Politics and the apolitical

[Wilson23]

Historians believe at the time of the American Revolution, a little more than a third of the colonists were Patriots -- in sympathy, if not actively -- a little fewer than a third were Loyalists, and the rest were apathetic or indifferent.

I suspect a study of public opinion in France or Russia during their revolutions would show similar results.

Even in the most highly politically charged times imaginable, there will always be a significant minority to whom anything political is somebody else's problem. The government you live under is like the weather -- you don't even think of trying to control it, you just find ways of dealing with it.

All political calculations should take that into account.

I heard an NPR piece about how Putin's power depends having so many people who really don't like him but do not care enough to risk the trouble of resistance or activism.

 

[Holy_Seduction]

I suspect that in the US’ situation, what carried the day was that 90% of the Patriots lived in the cities.

 

[Wilson23]

I suspect that in the US’ situation, what carried the day was that 90% of the Patriots lived in the cities.

In Russia in 1917, most city-dwellers wanted socialism in one form or another (though there never really was majority support for the Bolsheviks). But in the countryside, peasants who heard of the revolution thought "Revolyutsiya" was simply the name of the new Tsar.

 

[Bray123]

"Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel" is a famous 1775 aphorism by British writer Samuel Johnson, often misinterpreted as a blanket condemnation of love for country. It specifically targeted the dishonest, performative patriotism used by political actors (then politicians like William Pitt) to mask selfish motives and hide personal corruption.

Oscar Wilde, “Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.”

Nothing changes.

 

[Wilson23]

PATRIOTISM, n. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name.
In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.
-- Ambrose Bierce