throw the bastards out!

[marycatelli]

Most of the time, if your characters are discontented with the government they are under, they will not think, Revolution.  They will think, Throw the bastards out.

In the rare cases where they do want to change the government, most of the time, they will think, Bring back the old ways.

Witness how few people are calling for a monarchy in the United States.  Even a Constitutional Convention is on the fringe.  And in Europe, those who want change generally call for dissolving the European Union, reverting to the previous national structures.

They do have a point.  What's the point of shifting around the governmental structures when the fundamental problem is that they are built of human beings?  And an old governmental structure must have worked, for some value of the term "work", at some point.

Deposing the king can get icky.  (That's a technical term, there.)  Which is why they tend to denounce his evil councilors, his favorites, his mistresses -- sometimes his queen, though that can get tricky.  But it does depend on the exact theory of kingship.  In some times and places, deposing him is even the right of the -- people, or council, or something.

But those who want reaction, even, are fringe, and those who want revolution are nutcases in an overwhelming number of societies.

Comments

[eric-hinkle.livejournal.com]

It feels odd to be reading this here on one hand, and on the other, to be reading two books on Naziism in Germany and one on the Stalinist Purges. Because they pointed out the same thing you did. That even though many Germans and Russians (along with the several dozen assorted nationalities, tribes, and ethnicities in Russia) KNEW there was something horribly wrong with 'the system', they still were convinced that everything would get better just as soon as Hitler or Stalin stopped listening to their crooked advisers.

But those who want reaction, even, are fringe, and those who want revolution are nutcases in an overwhelming number of societies.

Dumb question: then what about events like the Hussite Uprising or Revolutionary France?

[marycatelli]

That's why I said "overwhelming" rather than "all." 0:)

And the amazing belief that the dictator really doesn't know in teeth of all evidence. . . it amazes me.

[eric-hinkle.livejournal.com]

And the amazing belief that the dictator really doesn't know in teeth of all evidence. . . it amazes me.

I've read that similar attitudes were found in Imperial China and Imperial Russia: "All we have to do is make sure the ruler learns about these excesses, and then everything will be fine!" It seems mostly to be a conviction that the leader himself surely has to be honest, even if all his servants are crooked.

[marycatelli]

There are Russian Jewish fairy tales in which the czar wanders about incongito and fixes everything. Like restoring a widow's only son after he had been taken for the military. Which was an actual practice, down from the top, happening with the czar's full sanction.

[blairmacg.livejournal.com]

Good points all around.

I used to be puzzled when folks would read of a fictional unjust government and call it "unrealistic" if the characters weren't rising up en masse to oust the horrid rulers. Then I realized such folks were either very young, or very short-sighted--traits that make sudden revolution sound more exciting than terrifying.

[marycatelli]

"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Isn't it the case though, that anywhere with a sufficiently long history can justify almost any course of action with an appeal to the past?

At the moment, I agree, there is a lot of noise in Europe about reversion to the nation state model. But this has a lot to do with the current parlous state of the euro: if you go back a few years, there were equally loud cries from many small areas that were long ago subsumed into nation states, that they wanted self-government within Europe.

Nobody is mad enough to believe that Wales, for example, has the infrastructure to become a completely independent nation-state, but as a nation within a wider Europe? Maybe! Yet this is framed as a call to the past - despite the fact that Wales was last independent in a time that pre-dated the invention of the modern nation state, let alone the EU, and has never really been unified.

An independent, unified Wales (or, more controversially, Ireland or Basque country) *is* a revolutionary concept really, because there are pretty much no real constants between the very distant past being harked back to, and the present. But as long as people feel an emotional connection to that past, you can still use it to help your revolution in the present, even to the point of violence...

It's interesting that you say in the US people don't call for a monarchy. Could that be because you kind of already have a king - just a very old model of kingship? You sacrifice him regularly on the altar of popular opinion and install a new one? All your elections lack is an oak grove and a magic bean...

In Britain the term 'Presidential' government is considered something of a derogatory term, almost suggesting a lack of democracy. Our prime ministers are not supposed to act with the grandeur of a president in his palace, but are supposed to be humble types, operating from a terraced house. The grandeur and the power are supposed, in theory, to be segregated.

Of course, this separation is shored up with appeals to Magna Carta, even though I'm sure both King John and his barons would find the whole idea quite baffling and alien.

[marycatelli]

Heck, people who actually are trying to get a revolution appeal to the past. Marx said that there was a primitive condition of communism in pre-history, and feminists spin stories about a golden age of matriarchy.