... to make sure poor, working-class whites had enough peevish resentments they'd never find common cause with "them..."

That revolutions will occur. Generally, we only read of the successful ones, not the many others that were successfully repressed.

It was such a nice theory that in the democratic republic of the U.S. we could have peaceful revolutions. There still is a sliver of hope.

But I think the peaceful revolution is happening, brought to you by the internet in general and social media in particular. Cell phones have helped as well. So have cheap digital cameras. It's getting us all on the same page, and lots of terrible things are exposed alot more quickly. It's going to be a little while longer before we start seeing some positive results.

On a darker note, and maybe I'm just being a little tinfoil hat-ish here, but I believe this is the purpose of the NSA's spying program, to counter the positive effects of the internet and modern communications.

local police was not by accident.

Nor is the fight over net neutrality.

The next time needs to be everyone who is tired of the corruption of our government. Politicians nakedly represent Donors instead of us now. We need to end all campaign contributions to return our Democracy.
Our media conglomerates and Wall Street banks need to be broken up. Our compromised Federal Regulatory Agencies need retooling like the FCC, SEC, EPA, DOJ, which do whatever the industries they regulate want do to the revolving doors. The DOJ will not enforce the laws by sending white collar criminals to jail and the settlements still allow the crime to be very profitable.
It will take millions of committed, peaceful demonstrators demanding an end to the legal purchase of our politicians and judges. The corporations and the 1% will not relinquish the power willingly! but it is the test of our time. If we don't try, it's "1984" for us!

many really understand the tracking technology employed to track any potential dissenters, those not willing to comply with the system designed to fleece them into subservience. I find it quite frightening. More and more reasonable dissent and various ideas are suppressed in the US, and there is a vast array of tools to accomplish this task. We seem to be ever leaving what this country was founded on ...

from full on fascism

..What the US, and indeed the world would be like without the internet.

people talk, especially across borders. And those on the gravy train will not tolerate anything that might disrupt their flow of cash. I think we are now in the most perilous of times. Directions laid now IMO will be exceedingly difficult to change in the future as the noose tightens. Many citizens are still too naive and trusting to get what is gong on ... and IMO it cuts across all political parties, especially when it comes to $$$$$.

Light getting shone and shined on all the dark things, whereupon
they must hide -- as they can no longer disguise themselves --
or else be fried, there and then, in public, on the sidewalk.

i see the same racist shit being spewed as i did when it came to trayvon martin.

they may have a problem with police having some military equipment but of the shooting of the black man they don't have a problem with.

But I think that the OP stated pretty clearly that a LARGE portion of the white community was behind the protests in Ferguson, not ALL of the white community.

And I agree with the OP. I've seen less bullshit racism about this incident from white people than I have in previous incidents. Of course that's anecdotal, but it's still a pretty clear indication that a saturation point is being reached by even the white community. But sure, you're always going to have the racists and the police apologists. Centuries of propaganda won't be overcome overnight.

weapons. but not the shooting itself.

Where are you seeing or hearing that white people don't object to this shooting?

The response is changing, albeit slowly. But as I said, centuries of capitalist propaganda won't be overcome overnight, although when the tipping point is reached, it might SEEM overnight.

to scare politicians.

That is significant.

The same could be true with class issues. We won't need all middle and working class people to get it--just enough of them to scare those in power.

Trayvon was killed by a fearful and inadequate little man who was a wannabe cop. Now you have a Policemen acting out authority in a jurisdiction they do not understand, a community with years of pent up simmering hostility. As a white male I ask this question; How many unarmed white youth are shot by police? It all comes from fear and if not outward; then latent and suppressed racism I think finally some people are asking the right questions about what ill informed out of touch elected officials have turned loose on the public; inadequate poorly trained insecure police on their constituents with life or death authority and the tools to create mayhem.

