Expectations, Frustrations, and State and Societal Failures

Adam L. Silverman

About three weeks ago Confused Ponder in his response to Walrus about the events in Ukraine excerpted a block quote that referred to the events in Ukraine as a "botched up color revolution". What I found interesting about that reference is that none of the color revolutions have led to significant consolidation. In fact many led to follow on revolutions. This is certainly the case in Ukraine - the 2004 Orange Revolution failed, leading to several follow on state and societal crises that eventually blew up - for internal and external reasons - in the 2014 Maidan events. What happens is that expectations for change get raised, the post revolutionary government cannot meet them, and the cycle that leads to revolution starts all over again. The US has seen this phenomena too. There were several small rebellions and uprisings between the first founding and the acceptance of the Articles of Confederation and the second founding and the ratification of the Constitution. Things didn't end there with regional rebellions in the 19th Century punctuated by the Civil War, which was originally called The Great Rebellion. These were interwoven with smaller riots and uprisings. While many of these were race riots or labor riots - as in either minorities or labor fighting back against institutionalized authority or institutionalized authority violently targeting minorities or labor - there have been over 200 rebellions and uprisings since the American Revolution! They also include several sports related riots - both because some community's team won or lost. In many of these cases, including some of the sports riots, the rebellion, uprising, and/or riot occurred because expectations were raised and not met. In many ways the events we are witnessing in Baltimore this week are the result of the frustration that arises and boils over when social, political, and economic expectations are not met. While the immediate driver may have been the death of a Baltimorean in police custody, the real drivers are much, much deeper. 

John Angelos, the COO of the Baltimore Orioles has made a statement about the real drivers of unrest in Baltimore this week (h/t John Cole at Balloon Juice) that provides a very easy to follow explanation of the effects of the dashed expectations that lead to revolutions, rebellions, and uprisings:

 

Brett, speaking only for myself, I agree with your point that the principle of peaceful, non-violent protest and the observance of the rule of law is of utmost importance in any society. MLK, Gandhi, Mandela and all great opposition leaders throughout history have always preached this precept. Further, it is critical that in any democracy, investigation must be completed and due process must be honored before any government or police members are judged responsible.

 

That said, my greater source of personal concern, outrage and sympathy beyond this particular case is focused neither upon one night’s property damage nor upon the acts, but is focused rather upon the past four-decade period during which an American political elite have shipped middle class and working class jobs away from Baltimore and cities and towns around the U.S. to third-world dictatorships like China and others, plunged tens of millions of good, hard-working Americans into economic devastation, and then followed that action around the nation by diminishing every American’s civil rights protections in order to control an unfairly impoverished population living under an ever-declining standard of living and suffering at the butt end of an ever-more militarized and aggressive surveillance state.

 

The innocent working families of all backgrounds whose lives and dreams have been cut short by excessive violence, surveillance, and other abuses of the Bill of Rights by government pay the true price, and ultimate price, and one that far exceeds the importances of any kids’ game played tonight, or ever, at Camden Yards. We need to keep in mind people are suffering and dying around the U.S., and while we are thankful no one was injured at Camden Yards, there is a far bigger picture for poor Americans in Baltimore and everywhere who don’t have jobs and are losing economic civil and legal rights, and this makes inconvenience at a ballgame irrelevant in light of the needless suffering government is inflicting upon ordinary Americans.

The real question is how much longer things can continue on continuing on before this becomes more widespread than it is and moves from communities of color to the larger cross section of Americans that John Angelos references in his remarks. And perhaps the real question is whether we, as Americans, have the social, political, and economic will to make the changes necessary to bring about positive changes. And if we have leaders that can recognize opportunities for real, positive improvements rather than opportunistically exploiting the reality Angelos so clearly describes for their own and their patrons limited self interests.

 

Comments

[David Habakkuk]

Imagine, readerOfTeaLeaves, Charles I,

Thanks for those comments – a lot of food for thought.

On 'Business School Logic', I very much agree.

I think Patrick Bahzad's remarks, on another thread, on the problems of getting accurate information from people are germane, and, although in weaker form, they apply to the difficulties of making sense of what is happening in one's own society as well as in unfamiliar ones.

Finding out how social organisations work has its own distinctive problems not simply relating to lack of candour, but to the fact that the basics of a system are precisely those which people operating in it take for granted. Ferreting out what is going on requires intellectual skills very different from those one learns in business school.

