It is one of the most eye opening pieces of media. Especially the French and Russian Revolutions are covered in such great detail, while staying interesting. I also loved the appendix to the show where Mike talked about "patterns" in a revolution. Learned a lot about the relationship between the government and its people.
Yeah, for me, Revolutions and The History of Rome are two of the best examples of "this is why knowing history is useful", and that history isn't actually boring - it's basically a highlight reel of some of the highest human dramas. Mike Duncan put out some incredible work.
It's never been a good way to get things done, but when you block off every other venue for change people will be much more willing to take a chance on a high risk option. Violent revolutions aren't usually the first thing people try.
Democracies that arise by nonviolent revolution, do so in part due to the threat of what comes next if the nonviolent revolution is crushed. Because if you make sure placards and petitions don't work, it eventually won't be placards and petitions anymore.
'Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, will make violent revolution inevitable', and all that.
Yeah, I get that it's a useful threat to back up the nonviolent options. I just don't think Americans have tried the nonviolent options wrt economics with any amount of real effort yet, and it's worrying/annoying to see people jumping to the nuclear option as soon as they personally hit a rough patch or start getting scared of one.
When I've gone to local government meetings, I've generally been one of only a few without gray hair. The vast majority of working-age people seemingly can't be bothered to learn the basics about who's running in a non-presidential election, let alone go argue for the boring but extremely impactful things that would actually help people out.
People need to put down the phones and put in some actual effort on fixing things before even jokingly advocating for something that would almost certainly be a mass casualty event. It's shameful.
Everyone remembers Malcolm X, but does anyone remember the names of the thousands of civilians who protested the Iranian regime and got summarily executed?
Resistance doesn't work very well against highly militarized autocratic regimes.