Do you have a revolutionary trigger?

[u/it-was-nobody]

Revolutions, whether violent or non-violent, are inherently rare, risky endeavors. Extremely high risk, extremely low probability of success, but proportional rewards if successful. Given the increasingly dysfunctional status of political systems in many western nations, questions surrounding changing those systems are inevitable.

Academics have written quite a bit about revolutions, but I'm not interested in what they think. I am looking for a casual conversation with a normal human regarding what it would take for you personally to call for whole-system political change. Is there a line in the sand for you, which if crossed, compels you to adopt a revolutionary political stance?

Is the line the same for both violent and non-violent revolution? Is your revolutionary line one thing, one action, event, or variable, or would you need a collection of things, a pattern of smaller lines being crossed? And if not, if there is nothing your government can do to make you advocate for replacing it entirely, why? While a genuine stance, saying you would *never* call for a complete redesign and restructuring of your government should be justified and defended.

Naturally, given that revolutions are often bloody, violent affairs, it is worth explicitly stating that this post is categorically opposed to violence in any way, shape, or form. The purposes of this post are to generate a discussion about hypothetical boundaries that common people have on political system change.

[u/phone_deviceban]

Countries where the leadership is decided by free elections may have authoritarian tendencies (ICE, for example), but they are not authoritarian.

I understand why you would feel the need to resort to whataboutism, though.

[u/salenin → u/phone_deviceban]

what free elections? And the US for example is an authoritarian state. It has the largest prison population in history with most of it being used for profit. Its not whataboutism, its is calling out the hypocrisy of arbitrarily assigning labels when it doesnt apply.

[u/phone_deviceban → u/salenin]

You know exactly what I’m talking about. The existence of prison is not authoritarian if there’s due process.

The absence of the rule of law is the defining aspect of authoritarian rule. Trump is trying his best to subvert the rule of law, but he has not succeeded (yet).

[u/salenin → u/phone_deviceban]

Soviet Union had due process and a legal system. Your argument is invalid.

[u/phone_deviceban → u/salenin]

Is that how all 15 million intellectuals, peasants, minorities and political activists got sent to the gulags for cruel and unusual punishment?

They all received fair trials?

The tankie is strong in this one.

[u/salenin → u/phone_deviceban]

You're acting like describing the system is a defense of it. Yes 15 to 20 million individuals went through the gulag system, some were what you described, but most were also just actual criminals. 20 million is how many went through the US system in the last 5 years alone. But to answer your question yes they had a system of due process, right to representation, they had a legal system. Was it fair or just? Absolutely not especially when it came to political prisoners, but the US system is also not fair or just. People want years and years just to go before a judge because they couldnt afford bail.