Pathless...
I am not advocating maintenance of the status quo, as such. Instead, I think that people would be better off just living their lives and getting on with things, as this "fight" and "struggle" is, in itself, futile, when the form it takes is badly organised street protests which are quickly crushed.
Buddha said to Rahula,
Rahula, Before committing an act, ask yourself this: Will this act harm me, or another? If the answer is yes, do not commit the act.
The fundamentally most important part of buddhism is not compassion- it is insight. Insight into the nature of how things are, moment to moment, without us, the viewer, imposing our own interpretations upon things based on nothing more than assumptions and inferences and stereotypies and conventions.
Now, while on a human level I can appreciate that people feel they need to fight to overthrow the regime they are forced to live under, an occupied people with no nation, no flag, no king, on the level of even an elementary buddhist this behaviour and mindset is not buddhism, it is Nationalism.
Realistically... each side has its own agenda. The Tibetan reports are saying around 100 people have died, mostly monks and native Tibetans. The Chinese are saying 10, all Chinese, hurt by the Tibetans and monks.
As for peasants... I believe the majority of people in any country think and act like peasants- they are not intelligent, self-supporting, self-regulating self-actualised individuals, they are stupid, they defer resposibility to the "higher ups", they cling to half-baked ideologies and supersitions to give their mundane and irrelevant lives meaning and purpose, and they will never self- actualise because they do not have the capacity to see beyond the confines of their own small minds and small worlds.
This is my definition of a peasant. These peasants exist everywhere- Eton, Yale, The House of Lords- they don't just live in sink estates and trailer parks...
...As for the "worthy of destruction or reeducation" part...
maybe I get carried away with myself. I did not mean to say the state does deem them unworthy, or that it should, or even that it does- these activities are the activities most people associate with communist states- when dealing with hostiles they might deem them worthy of reeducation or destruction- yet that has not happenned here was my point, I think.
I am not "someone who puts a considerable amount of faith in governments and the ideology of might-makes-right", but yes, I am conscious that our world is made of "the ruled and the rulers"- I might not agree with it, but its right there, in my face, every day.
Can I, personally, change that?
It's not very likely.
Should I devote my time railing against it and being constantly drained by the weight of oppression upon my shoulders? Should I campaign to take my little world back to the glorious days of the 1950's, when bread was bread and you could leave your back door open all night without getting burgled by junkies, even if that place no longer exists and things change and time moves on...?
So, instead of looking back in anger, or looking to the future in rapturous hope, we should instead look to the here and now, and attend to those things which need attention in the here and now.
Can you get an education? Do you have access to health care and medcines? Do you get enough food to eat? Do you have a roof over your head? Are you able to go about your business relatively unhindered by others?
Beyond that then, what more do you need to survive and be relatively content? A flag of your own? Nice flag, but you can't eat flags. You want to one day govern yourself? How will that happen, exactly? "You", personally, the individual, will still have to follow rules. Adopt policies. You will not make the rules for others- somebody somewhere will make them for you. So, what's changed? All you do is swap one dictaor and his fawns for another. You are still as far removed from being autonomous as you always were- it's all fiction, dreamt up by ideologues.
To have control of your self, your existence, in the here and now, as an individual- that's about as much control of anything you will ever hope or need to have.
The rest? Rackets, games of gain and loss, delusions to cling to.