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As I was heading out into a dark, drippingly wet, appropriately dispiriting New York City day, on my way to the "Fall Out Against the War" march -- one of 11 regional antiwar demonstrations held this Saturday -- I was thinking: then and now, Vietnam and Iraq. Since the Bush administration had Vietnam on the brain while planning to take down Saddam Hussein's regime for the home team, it's hardly surprising that, from the moment its invasion was launched in March 2003, the Vietnam analogy has been on the American brain -- and, even domestically, there's something to be said for it.
As John Mueller, an expert on public opinion and American wars, pointed out back in November 2005, Americans turned against the Iraq War in a pattern recognizable from the Vietnam era (as well as the Korean one) -- initial, broad post-invasion support that eroded irreversibly as American casualties rose. "The only thing remarkable about the current war in Iraq," Mueller wrote, "is how precipitously American public support has dropped off. Casualty for casualty, support has declined far more quickly than it did during either the Korean War or the Vietnam War." He added, quite correctly, as it turned out: "And if history is any indication, there is little the Bush administration can do to reverse this decline."
Where the Vietnam analogy distinctly breaks down, however, is in the streets. In the Vietnam era, the demonstrations started small and built slowly over the years toward the massive -- in Washington, in cities around the country, and then on campuses nationwide. In those years, as anger, anxiety, and outrage mounted, militancy rose, and yet the range of antiwar demonstrators grew to include groups as diverse as "businessmen against the war" and large numbers of ever more vociferous Vietnam vets, often just back from the war itself. Almost exactly the opposite pattern -- the vets aside -- has occurred with Iraq. The prewar demonstrations were monstrous, instantaneously gigantic, at home and abroad. Millions of people grasped just where we were going in late 2002 and early 2003, and grasped as well that the Bush dream of an American-occupied Iraq would lead to disaster and death galore. The New York Times, usually notoriously unimpressed with demonstrations, referred to the massed demonstrators then as the second "superpower" on a previously one superpower planet. And it did look, as the Times headline went, as if there were "a new power in the streets."
But here was the strange thing, as the "lone superpower" faltered, as the Bush administration and the Pentagon came to look ever less super, ever less victorious, ever less powerful, so did that other superpower. Discouragement of a special sort seemed to set in -- initially perhaps that the invasion had not been stopped and that, in Washington, no one in a tone-deaf administration even seemed to be listening. Still, through the first years of the war, on occasion, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators could be gathered in one spot to march massively, even cheerfully; these were crowds filled with "first timers" (who were proud to tell you so); and, increasingly, with the families of soldiers stationed in Iraq (or Afghanistan), or of soldiers who had died there, and even, sometimes, with some of the soldiers themselves, as well as contingents of vets from the Vietnam era, now older, greyer, but still vociferously antiwar.
However, over the years, unlike in the Vietnam era, the demonstrations shrank, and somehow the anxiety, the anger -- though it remained suspended somewhere in the American ether -- stopped manifesting itself so publicly, even as the war went on and on. Or put another way, perhaps the anger went deeper and turned inward, like a scouring agent. Perhaps it went all the way into what was left of an American belief system, into despair about the unresponsiveness of the government -- with paralyzing effect. As another potentially more disastrous war with Iran edges into sight, the response has been limited largely to what might be called the professional demonstrators. The surge of hope, of visual creativity, of spontaneous interaction, of the urge to turn out, that arose in those prewar demonstrations now seemed so long gone, replaced by a far more powerful sense that nothing anyone could do mattered in the least.
When it comes to the Vietnam analogy domestically, the question that still hangs in the air is whether, as in the latter years of the Vietnam era, the soldiers, in Iraq (and Afghanistan) as well as here at home, will take matters into their own hands; whether, as with Vietnam, in the end Iraq (and Iran) will be left to the vets of this war and their families and friends -- or to no one at all.