Next election the 2/3 African American population in Ferguson needs to come out and vote in a City Government that responds to the needs of the community, it is obviously lacking now.

are just the beginning of something bigger. The next time something like this happens -- and we all know it will happen -- I expect even larger protests and a lot more public outcry. Maybe we'll only see a change in how we're treated by cops, but that's a start. I'm hoping that we'll finally unravel the truth about the Prison Industrial Complex and the people who are making money from private prisons and the slave wages they're paying prisoners. I hope you're right; I hope this is the beginning of something much bigger. We have to start somewhere. Why not here?

the military equipment already in place.

I fear the OP is unrealistically optimistic. The elite doesn't fear revolution. At most, some may idly wonder what the bloodbath retaliation will look like, will it make a good movie.

... once said something like this: "When the people are afraid of the government, you have tyranny; when the government is afraid of the people, you have democracy."

about a lot of things. I don't have the links right now ... but I've read he was totally against the possibility of only two political parties, and was also very much against the concept of a corporation. All things we wrestle with today.

I've always felt the US would be far better off with several political parties with relatively equal potential to win ... and I've always felt the corporate shield is very very bad. The way the political parties are today, I've continuously felt we just watch and participate in an endless domestic argument.

There is also far too much suppression/surveillance of the people today ... democracy is fading.

All we need to do is just do the right thing and all be DEMOCRATS!

together at last.

I have spent some part of this afternoon, until I finally started crying, reading local responses to this (on the STLtoday website). I am sickened by the bigotry and hatred I was reading.

I have told my kids for years, and we live in a very white county surrounded by many gun toting, religious bigots, that the folks at the top are counting on us fighting amongst ourselves.

I am finding more kindred souls online, and getting some direct "news" from real folks online and it could start pulling the other way.

Many more people need to pull back and see that they don't see the young man being shot by the police as the problem, but the looting and damages to businesses. That is the wrong way to be going.

Storms are heading in, on this unseasonably cool August night. I am almost 30 miles southwest from Ferguson, but I hope this will cool heads and bring some peace for everyone. Even the folks at the top who think they want to be above everyone and needs the fighting at the bottom to continue lest the anger be turned toward them. It's hard to wish them something positive like peace, but it needs to be here and everywhere on earth.

because I think it's applies to the thread in general. It's pretty simple really. Nobody knows what the spark will be, but it probably won't be something like a policy decision. But it might very well be a personal story related TO the consequences of those policy decisions.

Sparks are usually an overreach that effects a lot of people either directly like the bus fare hikes in Brazil or offends their sensibilities like Mike Brown's death.

Although of all of the things you mentioned the one most likely to get EVERYBODY out into the streets would be the next Wall Street bailout. Now THAT is a policy decision that would fuel popular anger to the nth degree.

First, because the shooting in Ferguson has nothing to do with "the elite". It has to do with traditional, ugly, race relations, and -NO- it isn't an instance of racial discord fomented BY "the elite".

Second, because how different groups relate to racial discord and/or police misconduct has nothing to do with how they'll react to economic policies.

Third (and this is the biggie), there is nothing in American cultural or political history that suggests that a proletariat revolution is percolating. But keep dreaming.

The people are about fed up with the shit thats being hurled at us.

leads to voting. We saw that OWS was crushed intentionally and pretty much everywhere at the approximate same time. I had hoped that OWS could be a start, but the movement was too diverse to lead to a politically decisive action team. However, we are only a few months away from an important election. So, let's see whether the black population of Ferguson at least will vote.

limp fish Democrat to oppose Scott Walker that led to a predictable defeat, I'm not sure that's always the way to go.

I believe they would welcome one and in fact I think they are poking us to see how far they can push us. What happened in Ferguson that would scare them? Some local stores got looted?

