Thread by @AlexandraErin

Yesterday I said a crisis like the pandemic can function as a revolution simulator.

Think about David Geffen hiding on his yacht. If you could utterly disrupt the vertically-integrated entertainment industry, like 100% break up the systems that make it work?

He's still fine.

He can hide on his yacht living on hoarded wealth until he figures out how to leverage that wealth to control a big piece of whatever comes next. Sure, his holdings are reduced but you know he's not just holding his own entertainment company stock.

Working-for-a-living actors and musicians? They're screwed, in direct proportion to the extent that they're working for a living. Same thing with all the technical crew.

They're all out their wages and any health insurance they had, which is a double whammy for any of them who get sick, are sick, or have sick family members.

I mean, if your revolution is a flawless top-to-bottom reworking of society overnight, this doesn't apply.

If at the same time you're dismantling the corporate and societal structures that allow the David Geffens to hoard wealth at the exact same time you're introducing universal accommodations for human necessities and an alternate system under which those crafts can be practiced...

...then all of those artists and tradespeople will be fine, and most of Geffen's hoarded wealth no longer exists.

If you can't do it all in one stroke, though, you're going to have a long and messy middle period where a lot of working people will be worse off.

And there's going to be a lot of chaos, uncertainty, suspicion, and resentment, and if you want to know why so many actual revolutions get subverted by a cartoonishly evil strongman or gang of strongmen, it's because that period sucks Manhattan clam chowder through a bendy straw.

That's revolution-revolution, as in forceful revolution imposed outside the system. For revolutionary changes enacted through law, you're not going to upend the system all at once so the chaos is reduced, but whatever parts you disrupt will still have 2nd and 3rd order effects.

And this is not an argument against trying to make things better. I'm not saying "it's going to suck no matter what so why try."

I'm saying: it's going to suck no matter what, and if you can't acknowledge that, you won't even try to make it suck less when you do your thing.

People who share progressive values but want more incremental change aren't lying or hypocrites and it's not that they don't realize the system has a body count that keeps going up while we fight for baby steps.

They're weighing body counts against body counts.

To be more clear: if your imagined revolution means that you simultaneously dismantle the giant corporate oligarchies, successfully seize all hoarded assets no matter what form or where they exist, take care of everybody, and it's all global, this thread doesn't apply to that.

In that situation, David Geffen's not rich and the artists and tradespeople whose labor have supported his industries aren't screwed.

But that's a fantasy, right? Everybody knows that's a fantasy.

There's no realistic situation where eat the rich doesn't involve a lot of the poor biting it. A lot of diabetics die of lack of insulin on the way to seizing the means of its production. Many are dying now; this is not a defense of the system. It's an attack on magical thinking.

I don't like revolution-revolution for the same reason I don't like anarchy. A lot of the weakest, most vulnerable people die all at once and the door is wide open for the most vicious person present to seize power.

Men like Donald Trump would thrive in a violent revolution.

"But he'd be the kind of guy we'd lead to the guillotine."

He's got several million people in this country convinced he's an underdog just like them. They're already primed for the idea of bringing down the system with guns and torches and pitchforks.

If we actually built guillotines, Donald Trump would do to them what he did the term "fake news", with just as big a "revolutionary force" standing between him and the original one.

The vacuum that follows toppled power structures favors the most ruthless opportunists who come across them.

Revolution doesn't happen in one clean stroke but a long, drawn out succession of dirty ones.

Incrementalism isn't capitulation to the system, but harm mitigation.

And when I say "harm mitigation" I don't just mean the harm of the system, which we could end completely by ending the system. I mean it's an attempt to mitigate the ongoing harm of the system *and* the harm caused by toppling it.

And if you believe the harm caused by toppling the system is smaller or that it's worth it when compared to harm over time or because "better to die free than live in bondage" or whatever, fine. That's your perspective.

But if you can't admit the harm? Can't acknowledge it?

Like I said: things are going to suck, and if you can't admit it's going to suck, you're not going to do anything to mitigate that. In fact, if you can't admit the ways in which your way sucks, you'll likely undermine attempts to make them suck less.

Last note: Yes, things also suck about incremental change! But that's the thing about an incremental approach: it leaves you open to looking at how things are going, as they're going, and making course corrections.

Incrementalism means believing we can *always* do better.