Revolutionaries aren’t about saving the world. They’re about doing what’s best for them and their interests. Stalin was a revolutionary. The IRA were at one time a revolutionary force. The reign of terror in France were revolutionary.
A revolution in the sense that we tend to think of it is impossible. The world no longer has the attention span to propagate and sustain a revolution…instead the masses jump from bandwagon cause to bandwagon cause to answer the collective social guilt as it manifests itself in a single moment. It was AIDS, then last summer, it was African debt, and now it’s oil. Change can’t come about if social guilt is allowed to dictate what is important. Just because the G8 summit is over and we all got to watch U2 at the Live8 concerts doesn’t mean that Africa has ceased to exist or that all its problems have been solved.
The time of the revolutionary as we imagine him has passed. And it kills me to say that because I am making my name on the study of revolutions.
