That's the first thing that will be tried, but to be truly successful the "buy in" needs to happen equally as much from the people that are on the verge of picking up pitchforks. It also needs to be an authentic political action. Unfortunately our politics in the USA has gone into profound dysfunction. Something ugly is going to happen, I think. I don't know when, but it's been on the way for quite some time. That guy in the oval office is just a symptom of a really deep problem.
> Unrest is what happens in Venezuela or Yemen, etc
Not necessarily!
There are a number of really bad things that precede unrest, usually a collapse of systems that people rely on. The folks in Venezuela didn't want unrest either, but when your currency becomes worthless within a span of a couple years... bad things are going to happen.
I only hope more people woke up to this fact and form a critical mass but I doubt it.
It does little good to send people thousands of dollars if when that dries up, and it would, there are no above board jobs to go back to.
There is no reason assistance to people has to go through business. The reason governments do that is because leaders own equity in the current hierarchy and definitely don’t want to disturb that by giving the lower classes leverage to demand better terms.
The way to go is to protect workers during transition from one job to another by providing them with decent unemployment benefits, training, etc., not bail out lousy executives over and over.
I swear I have yet to meet a capitalist who actually believes in "capitalism"...
True Believer has lots of insight into the circumstances than lead to unrest.
On the other hand, some societies can descend quite a bit and be okay with going into more or less survival mode: witness Russia.
So I wouldn't call it a good example of being okay. It made it through that political unrest without blowing up as a whole (but with plenty of local crises, like Chechnya)... but it was not smooth sailing at all.
The exploding inequality and continuous safety net collapse in the united states could very well be a similar powder keg waiting for a match.
They’ve had them in France, they’ve had them elsewhere. That’s a kind of unrest but not the kind I think we’re talking about.
I think what we’re talking about is the kind that results in overturning of the power structure. I don’t think we’re near that. I think 99.9% of the people do not want that outside of people on the extreme left and extreme right, interestingly for quite different reasons.
As Thucydides wrote, the tyranny that the Athenian empire imposed on others it finally imposed on itself. "Unrest" in Latin America is caused by USA's off-the-leash unsupervised services. Venezuela's government is taking better care of its citizens than our government is taking of us, in this current health emergency. This despite the crippling sanctions and attempted coups d'état we've perpetrated against them. Don't believe the war media; I recommend The Grayzone. [0]
Although, of course, for the last year or so not even the war media attempts to defend what we're doing in Yemen.
I've seen nothing to corroborate this.
>Don't believe the war media; I recommend The Grayzone.
Here's a video from last year of Grayzone founder Max Blumenthal cheerfully receiving honors from Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who has ruled that country by violence and decree since 2015:
https://twitter.com/NicolasMaduro/status/1156588153945427970
I do trust The Grayzone to have an anti-U.S. editorial position. I do not trust them to be objective.
If a USA president had been subject to massive bias from nearly every news media corporation, he might be tempted to honor an independent news outlet that attempted to report with objectivity. Oh, wait... that actually happened this year, at the "State of the Union" speech.
When we fall into the trap of running to wikipedia every time we're confused by world events, we can't be surprised that the war media continues to lead us around by the nose. If we step back and see the pattern, we begin to discount every story that leads us closer to yet another stupid war. Every day this month, it has been obvious to non-Americans how deficient our system is. Every other nation on earth has responded more reasonably and more effectively to this virus. Venezuela is among those nations.
Usually unrest is not decided so naively like that.
For example, you can organize and take political action just fine, but your larger encumbered opponent might want to start unrest for you https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair#May_Day_parad...
This has been tried for many years with little result. People in my social circles have grown fed-up and tired with the U.S. political system, especially those who supported Bernie Sanders in 2016 only to watch entrenched power-brokers deny him the candidacy. Some allege similar interference in 2020 (see podcast with former Bernie staffers):
https://soundcloud.com/seeking-derangements/sd7-the-bernie-p...
>unrest is a medicine that is in most instances worse than the disease.
Millions of increasingly desperate and frustrated Americans may not be able to agree with you. People are never purely rational actors, and beat-down emotional people are among the least rational. The LA Riot's immediate outcome was arguably worse than its proximate cause, but nevertheless people rioted.
A better alternative is the less sexy but more productive political action obviously with buy in from the power brokers.
Unrest is what happens in Venezuela or Yemen, etc. it doesn’t always have to be like that as those are extreme; never the less unrest is a medicine that is in most instances worse than the disease.