The Consensus Gap
Here's the strange thing: As we all know, the Washington Consensus -- Democrats as well as Republicans, in Congress as in the Oval Office -- has been settling ever deeper into the Iraqi imperial project. As a town, official Washington, it seems, has come to terms with a post-surge occupation strategy that will give new meaning to what, in the days after the 2003 invasion, quickly came to be known as the Q-word (for the Vietnam-era "quagmire"). The President has made it all too clear that he will fight his war in Iraq to the last second of his administration -- and, if he has anything to say about it (as indeed he might), well beyond. In their "classified campaign strategy for the country," our ambassador in Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, and the President's surge commander, Gen. David Petraeus, are reportedly already planning their war-fighting and occupation policy through the summer of 2009, and so into the next presidency. The three leading Democratic candidates for president, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards, have refused to guarantee that American troops will even be totally out of Iraq by 2013, the end of a first term in office -- as essentially has every Republican candidate except Ron Paul, the libertarian congressman from Texas. In fact, in Washington, the ongoing war is now such a given that it's hardly being discussed at the moment (as the one in Afghanistan has never been). The focus has instead shifted to the next possible administration monstrosity -- a possible air assault on Iran that would essentially guarantee a global recession or depression.
Meanwhile, the American people -- having formed their own Iraq Study Group as early as 2005 -- have moved in another direction entirely. On this, the opinion polls have been, and remain (as Mueller suggested they would), unanimous. When Americans are asked how the President is handling the war in Iraq, disapproval figures run 67% to 26% in the most recent CBS News poll; 68% to 30% in the ABC News/Washington Post poll; and, according to CNN's pollsters, opposition to the war itself runs at a 65% to 34% clip. As for "staying" some course in Iraq to 2013 or beyond, that CBS News poll, typically, has 45% of Americans wanting all troops out in "less than a year" and 72% in "one to two years" -- in other words, not by the end of, but the beginning of, the next presidential term in office. (The ABC News/Washington Post poll indicates, among other things, that, by 55% to 40%, Americans feel the Democrats in Congress have not gone "far enough in opposing the war in Iraq"; and that they want Congress to rein in the administration's soaring, off-the-books war financing requests.)
In other words, the Washington elite are settling ever deeper, ever less responsively, into the Big Muddy, while the American Consensus has come down quite decisively elsewhere. For all intents and purposes, it seems that most Americans are acting as if some policy page had already been turned, as if Iraq was so been-there, done-that. Perhaps many are also assuming that the present administration is beyond unreachable and that any successor will be certain to fix the problem; or, alternately, that nothing the public can do in relation to the Washington Consensus, including voting, matters one whit; or some helpless, hopeless combination of the two and who knows what else.
As I sat in that rumbling subway car on my way to the march in lower Manhattan, I kept wondering who, between the Iraq-forever-and-a-day crowd and the been-there/done-that folks might think it worth the bother to turn out at an antiwar rally on such a lousy day. And it was then that a brief encounter from the summer came to mind.
I'm now 63 years old and increasingly feel as if my 1950s childhood came out of another universe. Sometime in August, I ran into a "kid" -- maybe in his early thirties -- employed by a consulting firm to do what once would have been the work of a federal government employee. He gamely tried to explain the sinews of his privatized world to me. As he spoke, I began to wonder whether he was interested in working in the federal government, not just as a consultant to it. To ask the question, I began explaining how I had grown up dreaming about being part of the government -- the State Department, actually. It seemed to me then like an honorable, if not downright glorious, destiny to represent your country to others. It was a feeling that left me deep into the 1960s when I had, in fact, already been accepted into the United States Information Agency (from which I would have, a good deal less gloriously, propagandized for my country). It was only then that anger over the Vietnam War swept me elsewhere.
I told the young consultant that, when young, I had dreamed of doing my "civic duty" and his eyes promptly widened in visible disbelief. He rolled that phrase around for a moment, then said (all dialogue recreated from my faulty memory): "Civic duty? No one in my world thinks about it that way any more." He paused and added, hesitantly, "But I might actually like to be in the bureaucracy for a while."
That was my moment to widen my eyes. What I once thought of as "the government" had, in the space of mere decades, become "the bureaucracy," even to someone who would consider joining it -- and, the worst of it was, I knew he was right. This was one genuine accomplishment of a quarter-century-plus of the Republican "revolution" (and the Clinton interregnum). All those presidential candidates, running as small-government outsiders ready to bring Washington big spenders to heel, had, on coming to power, only fed that government mercilessly, throwing untold numbers of tax dollars at the Pentagon and the military-industrial complex, ensuring that they would become ever more bloated, powerful, and labyrinthine, ever more focused on their own well-being, and ever less civic; ensuring that the government as a whole would be ever more "bureaucratic," ever less "ept," and -- always -- ever more oppressive, with ever more police-state-like powers.
