Jesus the whole point of democracy in the modern era is that history has proved you decisively wrong. From the Peasants’ Revolt to the European revolutions in the 19th century to the European colonies, all a Monarchy needs is a practical monopoly on violence. The only recourse is raising a bigger army.
That you and Bloomer can take this view seriously and not with utter derision is a sign of how priveleged and soft we are as Americans. Not that that’s a bad thing.
You don’t actually need a bigger army… you just need a lot of weapons and a decent size pool of people willing to die for the cause and a population where enough people support you that you can hide.
The dimension missing is the stomach the occupying force has to implement both a rigourous caste system of access to wealth, education, opportunity etc., and the brutality with which they deal with people revolting. Changes in military technology have definitely altered the balance needed, but if you’re talking colonialism and its modern varieties then you have to also realise that occupying powers no longer have as strong a stomach for (or can find peers to support) the brutal repression element that the British Empire and others employed.
(That’s not to say there isn’t a lot of brutal repression going on now, obviously.)
“Just need an army” worked great for the Brits in Afghanistan!
Splitting hairs. You need to be able to either do decisively more violence or critically diminish the other sides will for violence.
Tell that to Saadam’s Parliament.
It did until it ran into a superior force. It worked in India, Africa, China, America, etc, etc, etc. until it ran into a more effective army,or until the crown was a vestigial appendage to a parliamentary democracy.
And what constituency demanded withdrawal?
Those guys were ornaments not the power structure. I’m not an expert in how the Baath party was structured in Iraq, but there was for sure a power structure that was more effective at governing the country than anything that has come since.
This is so, and the (ex-) Colonial powers’ accountability to their population is part of the reason for that.
Of course that wasn’t my point. Obviously. “Every leader has a constituency he must satisfy” doesn’t mean he has to satisfy the wants of all the people he rules. You can rule with the support of a rich and powerful minority, though that can be unstable. The US slaveholders were terrified of slave revolts, for good reason. You can rule with terror and violence, but you still need to satisfy the constituency of those who wield terror and violence on your behalf. And again, the more a leader relies on sheer violence and terror to solidify his rule the more fragile society and his grasp on it becomes.
Hopefully people can see that I’m being critical of Bloomberg’s comments here?
Right, the military was the power structure, just like every monarchy from the medieval period to the 19th or 20th century. You’re making my point about only needing enough mass murderers for hire. Let’s not conflate this with a democratic constituency.
More wishcasting imo.
Yeah, no. Didn’t see that.
Maybe slow down and read what people are actually writing then
You need an economic reason to have the occupation. The British Empire mostly failed because WW1 was really expensive, the UK mortgaged itself to the US and the US kept making a sad face about it having an Empire.
So, you need:
The reason I don’t really get why this discussion is an argument between violence and serving a constituency, is that you do the violence in order to serve a constituency.
After a couple of 4th place finishes, polling far behind nationally, and very little POC support Warren is gonna see how far that super PAC money (after just saying she’s okay with using them now compared to her prior position) can push her ahead
https://twitter.com/annielinskey/status/1232096441738432517?s=21
https://twitter.com/annielinskey/status/1232096607530868737?s=21
In the context of Bloomberg saying Chinese dictator has to answer to his constituency you said you think even the worst dictators have to to some degree answer to thd common people. I don’t think missing that that was supposed to be critical of his position is my fault man.
It’s pithy to be sure, but when that constituency is the violencers it’s not really what we usually mean by constituency and using the word as such blurs (for some intentionally) the line between autocracy and democratic accountability.