IVIV (8): Downstairs Eddie

[Monte Davis]

Joseph Tracy sez: 

> Course that reflects also a secret passion of the imagination  
> where the boss is killed and wealth redistributed. Not all that  
> secret , there was this little incident of the American Revolution.  

Yebbut the thing of it was that it *wasn't* a revolution in the French,
Russian, Chinese sense, but a war of independence combined with a bloodless
Glorious Revolution Mk. 2. 

The colonial rebels were aiming for a polity in which there would still be
very rich and very poor, *but* the former would have no special claim on law
or state power.... well, aside from those nitpicky details about voting only
if you were white and male and had $X worth of property, which were cleared
away in less than two centuries. If you could make that work (and, tacitly,
if anyone with gumption could go steal some more Native American land, farm
it hard and/or sell it at a big markup to newer immigrants, and prosper),
you wouldn't *need* a kill-the-rich revolution. 
 
That built in all kinds of ambiguity, which reared its head quickly in the
wackiness of US domestic politics re the French Revolution, and has popped
up Punch-like in every generation since.