All that had been strangled in the process -- made smaller, if you will -- was the federal government's ability to deliver actual services to the population that paid for it. All that was made smaller in the world beyond Washington was whatever residual faith existed that this was "your" government, that it actually represented you in any way. As the state's bureaucratic, military, and policing powers bloated, so, too, did the electoral process -- and lost as well was the belief that your vote could determine anything much at all.
Looking back, this was, in a sense, what 9/11 really meant in America. The one thing that a government, which had long reinforced its own powers, should have been able to deliver was intelligence and protection. So it wasn't, I suspect, just those towers that crumbled on that day. What also crumbled was a residual faith in "we, the people." This was actually what the Bush administration played on when it urged Americans not to mobilize for its Global War on Terror, but simply to go about their business, to -- as the President famously put it 16 days after 9/11 -- "get down to Disney World in Florida. Take your families and enjoy life, the way we want it to be enjoyed." In a sense, Bush and his top officials were just doing what came naturally -- further sidelining the American people so they could fight their private wars in peace (so to speak).
The "bureaucracy" had strangled the very idea of the "civic." Who would even think about entering such a world today as a "civic duty," rather than as a career move; or imagine Washington as "our" government; or that anyone inside the famed Beltway, or near the K-Street hive of lobbyists, or in Congress or the Oval Office would give a damn about you? This is why, at a deeper level, the Washington Consensus today has next to nothing to do with the American one.
American Disengagement
When people look back on the Vietnam era, few comment on how connected the size and vigor of demonstrations were to a conception of government in Washington as responsible to the American people. Even the youthful radicals of the time, in their outrage, still generally believed that Washington was not living up to some ideal they had absorbed in their younger years. Whatever they were denouncing, the founders of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in their Port Huron Statement, for instance, spoke without irony or discomfort of "[f]reedom and equality for each individual, government of, by, and for the people -- these American values we found good, principles by which we could live as men."
Though they may not have known it, they were still believers, after a fashion. By and large, the demonstrators of that moment not only believed that Washington should listen, but when, for instance, they chanted angrily, "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?", that President Lyndon Baines Johnson would be listening. (And, in fact, he was. He called it "that horrible song.") Which young people today would believe that in their gut? Who would believe such a thing of "the bureaucracy"?
Don't forget, demonstrating is another kind of civic duty -- but perhaps a waning one. I was struck this weekend that, even among people I know, many of whom had demonstrated in the Vietnam era and had turned out again in the early years of this war, next to none were on the streets this Saturday. Most were simply going about their business with other, better things to do.
The fact is: Attending a march like Saturday's is still, for me, something like an ingrained civic habit, like.... gulp.... voting, which I can't imagine not doing -- even when it has little meaning to me -- or keeping informed by reading a newspaper daily in print (something that, it seems, just about no one under 25 does any more). These are the habits of a lifetime and they don't disappear quickly. But when they're gone, or if they don't make it to the next generation intact, it's hard, if not impossible, to get them back.
If you need another point of comparison, consider TV comic Stephen Colbert's joke (or is it?) race for the presidency in his home state of South Carolina (or the fact that, in a Rasmussen Report telephone poll, he garnered 13% support in the Republican field just days after announcing his run). Again, I'm old enough to remember the last time something like this happened. Sometime in the late 1950s -- the details escape me -- a few fans of the cartoon strip Pogo decided to launch a "Pogo for President" campaign in election season. (Mind you, that strip, about a talking opossum and his pals in Okefenokee Swamp, was a classic with a critical, political edge. Who could forget the moment when Howland Owl and the turtle, Churchy LaFemme, decided to enter the nuclear age by creating uranium from a combination of a Yew tree and a geranium.) In the strip, Pogo did indeed run for president and its creator, Walt Kelly, used that hook to promote perfectly real voter-registration campaigns. But -- as I remember it -- he was horrified by the real-life campaign for his character and insisted that it be stopped. You didn't, after all, make a mockery of American democracy that way. It just wasn't funny.
No longer. Now, the "character" is launched onto the field of electoral play by the creator himself, who also happens to be promoting a book in need of publicity; and Colbert's ploy is hailed as a kind of transcendent reality, not simply a mockery of it, even on that most mainstream of Sunday yak shows, Tim Russert's Meet the Press. Of course, the joke -- and it's a grim one indeed -- is on what's left of American democracy, which, as Colbert obviously means to prove, is the real mockery of our moment.
