Apr 30, 2016 4 min read

It’s been said America would never have another revolution unless conditions got really bad. We may have come to that point. Grudging acceptance of “the way things are” has met resistance from the ideal of “the way things ought to be.”

Another reason is that voters never thought they’d have powerful champions on their side. Now they’ve had politicians listen to them and reply with angry promises of change. Through Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, voters have found the courage to show their anger toward a government they believe ignores them.

I am not a fan of Trump. But he, in his politically-incorrect way, has awakened a many-headed Hydra with too many heads to cut off gracefully.

The American Dream cannot be an unobtainable illusion. We need it to be real so we have something to strive for. But when hope dissolves, anger takes it place, and, in a democracy, anger can translate into a revolution at the ballot box.

There is a strange dichotomy between what the voters think they want and what they really want. Most voters will tell you they want tax cuts. But when told that would mean Social Security or Medicare coverage being sliced by 35 percent, they quickly change their mind. When the federal government cuts taxes, the states must take up the slack. If states cut taxes, counties and cities must take up the burden. One way or another, basic programs must be paid for. It’s like filling a balloon with water and squeezing one end only to find the water has enlarged the other end. Limited government is an ideal that can’t exist in a democracy.

There is a line in politics that must not be crossed. But politicians on both sides have crossed it. The days of big and bold tax cuts for the 1 percent, and pandering to insurance companies and Big Pharma, are over. The ridiculous theory that “carried interest” isn’t really income, while continuing to tax Social Security and pension benefits, has finally caught up with the political class.

Mark Twain once said there are three types of lies – lies, damned lies and statistics. We’re told inflation is effectively at zero, but that doesn’t include food or energy, so milk and gasoline prices can go up by 50 percent, but inflation remains at zero. The middle class mom buying food for her family isn’t fooled.

President George W. Bush’s three rounds of tax cuts in the 2000s meant the average person was thrown a bone of $300 – not quite $6 a week – while a feast was prepared for the 1 percent. But that was only half the reason for the tax cuts. The other half was to cause an exploding U.S. budget deficit which would inexorably lead to a “desperate need” to cut many programs, especially entitlements, education and infrastructure, while the Pentagon budget continued to grow.

It was a simple, yet profound agenda. The voters love tax cuts, but savvy conservatives heard the dog whistle of spending cuts. It was the siren song of safety-net destruction. They knew the real agenda. Now conservatives talk of nothing but our $18 trillion national debt, which the tax cuts helped create.

A revolution is hard to start and even harder to stop, and no one knows where it will lead – witness the French Revolution leading to the Reign of Terror. In the end, the only thing that can conquer the political self-interest of an oligarchy is the greater self-interest of the voters.

In the Reign of Terror, French citizens wanted revenge for the villainy of the aristocracy. In our case, heads will only symbolically roll.

Jay Fenton is a resident of Washington and a retired writer and film restorer for VCI/Magic Lantern Entertainment in Tulsa, Okla.