this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2026
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I think light revolutions work. Stuff like what France does where they riot and start burning cars when the government tries to raise the retirement age. The kind of stuff that reminds the politicians that they could be dragged out into the streets by an angry mob, but that hasn't happened yet.
Actual revolutions where you do need to go that far, mostly fail as you said. Additionally, foreign meddling is common, so even if you can deal with everything else, outside actors are going to try to screw with you. And they'll typically succeed.
Without any sort of violence at all, you become a non-threat and we get what we currently have in America today. No one cares about the protests because they aren't going to do anything at all to the people they most need to affect.
Basically you need a sweet spot of minor levels of violence without fully going full revolution or being neutered into irrelevancy since they know you'll never fight back.
Renee Good and the other guy who was executed because he had a gun at a protest. I can't find his name. I want to say Matthew Sweet? He was a nurse I think.
The government did raise the retirement age.
Granted, the riots have made this an attractive talking point for candidates for the coming presidential election, but that's about it.
Such riots may look amazingly violent to an outsider, but as a frenchman I don't think we'll get anything nice without going MUCH further than a day of planned (with the police), organised chaos in a designated street of Paris.
This is also mostly how modern geopolitics seems to work. Lots of little 'skirmishes' that aren't actual war alongside more traditional diplomacy. The ideal seems to be mostly peace with a touch of violence here and there to keep people on their toes.