This is sociologically tested. Economic inequality/material insecurity has a negative relationship to elite-challenging behaviors and liberty aspiration. Economic insecurity also has strong connections to increases in conservatism and authoritarianism. There’s a reason fascism tends to get stronger in economic depressions.
People who are fighting to survive just do not have the same resources for mobilization and action that those who have some level of basic assurance that they won’t lose what little they have trying to find the time and energy to seek improvements.
If you want change, the best bet is a foundation of education, support, and security. Burning everything down will just kill your own people inside the house.
brimleymuffins: If that's the case, I'm a white leftist who voted Clinton, but I understand the rage. Shocked by a Marxist who was thrilled about Trump, until I realized he believed it would spark the revolution in the USA. Playing with people's lives for kicks.
broadlybrazen:
I am so fucking DONE with the (predominantly white) entitled leftists who advance that argument.
A friend of mine articulated it beautifully:
“A Trump presidency is /highly/ unlikely to inspire The People to finally recognize the injustice of our social and economic order and rise up as one to destroy it, etc. Historically speaking, this idea really doesn’t have much or any grounding. The worse things get, the more time and energy and money and social capital and so on people have to expend just to get through a day and protect themselves and their loved ones. They will have even less of a chance to get involved in creating structural change; they will be even more wholly swallowed by urgent personal concerns.
The largest, most significant, most successful protest movements in the US in the 20th century emerged during an era of rising prosperity and financial security and falling income inequality. That’s not a coincidence.
I reject the leftist trope that things need to get worse before they get better. Putting aside the ethical problems with this claim, there just isn’t any evidence for it.”
We’re already see this play out, horrifyingly. Last week, progressive Democrats were saying things like “remember, after we win, we hold ourselves and our candidate accountable; we’ll do better, we’ll make real changes.”
Today, people are talking about surviving without health insurance, without life-saving medication. About surviving deportation and families being torn apart. About violence and jubilant demonstrations from neo-Nazis. About what happens when we lose the last sixty years of hard-won, hard-fought social progress and social safety nets. About labor rights and protections.
We will not have energy to fix our flawed liberalism, because every scrap of energy, power, and influence will instead go towards bare survival.
Last week, we were talking about how much we could change the status quo for the better.
Today, we are desperately reaching for ways to keep the status quo – to keep healthcare, legal protections for LGBTQ folks, reproductive rights.
Last week, the status quo wasn’t good enough. Today, we know we’ll be incredibly fortunate if we can keep it.
That’s what radical leftists don’t want to understand and that’s what they don’t care about because it is never ever EVER their lives and their human rights at stake.