The People Have to Eat
The first and most fundamental rule of revolution
My post Do-Over Revolution is now my third most read post. Because there is so much interest I am beginning a series. I don’t really have a plan, but then the point of writing about it is to expand on the idea, see where it goes, test the logic and reason of it, see if it really makes sense. As Thomas Jefferson said in the Declaration of Independence, “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes.”
For reference, my sixth most read post, which I wrote when I had half the subscribers I do now, contains some ideas about what a Conservative counter-revolution would look like, against the woke/trans/globalist revolution overtaking America. This series will expand the topic.
A Conservative Counter-Revolution
A short history of Revolution in the West; the American Revolution started in 1776, ended in 1783, the Constitution signed in 1787. The French Revolution started in 1789, ended in 1799, though the First Republic was established in 1792. The support of Napoleon (1804-1815) was much a reaction to the excesses of the Reign of Terror of the revolution, the largely indiscriminate cutting off of heads. France would go on to have several more revolutions, (1830,1848,1871), the most prominent in 1848, establishing anarchy as a guiding principle; anarchy and socialism were active, distinct revolutionary forces in the early years of industrialism. The Russian Revolution took place in 1917. It has been a kind of slow socialist revolution ever since, globally, even as capitalism triumphed and remains entrenched, if perilously so. The current revolution taking over Western institutions is Marxist/socialist fundamentally (though it seems clear an amalgam of Marxism and capitalism is best for central bankers.)
Anyways, the people have to eat. The most fundamental mistake of the anarchists in 1848 was, they assumed all the working class were on their side, they did not really plan to feed the people, assuming the working class alone would spontaneously produce and distribute the food in service to the revolution. The short answer is they did not, at least not sufficient to feed the country, and the revolution died on the vine.
Revolution is fundamentally destabilizing. Systems break down, because systems are complex, their efficient function is dependent on many different parts working efficiently. It is not just a matter of the revolutionaries and the working class or whoever doing their part, if there are many people not showing up for work, and even turning against the system to make sure it is not working, then food might get produced but it might not be able to be distributed, and in the worst case it is not being produced. In 1848 the anarchists achieved a great victory, then the people went hungry, and it wasn’t four months before the anarchists were overthrown, because hungry people blame whoever is in power in the moment.
Obviously, the food system in America is hyper-complex. Any revolution that upsets the food supply is going to be put down before you can say where the phuck are my [insert your favorite salty crunchy snack] three times. WTF do you mean you don’t have ground beef? You don’t have ANY beer!? America’s food is produced and distributed by a system of institutions public and private; the socialist genius has been to use the law and sheer coercion and fear, to take over those institutions from the inside, though there is abundant sign, that is beginning to undermine the competency of these institutions, which increasingly prefer narrative fiction to fact (to hide their incompetence, thereby exacerbating it.) Complexity is great when it works, and devastating when it breaks down, particularly in this sense, that the vast majority of Americans are utterly dependent day to day on the food production and delivery system working efficiently. It should be said too, those woke/trans/globalists who have gained power in our institutions through fear and coercion, would wreak havoc upon those systems if deposed. The George Floyd and pro-Hamas/Palestinian protests of late should make clear, socialists are not peaceful by any definition, and ideologically believe violence in service to the revolution is justified. In this age of climate frenzy, it should not be hard at all to imagine such zealots attacking the food system. In case you have not heard about the thousands of food processing facilities that have blown up or burned, since 2020?
The good news is, most of the people who work in food production and delivery facilities, and most of the people who run them, are more conservative, not particularly woke. As are most of the people who work in the energy industry. By that I mean, the actual people who do the work, not the admin who see about HR and Marketing, who tend to see themselves as woke/trans social justice warriors, the business and America be damned. You don’t actually need HR or Marketing necessarily, to produce and distribute food, btw. You absolutely do not need a DIE diversity-inclusion-equity department, to accomplish anything about the actual business.
But again, in a theoretical revolution in which the woke/trans/globalist, social/climate justice fanatics are deposed, you can absolutely expect them to go about, if not disrupting the food production and distribution system in it’s particulars, burning restaurants and looting and burning grocery stores, or at least inciting people who have no allegiance to anything but are merely destroyers, to do it (of which there are many in America.)1 So any revolution would have to have the muscle at the ready to prevent that in every particular, ie looters will be shot on sight kind of justice.
The people will put up with a bit of disruption, if they think the revolution makes sense, and support the goals of the revolution in the main. But most Americans don’t have a lot of experience with hunger, and certainly not famine, and they will not have much patience for any lengthy scarcity of even the processed crap they have grown accustomed to.
