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well, the reason i dwelt on it isn't quite what you think---it wasn't only that you're take on it was wrong---it was also that the revolution did not start because of some hydraulic relation between events and people---it happened because people started to organize amongst themselves---and the circumstances ended up transpiring that people who were somewhat organized, who had something of an idea of what they were doing found themselves in the middle of a power vacuum, because the monarchy fell in around them.
but the french revolution was also a problem, and many many generations of revolutionary theorists have know this: it had no particular political goals, it kind of backed into being a revolution at all. it ate itself two or three times over. and it resulted in the convention, which resulted in a coup d'etat, which resulted in a restoration...(from a remove, this is how it worked...it's really alot more complicated, but so's everything)
revolutions almost never happen--they're made. so the idea that the present economic system will issue into a revolt seems to me naive. particularly if you're looking to conservative-sponsored agit-prop events like these tea parties. it's all a rhetorical effect--the right would no doubt be among the first to call out any revolt as communist. or whatever. it ain't gonna happen. not that way.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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