I seem to be having the same conversation every day. 

Now that we are officially in a depression, (at least, according to the New York Times), now that Rush Limbaugh is the leader of the conservative party, now that the European Union is being fractured by its inability to determine a response, everyone I speak to seems to be concerned with economics, forces of history, and revolution. If history repeats itself, then what? Will we see the rise of fascist movements in Europe as in the 30s? Will we see the rise of an increasingly reactionary fundamentalist right wing in America? How will history rear its head in the face of an ever deepening and increasingly terrifying economic crisis? 

In "The Radicalism of the American Revolution" Gordon S. Wood makes a distinction between revolutions such as the French--with its blood baths and storming of manors--and the American--with George Washington, in a very polite wig, standing stern and one-legged on a boat. The French Revolution was a revolution of government, yes, but it was primarily a revolution of society. It was aimed at social structures, disparities of wealth, and the oppression of a class. The American Revolution was less about social injustices (big glaring fact: they didn't care about eliminating their society's biggest injustices--slavery and the lack of rights for women) and was centered more purely in the political realm. It was a deeply intellectual event, a constitutional defense of American rights against British encroachments. Wood writes, "The white American colonists were not an oppressed people; they had no crushing imperial chains to throw off. In fact, the colonists knew they were freer, more equal, more prosperous and less burdened with cumbersome feudal and monarchial restraints than any other part of mankind in the eighteenth century." It seemed to be about a new kind of government, not about a new kind of society. (But then Wood goes on to advance a thesis arguing that this political revolution was in fact deeply and fundamentally socially radical--just in a unique way. Here I am bringing up a point that is actually contradictory to his thesis, forgive me. But read it, it won a Pulitzer, its great). 

So. the point. Americans tend to repeat the mantra of "only 2 more years" when they are displeased with their political leadership rather than rally to the barricades. Are term limits that awesome? Yes. In part. We are equipped with a document that was permanently designed to be greater than any given government. It is a document that endures and that provides us with the hope that, come the next election, things could get better. But, significantly, we are also a country where consumer spending accounts for 70 percent of GDP. This number blows my mind. Our economy thrives on luxury, on people buying things they don't need, on people constantly accumulating more. This acquisitive commodification is insidious. It leads to apathy. As long as I can Tivo Gossip Girl and eat take out, I'm not going to get into too big a snit about Iraq and the looming train wreck our entitlement programs are about to cause. We're individualistic and as long as our personal needs are met, we'll care, but we wont really. This isn't uniquely American, we have just been blessed into complacency. So, I think our aversion to the barricades is two-fold--it is located in the foundations of our government and everything we understand about civics, but it is also the product of the luxury in which we generally live (and yes, there is great poverty in America, I don't deny this atrocity, but in terms of the rest of the world, we are pretty well off). So then, what happens when the latter gets threatened? What happens when a greater number of our citizens not only cannot buy that flat screen, but cannot provide a place for themselves to live? What happens when our basic needs are not met? I think everyone is afraid that this is where we are headed. Many families are there now. We have all the ingredients for a revolution--economic crisis, coupled with a widening class differential, and increasingly apparent crimes committed by one class upon another. And, as we are told constantly, thank you media, Its Only Going To Get Worse. 

Frankly, I'm hoping for revolution. Not the violent, government toppling kind (I heart the Constitution, btw). But I hope for a drastic and decisive alteration in how we, as a society, function. People are inherently averse to change. It takes a crisis to prompt action. The bigger the crisis the greater the change. The fear is that the change will be reactionary rather than progressive. But I suspect that the direction is determined by who's talking. Scary reactionary movements tend to fill voids (the whole 'when there is no water in the desert people drink the sand' concept), and we are lucky to have a fairly progressive government talking right now. I hope for an energy revolution that will be every bit as significant as the technological--or better still--the industrial. I hope we learn that because we can no longer financially support overseas wars and imperial engagements, we will stop engaging and focus our foreign policy on defense and humanitarian aid. I hope that we will inspire a national zeitgeist focused more on service and necessity rather than individualism and acquisitiveness. I hope the economic crisis can be seen more as opportunity than as devastation, as a leveling that marks a way to move forward instead of reach backward. 

I thought the Washington Post had a nice pairing of Op-Eds today, both of which address this issue but with differing foci and spins. Here they are. I like history. The end.