This is a just-in-time global market; it is often said (in circles that think about this kind of thing) we are three days from shortages. People don’t stock up like they used to. Cupboards are relatively bare most of the time in America, merely in many cases because there is food (or the facsimile of food) at the ready everywhere people go. Covid supply constraints were as nothing, compared to violent revolution.
Wait a minute, did I say violent? Suffice to say, if it comes to revolution, there will be violence, there is no getting around that - the implicit threat of violence is necessary to maintain society, civilization.2 The woke/trans/globalist revolution is using violence to utterly change society - get with the program or lose your livelihood and starve for all we care, take your jabs you ignorant gramma killer, it is peaceful protest to let the mob rampage to fight white supremacy. Obviously, preferably, Americans oust Brandon and most of the Dems in this next election. Not that the Republicans are the answer necessarily, as half of them are globalist/imperial centralizers happy to sell out America to the highest internationalist bidders. But something has to shift away from the trend toward democide, population replacement and trans-sexualizing everything, to give cover to people to fight it more generally. As it stands, most people won’t stand up for a more honest justice because if you do, the social justice horde will end you. That has to stop, one way or another.
I’ve cross-posted John Carter here regularly, because he is one of the finest most erudite thinkers on substack. John is a Canadian; he and I have disagreed in the past, about the idea of the King. John is something of a believer in the divine-right of the King, he seems to think a King is the solution to globalist centralizers ending nation-state sovereignty and demociding and migrating people as they will. His latest post is essentially encouragement for the Irish to embrace Conner McGregor as King and lay waste to the people in their government flooding the country with migrants even as the the gov want to criminalize anyone who questions that.
Basically I said to John, some time ago, not in America. There will be no King in America. I have more faith in America and Americans than John does, in part because I am American, which may be me being naive, but I don’t think so. The fact that less than 10% of Americans have taken the most recent Covid jab suggests to me that despite us being the most propagandized and bamboozled people in the history of the world, we have kept our wits about us mostly, after the greatest crime ever perpetrated against us, covid policy. We have neither succumbed to it entirely, nor gone berserker on the mthrphkrs.
The problem there is, no one was held responsible for that greatest crime ever; as like after the credit markets imploded in 2008 and Obama gave the bankers the keys to the kingdom instead of (metaphorically) cutting off their heads, the bankers and elite went pathological and printed 5-trillion to float the banks in 2019-2020 (one year), instead of 4-trillion 2010-2014 – the next fraudulent pandemic is going to be at least 4 times as democidal. It should be no surprise the same class of people who demand you take experimental untested jabs think you should subsist on insects and bike to work - who also think a digital currency is both inevitable and necessary. That same class of elite would deliberately attempt to starve us if we ever truly stand against them.
If electoral politics can’t put an end to this madness, something has to. I would prefer electoral politics; in the absence of that, a do-over revolution, not a king.
In any case, deposing the woke/trans/globalists by electoral politics, do-over revolution, or a king, the people have to eat. Any way it is done, we have to assure the food supply. And in that sense, we should all be encouraging each other to stock up on essentials. Because after all no one should depend on the government or corporations to feed them in the moment, particularly not when that government and those corporations hold you in contempt. Not having a stocked pantry or plans should there be real shortages is giving away much of your power, making you and yours vulnerable to disruptions deliberate or not.
I mentioned a guy in my post on the St Paul City Council Longhouse who calls himself a pimp, who is addicted to drugs and alcohol and living free on the Section 8 dole in St Paul. He told me once one of his favorite dreams is to rampage through rich people’s houses (just about everybody being rich compared to him.) A lot of of those responsible for the burning of Minneapolis in 2020 were not ideological protestors, but merely destroyers for chaos sake - who the State is happy to make use of, if the State thinks rampaging mobs serves the State.
It is an epic delusion, liberal city dwellers calling to defund police and otherwise neuter law enforcement by not enforcing the law, when it is only the implicit threat of violence by law enforcement that prevents criminals from rampaging through houses, doing violence to the inhabitants and even taking the house.
Great essay. You covered all the bases. If the cigs and beer stopped, you would see a revolution in 5 minutes. However, as a friend who lived in LA during the Rodney King riots told me, standing in front of your shop or home with a gun caused the mob to just keep going.
“An army marches on its stomach.”
Beans, bullets, bandages, in that order. To be effective, an army relies on good and plentiful food and other essential supplies. This is why I am saving up to buy land to fortify and establish farm with the goal of being as self-sufficient as possible.