Revolution in the Air

Another irony for you…or rather for me (connoisseur of ironies that I am), I just realized that last Friday--April 15--the very day I was posting my support for Hillary The Incrementalist over Bernie The Revolutionary was the 49thanniversary of my participation in the Spring Mobilization against the Vietnam War. As we marched from Central Park to the UN, my particular group raised our voices in singing the then-popular refrain from the hot play of the day, Marat/Sade :Marat we're poor
And the poor stay poor
Marat don't make us wait any more
We want our rights and we don't care how
We want a revolution
Now


It was a little incongruous because the march was against a military venture rather than economic exploitation, but it had the word revolution in it and revolution was in the air, so we went with it. As history would have it, the song is actually more au courant with Bernie Sanders’ “revolution,” with lines such as these:
Down with all of the ruling class

Throw all the generals out on their ass

Why do they have the gold?
Why do they have the power? Why, why, why, why, why?
Do they have the friends at the top? 

Why do they have the jobs at the top?


So why am I less willing to take up the mantle of revolution now? Have I become a predictably reactionary Tory in the material comfort of my later years? Perhaps. Though in the considerable time I’ve put into thinking on the question, I’ve come to a different conclusion, which is that revolution...political revolution for sure...is not something to be taken lightly. No matter how much Madison Avenue tries to sell it as something good and fun and easy (revolution as marketing ploy), revolution is by definition jarring, uprooting, difficult and often very bloody. Even the nonpolitical revolutions…industrial, technological, cultural…do not transpire without having a considerable disorienting impact on society. Revolutions strike with a brutal suddenness, which is one of the characteristics that so differentiates revolutionary change from incremental change. With that suddenness, the Industrial Revolution attracted mass migrations from rural America and created dense urban centers with concomitant health and welfare problems. As I write, the tech revolution is displacing masses of workers, replacing armies with robots, and entirely reshaping how we relate to one another socially. The youth revolution of the 60s--the one revolution of which I can honestly claim to have been on the barricades--not only created a multi-billion dollar segment of the economy built on the cultural tastes of the nation’s youth, but created a bias in favor of youth that permeates our entire society for both good and ill.
The cost of political revolution generally comes in lives lost, which is why I take an increasingly sober view of political revolution. We look at our American Revolution…and even the far bloodier French Revolution--and romanticize them because we can bask in their far-reaching positive outcomes. But the Russian Revolution turned out to be the trade of one tyranny for another, and the various revolutions of the recent Arab Spring have thus far yielded disappointing if not horrific results.
Paradoxically our revolutionary forefathers--notably from the establishment class--left us with a system designed for incremental change. For whatever revolutionary fervor gripped Thomas Jefferson when he uttered his famous dictum that the tree of liberty must occasionally be watered with the blood of tyrants, he also was among those responsible for bequeathing us a Constitution of checks and balances and balance of powers--practically revolutionary-proof.
As a teacher and father I early on arrived at a truth about disciplining the young, which was never bluff...never make a threat or a promise you are not willing to follow through on. At the risk of being too much the literalist, I believe that if you are going to call for political revolution, implicit in that call must be a willingness to take up arms to bring it about. The Marat/Sade song pulls no punches on this score: We want our rights and we don't care how. It’s the real threat of violent action that distinguishes the political revolutionary from the political reformer.
I can see the discontents of our current political landscape incrementally changed by reforms:A Constitutional amendment to obviate the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decisionAn end to state gerrymandering of congressional districtsAutomatic voter registration for everyone at age 18A reinstatement of the Voting Rights ActA tax code that rewards companies for investing at home and makes them pay a premium for taking jobs elsewhereA campaign finance law that places spending caps on all state and federal elections 
I can go on, of course, and include the three pillars of the Bernie Sanders Revolution--free college, single-payer health care, break up of the big banks—but to accomplish any of them would require the same very un-revolutionary steps of introducing legislation, holding hearings, lobbying for votes, etc. Alas, nine years later, Guantánamo prison remains open despite the promises and best intentions of our last revolutionary candidate for president.
As angry as we may all be at the behavior of the big banks is anyone really going to take up arms to punish them? (Don’t answer that. We know that there are dangerous numbers of our fellow citizens who are well-armed and take this revolution business far more seriously than most of us and seem quite intent on bringing down something big, be it the banks or the government itself). It may be worth reflecting on China, Eastern Europe, and Cuba. In my lifetime…since the day I marched against that war in New York at least…no places on earth were riper for revolution than those places. And yet in that same timeframe, through non-revolutionary means—through patience and evolutionary change—all of them have progressed from one degree to another toward being better societies without massive upheaval and untold loss of life.
A favorite Dylan verse comes to mind:I lived with them on Montague StreetIn a basement down the stairsThere was music in the cafes at nightAnd revolution in the airThen he started into dealing with slavesAnd something inside of him diedShe had to sell everything she ownedAnd froze up insideAnd when finally the bottom fell outI became withdrawnThe only thing I knew how to doWas to keep on keepin' onLike a bird that flewTangled up in blue
I love the verse not only because it so vividly captures a particular time in my life, but because it provides me with a more comfortable explanation for what happened to my revolutionary ardor. It’s not that I’ve become a Tory, but because like so many of us I got tangled up in blue.