A guy in the comments of an article I just read took the author to task for applauding the "successful" uprisings in Egypt saying "has the author read the news lately, that place is a mess!" Part of me says "right on Credulous Man, Arab Spring was a US plot all along and the new boss is probably going to be worse, high fuckin' five!".
But another part of me says "Oh Soft American, so drunk on consumerism that you are thoroughly convinced all transitions should be painless upgrades that require no sacrifice or downtime, this must be stressful for you."
I think a big part of why Americans can't seem to pull their asses out of the couch crevasse to demand a better system of governance (hell, to demand a system that won’t eat it self alive in the next 45 minutes) is because they have the expectation that beneficial change can occur in the same sanitized way that old boring white appliances get replaced with shiny new front loading red ones.
Since half the point of consumerism is to turn people into infantile hedonists too preoccupied with developing their "style" with the cheap shiny fruits of globalization to spend more than 5 minutes a day worrying about what their government might be up to, I think my theory is awesome. (At least this holds up as long as the cash and credit flows and goods remain plentiful, interrupt this atmosphere too egregiously and well, watch this crowd go after the $2 #blackfriday waffle makers at Walmart. Fucking terrifying, no? Imagine if these people were actually hungry or cold or something.)
This thought flows through the same vein I posted in the other day about how people are resistant to leaving their big evil bank for a small, ethical credit union because the process is sort of a pain in the ass, takes a bit of time and doesn't make them have more money or stuff when it's over. We are very much accustomed to having our cake and eating it too i.e. getting something for nothing. Joining a credit union is damn near the easiest and most direct way to subvert the banking cabal yet this somehow gets lost in all the flustered, confused, vaguely sweaty, 'having to do actually something' schtick.
Fundamental social/political change has always been a convulsive, destructive, highly inconvenient process. Elites very much enjoy being Elites and with institutional inertia working in their favor, depriving them of the favorable climate through which they extract their glorious tribute like a hyena pulling the guts out of a still hot wildebeest will definitely precipitate one of those 'out of my cold dead hand' type situations.
So maybe Mr. Commenter is keen to Paul Wolfowitz's plan to suck up all those former Soviet Client States before China gets too big to make a fuss. Maybe he's tuned in to The Rand Corporation's devious covert regime change machinations. Or maybe he's just wondering when a better political system will be ready for pre-order on Amazon.