I think American Pride's understanding of the cause of revolution can be expressed quite succinctly: "The Man is keeping me down." "The Man" in this case is the 1% who are the leaders of Western Capitalism (whatever that is). While this may be true, it is rather unenlightening because of its generality.

A few days back this post by Bill Moore appeared on the Musa Qala thread. I think that the first quoted line, replacing the place name (Helmand) with just about any other place name where reaction to the status quo is occurring or has occurred, captures American Pride's desired causal nexus much better than some appeal to a global movement against the current forces of Western Capitalism.

The Tip O'Neil quote that is the subject of this post says about as much on the causes of revolts and other popular upraising and outcries as the historical evidence of such events seems to support.