Those that dream of a revolution are just dreaming. The aristocrats are well prepared for a revolution. They have militarized our local police forces. They have control of the National Guard and armed forces. Second, the revolution dreamers for some crazy reason envision the lower classes uniting to fight the aristocrats. More likely the aristocrats will push one group of us into fighting the authorities, like in Ferguson. It's my guess that the aristocrats will continue their persecution of the black community until they lash back. If they do lash back, will the rest of the lower classes come to their aid? For sure the gun toting tea-baggers will be glad to side with the aristocrats and shoot members of the black community. History has shown that the aristocrats like to turn one group of lower class peoples against others. They will even give financial backing and military equipment to one side. And even if the lower classes did over-throw the existing elitist bastards, they will simply be replaced by another set of elitist bastards.

... and as you noted the military tilts disproportionately right, so what potential bad result could come to the 1% from a Revolution?

Those looted and burned out buildings are going to be rebuilt by companies owned by the 1%, paid for by insurance money.

A revolution would not help anyone on the left at all.

when they clearly oppress the middle and working class those troops and cops are drawn from.

That was the case during the collapse of the Soviet Union. There came a point when the troops would not follow the orders of the hard liners, and then it was over.

side the police against a revolting black community. The rest of the country will have to decide if they want to get involved. The liberals will of course, maybe not violently, but the centrist Democrats will waiver. It will be more of a civil war between the left and right.

they've been quietly preparing to put down a revolution, knowing that people will only tolerate so much inequality and hardship and it will only get worse.

My dollar says that no part of the "elite" lives in Ferguson, or even particularly close to it. The working class lives in Ferguson, and the guys carrying the guns and driving the armored vehicles to suppress the protest are working class too.

Black and white folks have been occasionally uniting on issues and protests since the freedom rides in the 60's. There is nothing new in this.

Riots in the streets are not the way social change will happen, if it happens at all. Local law enforcement is now very well equipped to suppress riots, the only problem that arises is when their use of such tactics is seen as disproportionate. In the case of widespread rioting to displace the "elite", little they could do will be seen as disproportionate.

The mass of us have two weapons that can be used. One is at the ballot box, and this is problematic as Stalin reportedly said something along the lines that True power does not lie in the vote, but the power to count the votes.... The second tool, which cannot be discounted is the ability to withhold work. Real change will come from shutting the system down, not protesting its injustices.

Don't

I am a Quaker. Like most of us in this country, I am white. St. Louis has a good sized Quaker Meeting. We show up for stuff like this protest. We have been showing up for stuff like this for a very long time. Seeing some white folks in a crowd after something like this may be little more than the usual suspects showing up.

I would not think this incident was that out of the ordinary if not for the bipartisan backpedaling on militarizing the police.

That implies a fair number of conservative woes were disturbed too

is more than a bit concerned with an up-armored and well armed police force, but for different reasons than you or I.

And actually, their reasons aren't that different, they are just put in uglier, less kumbaya terms.

A significant portion of them are already demented!

Our black citizens are determined that they will just not take it any more!

I felt that for the first time during the Bush administration when they treated dissent the way Bull Connor treated black Civil Rights protesters, and the teachers union I belonged was called a terrorist organization by a cabinet member.

The internet and the training of folks overseas to do what America does and even do it better - computers, etc., has brought peoples together of all races, ethnicity and religion.

More and more people are becoming attracted (publically) not only to people of same sex, but to people of all colors and sizes. Intermarriage or "partnerships" will be between those who wish to be partners with someone which was not possible when the "old folks" were around to show their disapproval. Even in Islamic countries - it'll take longer, but it will happen.

Maybe the distant future has a race of beautiful tan people. This would be the best way, because whites are in the minority in the world and should accept that they cannot legislate things in their favor forever.

The bad way would be over water rights, food, property, etc., because people will not give up old ways till there's war. Wealth will be redistributed into pockets that don't exist now... this is all maybe, maybe.

They don't care as long as Americans keep:
Voting for people who serve their interests
Watching their commercials
Buying their products
Manufacturing their products for them

Nothing in Ferguson is going to make them less wealthy/powerful.

with blacks about about abuse of blacks enough for Congress to feel the need to act across bipartisan lines.

That is a shift that hasn't happened too often since at least the election of Reagan.