Let me add a thought: people get tired of being riled up. After a decade of turmoil in the 60s, people were utterly burnt out on the whole counterculture madness by about 1970-72. There's only so long the frenzy can be kept up before people just tire of the chaos. Also, the zealots you start with get older, get jobs, grow up, get married, have kids. Suddenly, life priorities change and foaming at the mouth about (insert X) is less important than finding a babysitter for Saturday.
As people turned inward and got "busy" they enjoyed themselves a bit too much doing other things and just got distracted from the revolution.
Let's hope that the same thing happens this time, though I wouldn't bet on it. Things are quite a bit more unstable now than in the 1970s. Back then, for better or worse, and as Cooper narrates in that interview, there was an establishment to fall back on and absorb the chaos.
But now, as we just saw in Syria, there is chaos bubbling beneath the surface because every regime is structurally weak, and a little push can have unexpected results...
In 2020 there was the republican assertion that the Obamas used Italian military satellites to rig the election without going through channels that the nsa could monitor somehow.
Let me add a thought: people get tired of being riled up. After a decade of turmoil in the 60s, people were utterly burnt out on the whole counterculture madness by about 1970-72. There's only so long the frenzy can be kept up before people just tire of the chaos. Also, the zealots you start with get older, get jobs, grow up, get married, have kids. Suddenly, life priorities change and foaming at the mouth about (insert X) is less important than finding a babysitter for Saturday.
Days of Rage by Brian Burrough as well as Darryl Cooper's interview with James Poulos agree with you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfOf11EFY6E
As people turned inward and got "busy" they enjoyed themselves a bit too much doing other things and just got distracted from the revolution.
Let's hope that the same thing happens this time, though I wouldn't bet on it. Things are quite a bit more unstable now than in the 1970s. Back then, for better or worse, and as Cooper narrates in that interview, there was an establishment to fall back on and absorb the chaos.
But now, as we just saw in Syria, there is chaos bubbling beneath the surface because every regime is structurally weak, and a little push can have unexpected results...
I agree: we live in uncertain and interesting times.
In 2020 there was the republican assertion that the Obamas used Italian military satellites to rig the election without going through channels that the nsa could monitor somehow.