I think you are exactly right. I think all of these movements had important mechanics working the system. except The American Revolution. I would also say that in movements with financial components like Medicare4All, Education, Anti-War, Climate Change, we're back to The Revolutionary War. The system mechanics can only work on "how are you gonna pay for that?" hamster wheels. The system may as well be someplace else, because we will never have enough money to afford Washington's vending machines for things like that. That is only for the realm of our new corporate monarchs. They also own the mechanisms of our electronic vote. They own the polls. They own the media. We either have faith in their integrity or not. I don't. Why should I have to? So for me, I'm left with a movement.
Franklin’s diplomacy was very important to the early American cause.
You’re deep in the counsels of despair. I refuse to cede ownership of society to the corporations. Too many people seem to think they deserve it. They’re actually the beneficiaries of late stage colonialism - warlords.
But people who have never governed themselves are always looking for a rescuer, so the corporations will do, and they uphold the cause of the people who rob them.
All our wealth has blood on it.
All our land is a commons that was stolen.
But if we remember back a little way, some of us can remember oldsters telling us how their towns were set up to be self-governing. Self-government is *work*. Consumers cannot do it. Merely having a rebellion cannot do it.
So I would say, and I don’t care if this sounds old-fashioned, that the people who are willing to self-govern have two enemies. On the one hand, the corporations and the rentier class, who are used to perverting the law to suit themselves, and on the other hand the irresponsible rabble, who sometimes imagine themselves to be a rebellion, but who always wind up obeying the warlords in the end for security: because rebellion without understanding is nothing but the search for the strong father.
Self-government, on the other hand, retains all its thoughtful power for itself. So if you have self-control, weak people will say you’re arrogant, uppity, rebellious like they are, and so on.
The suffragettes were constantly told they were bad, but they had confidence in their own ability for self-government. They were conscious of their abilities but also of the work that would be involved.
Rebellion isn’t enough, you have to build something. For the internet rebellious on the right, it just winds up as capitulation to the latest popular strongman. They just want a Daddy rescuer and they haven’t been particular about who. The rest of their crap is projection. They can’t stay Left for any length of time because they never were to begin with.