Dr. Jack Goldstone

They had state and local government, all of which pushed back and limited what presidents could do.

Well, that's changing now, right?

So if people don't like that, if the

Republicans who lead government now are able to change the rules for voting, if they're able to prevail in the redistricting, if they can just kind of tilt the playing field enough to make it almost impossible for the Democrats to win national victories.

Then the only options really are for people to go into the streets and try and overthrow the government by force.

That's not likely to be effective given how strong the American military is and how loyal it seems to be to the government.

Maybe we'll see some states actually talk about succession and say, we don't want to live under an arbitrary government in Washington.

We want to control our own destiny.

And then we're back to that issue.

So I hope it doesn't go that far.

But the fact that we're even talking about it.

And frankly, I was at a meeting of experts on revolution.

We had a workshop last week in the Netherlands, and everybody was kind of talking about, is the United States going through a kind of peaceful, nonviolent, but authoritarian revolution?

And if so, what kind of things could turn it back?

So a lot of people around the world have a sense that this is an unusual moment.

This is not politics as usual, right?

I presented a paper in which I said, what makes revolutions work, the motor of revolutions is emotion.

It's not facts.

People don't revolt because unemployment is up or down 5% or 10%.

People are being manipulated on the basis of pride and fear, very strong, widespread emotions.