Yeah I was listening to a smart sounding guy on a podcast, an expert on authoritarian regime changes. He was saying change can only really happen when the oligarchs become dissatisfied.

The stench on dear leader needs to become so bad that the oligarchs start to actually hurt.

The tariffs might have reduced their profits to some extent, but they probably consider it to be temporary, and effecting everyone more or less equally. They’re happy to weather that storm because they’re not losing position on the wealthy and powerful ladder, and in the long run they’ll get some carve outs and hand outs if they haven’t already.

You’ll notice though, in April when the tarriff “war” was really getting going, someone had a word to Trump and said enough is enough and he had to step back.

Smart podcast guy said it didn’t take much of the population to hurt oligarchs. As in a dedicated change in behavior from as few as 3% of the population could make a difference. The thing is I don’t really believe Americans have that in them. For example, you need 3% of people who regularly use facebook and buy things from Amazon to stop doing those things permanently.

The protests in May were like: “do your shopping on Tuesday and Thursday but not Wednesday, unless you really need something and then it’s ok. This will really communicate our general feeling of discontent to people working at the checkout.”

I just looked it up and the guy was Dr. Jack Goldstone on ologies podcast: https://www.alieward.com/ologies/revolutionology