Where candour is an issue, in my experience, the two most fatal mistakes one can make are to condescend to people and to allow them to think one a fool. With Nuland and her like, I think they commonly do both.

[David Habakkuk]

WRC,

In the U.S. and elsewhere, there are scholars who, in my view, have a deep grasp of Ukrainian realities – and they have an interesting diversity of backgrounds. So in the United States Stephen F. Cohen, who comes of Lithuanian Jewish origins, has been a fount of illumination about Soviet and post-Soviet affairs for many years.

In Britain, Richard Sakwa, the child of Polish refugees, is an invaluable source of incisive commentary. Unfortunately, among refugees from Eastern Europe, and their descendants, there often seems to be a kind of inverse correlation between insight – and also generosity of spirit – and political influence.

Those whose views carry weight are commonly those who saw the retreat and collapse of Soviet power as an opportunity to get their own back.

Partly as a result, as Cohen has repeatedly pointed out, we have the bizarre situation that, while in the Eighties the views of people like him, although in a minority, could get a hearing, now he finds himself marginalised and smeared.

(An an example, see a March 2014 article about him by one Isaac Chotiner in the 'New Republic', entitled 'Meet Vladimir Putin's American Apologist', available at

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116820/vladimir-putin-defended-american-leftist .)

The now common practice of claiming that everything that the Russian authorities or the Donbass rebels claim should not be taken seriously, because it is self-evidently 'propaganda', and of smearing those like Cohen who think differently, is beyond belief dangerous.

If there is one thing which recent events should have taught us is that in dealing with all kinds of regimes it is wise to avoid prejudgements as to what parts of what they claim is propaganda and what are not.

Distinguishing between genuine belief, deliberate attempts to obscure the truth, and the kind of 'bullshit' where what counts is the effect of a statement, and its truth or falsity is immaterial, is commonly difficult.

Anyone who simply takes for granted that they have sufficient grounds for assuming that a regime that they dislike is lying and can accordingly prudently simply ignore what they say is either a fool or a knave, or more probably both.

There is here, an irony relating to the endemic propensity for Americans to denounce 'appeasement'. What seems not to be generally realised is that interpretation of European politics which animated Chamberlain's policy at Munich involved a reading not just of Hitler but of Stalin.

In essence, this was that one could discount the claims by the Soviet Foreign Minister, Maxim Litvinov, that Soviet policy was defensive. These were simply 'propaganda', and its real agenda was to exploit the naïve delusions of Western liberals to spread disunity in the West, and hopefully finesse Germany and the Western powers into a new disastrous war.

In this respect, at least, the true heirs of Chamberlain are the neoconservatives. And one of the consequences is that once again we see Western governments completely incapable of anticipating how Russia is likely to react to their policies.

While people like Cohen can see the possibility – not great in the immediate future, but non-negligible now and serious in the long-term – of escalation to nuclear conflict, the likes of Anne Applebaum are blithely unaware.

Just as much as similar figures in the Thirties, she cannot grasp the extent to which Russian policy is driven by fear – and understand that the results of fuelling this fear might not be entirely congenial from our point of view.

[David Habakkuk]

Professor Brenner,

As with your discussions of 'narcissism', I find this fascinating and very much to the point.

What I have difficulty understanding is why, over the last generation, there has been such a patent weakening of respect for truth, and in belief in the virtues of free debate, among very significant elements of those one might call the 'tutored', alike in the United States and Britain.

[Fred]

CP,

Well there's a nice justification for looting, whether with a brick trough the CVS window or a well padded urban renewal contract. Police oversight by elected civilians, like Governor O'Malley for years on end? That also is an individual who failed to 'system' of representative democracy. Maybe the registered voters of Baltimore will fire a few more of his ilk.

[rjj]

BTW is that Chernobyl forest fire getting much coverage on MSM? Judging from Google News it is not.

[William R. Cumming]

The cost and effort of the second attempt to encapsulate the core-melted reactor is placing a huge strain on Russia. Yet it must be done!

[Babak Makkinejad]

Chernobyl is in Ukraine.

[Babak Makkinejad]

Chamberlin and the UK establishment, in my view, were desirous of a war between USSR and the NAZI Germany.

That Litvinov - a Jew himself - would be uttering Stalin's propaganda was only an excuse for the feeble minds - in my opinion.

I think UK leaders miscalculated and miscalculated catastrophically when they deliberately sabotage Litvinov's mission through malignant neglect.

Yet no one was forced to fall on his sword or commit Hara Kiri - no matter how deserving they were.