutions succeeded, and you were worse off.

It's so bad that, again, people are even a bit skeptical even of low risk options like tax reform and stronger unions. Right now, people seem to view anything that even appears to move away from the status quo as dangerous because of the admittedly horrid track record of revolutions, combined with the off the wall proclamations and actions of certain groups opposed to the élites. (Believe it or not, you don't allay peoples' fears of a reign of terror by shooting up churches and Walmarts for instance.)