> If its a revolution you probably aren't hitting them 40k in the air, your hitting them when they park similar to how Ukraine sent drones after bombers behind enemy lines.

Right, and you don't need to conjure up anti-tank missiles (sure those could be nice to have) to do this. You could seize a bulldozer and drive it into the airframes, or just shoot them to bits. At this point if you have access to American jets on the ground to destroy them, you've already lost the manufacturing capacity to repair them.

> There is also no reason to assume what starts out as your side will remain such, revolutions are crazy risky.

Absolutely. Robespierre learned that lesson. Putin is learning that lesson from the perspective of starting a war but not being able to predict the outcome. The status quo is pretty great and we should be very careful and guarded about changing that, especially through violent means. Most things that are problems today can be resolved through legislation and the existing democratic mechanisms. Throwing that out (not suggesting you are suggesting that) would be almost certainly profoundly unwise. It's very much like the Monty Hall Problem.

> In the situations a revolution comes to exist, it is because life for everyone is already getting much, much worse with little prospect of anything being better.

Some folks want to hasten "a revolution" because (a) they think it's going to happen 'eventually' anyway so might as well get it over with, and (b) they think they can come out 'on top' and set up the new system the way they want it (because the current Enlightenment-based system(s) suck in their opinion):

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment

In the American context, life is pretty great. Been all over the world. It could get better here but it's still by and large pretty great.

My point wasn't to suggest the options were "hell for no reason" or "continue to live a great life" so to speak, but that the probability of "life gets better" as an outcome is one of the least likely. The most likely outcomes, certainly in a single lifetime, are death, destruction, food shortages, roving gangs of gunmen, religious theocracies, dictatorships, and more.

The US for example is in no position or need of a "revolution". Reform, sure. Most revolutionaries are just in it for their own power grab, at your expense.

> Nobody starts a revolution for funsies

They definitely do, see the 1900s.

I think modern day Americans do not understand how bad war is because they’ve been engaged in it for nearly 30 years continuously without directly feeling the consequences.

>Nobody starts a revolution for funsies,

They do when they're convinced it's a walk in the park.

See the Spanish civil war, which was a two week coup by military worried about conspiracy theories turned into a years long war turned into a 40 year dictatorship (with decades of hunger).

Counterpoint: no matter how bad you think your life is, it's nowhere near as bad as it would be if a civil war occurred in your country.

Even people living a quite miserable life have a lot to lose.

Exactly. Revolutions are awful things that are only defensible if the conditions are brutal enough. And even then, there has to be the caution that the revolution can be co-opted by infinitely worse people than those that were overthrown (take the Russian revolution, for example)

> Nobody starts a revolution for funsies

I mean... we're 4 years into a little Russian jaunt that was supposed to be over in a matter of weeks. And a certain someone just picked a war with Iran pretty much for funsies

I don't want to underestimate the level of arrogance/stupidity that might be involved in sparking a revolution at this point

I did not find that movie to be realistic at all but I can see why other people do. I think it it’s far more likely to be a CIA faction led ‘attempted coup’ similar to the 2016 on in Turkey. I think Turkeys coup was likely run by their secret police as a way to flush out dissidents and heavily suppress them. So I would expect a Jan 6 but with more of a real actionable plan created by informants and doomed to quickly fail followed by a de-MAGAfication program similar to de-Baathification in Iraq or de-Nazification in Germany.

It didn't exactly matter in the end. Russia eventually encircled them with artillery and pounded them until they gave up and brokered a deal. Their fighting skills and spirit have since been added as an asset on the Russian military's balance sheet.

Right but seizing military equipment and building your own are very different things.

nobody needs to read a comment, tbh, any comment.

revolutions are like earthquakes or pandemics: created by forces beyond our control and a matter of when, not if. people romanticizing or anti-romanticizing armed conflict online doesn't even enter the frame <zizekian sniff>.

From my experiences with the YPG in the Syrian Civil War --- You'd be surprised how many people that have seen combat absolutely loved it. There was one guy that would go in a state of ecstasy while being shot at, literally expressing happily "ha ha they try to shoot me" and this is a guy who had seen many of his comrades die. Once you accept you are dead it's actually far less mundane than normal life, while at the same time you have a fairly straightforward sense of meaning and purpose. Plus life is much simpler -- 99% of (that) war is just standing guard, smoking cigarette, drinking tea, moving sandbags, etc, much less complicated than say something like trying to juggle a dentistry practice while driving the 2 kids to school events and then going home to patch drywall on the house.

There's a reason why Hemingway wrote "There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter." Going home just to have a toddler scream at you for the wrong color cup or walking into the grocery store and just effortless picking one of 1000 brands of cereal just seems so -- hollow -- afterwards.

Anyone salivating over/romanticizing surrendering to a dictatorship hellbent on committing genocide has never experienced it and can't fathom how awful it is. I know I can't, and that's why I don't want to find out.

America is not going to have a Tahrir Square. It just about managed Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter.

Fuck that. South Korea constantly worked toward progress and went from generals to democracy.

America won a Civil war against traitors like the Epstein class, but we want to just give up today because democracy is hard and what, hope the new dictator class is more benevolent? When has that ever been the case?

The US is ours, Democracy is ours. That is why they constantly undermine it. Why would we give up the stronger position that is easier to win from just because they keep trying to undermine it? That makes zero sense.