Perhaps we all have to hope that, when he's done with the election, he'll turn his attention to demonstrations in a world increasingly uncongenial to "civic duty" of any sort. It seems that we've entered a time in which even demonstrating can be outsourced, privatized, left to the pros, or simply dismissed (like so much else) as hopeless, a waste of time. So I was heading toward this demonstration, wondering not why more people wouldn't be there, but why anyone would be.
Penned in on the Streets
And here's how it felt:
"From the moment I looked across the aisle in the subway and saw the woman with the upside-down, hand-painted sign -- an anguished face, blood, and 'no war' on it -- and she noted my sign, also resting against my knees but modestly turned away from view, and gave me the thumbs up sign, I knew things would be okay. As my wife, a friend, and I exited the subway at the 50th Street station on the west side of New York, I noted three college-age women bent over a subway bench magic-marking in messages on their blank sign boards, a signal that we were heading for some special do-it-yourself event."
Oops! Sorry, that was my description of the first moments of a massive antiwar march -- half a million or more people took part -- in New York City on February 15, 2003, just over a month before the invasion of Iraq was launched.
On my subway car Saturday, there were no obvious demonstrators carrying signs; no eager faces or hands ready to give a thumbs-up sign; no one who even looked like he or she was heading for a demonstration. (Of course, I had no handmade sign and didn't look that way either.)
A signature aspect of this era's antiwar demonstrations, from the first prewar giants on, has been the spontaneous, personal signage, often a literal sea of waving individual expressions of indignation, sardonic humor, hope, despair, absurdity, you name it.
On Saturday, most of the signs were printed and clearly organizationally inspired; not all, however, as the shots by Tam Turse, the young photojournalist who accompanied me, eloquently indicate.
As for the police, well, here's how it felt with them:
"They still had us more or less confined to the sidewalk and a bit of the street on one side of the avenue, and cars were still crawling by. But already demonstrators were moving the orange police cones quickly set up for this unexpected crowd on an unexpectedly occupied avenue ever farther out into the traffic. Soon, to relieve pressure, the police opened a side street and with a great cheer our section of the rolling non-march burst through up to Second [Avenue] where we found ourselves in an even greater mass of humanity, heading north on our own avenue without a single car, truck, or bus."
Uh-oh, my mistake again! That, too, was the February 15, 2003 demo. This time, I came out of the subway at 23rd Street and was promptly accosted by a confused young German woman, postcards clutched in one hand. She pointed at two blue mailboxes on the corner and asked, in charmingly accented English, how you put the cards in. "Oh," I said, "let me show you." And I promptly pulled on each mailbox handle, only to find them locked. The police had undoubtedly done this as an anti-terror measure. The woman was relieved, she told me, that she wasn't "mad." No, I assured her, it was the world that was mad, not her.
The rest of the march was, in essence, a police event, the demonstrators penned in by moveable metal barricades, "guarded" often by more police personnel than on-lookers. From the moment we began to march in the rain, the police presence was overwhelming, starting with a well-marked NYPD "Sky Watch" tower, a mobile tower that can be raised anywhere in which police observers can spy on you from behind a Darth Vader-style darkened window. In fact, we marchers were penned in by the police as we headed south for Foley Square, cut off, for instance, from the large cross street at 14th by a row of dismounted police using their motorcycles as a barricade. Police vehicles and police on foot moved slowly in front of the demonstration as well as behind it. Police even marched in the demonstration (though not as demonstrators). Essentially, it was, as all rallies and demonstrations now seem to be in our growing Homeland Security state-let, a police march.
Led by a sizeable contingent of soldiers, vets, and military families, there were perhaps 10,000 marchers -- a rare occasion when my own rough estimate fit the normal police undercount -- on a dreary, rainy day, which is no small thing. Each of them left his or her life for a few hours to take a walk (or, in the case of one elderly lady, to be wheeled, encased in plastic, or for two "grannies for peace" to be peddled in a volunteer pedicab) in mild discomfort, to chant, to call out, even in a few creative cases, to display feelings on individual placards or constructions or in group tableaux. Each of them, for his or her own reason, was civic, even global. Add up all the people who did this in 11 cities nationwide, and the numbers aren't unimpressive. But with unending war, as well as perpetual death and destruction on the Bush administration menu, with the horizon darkened by the possibility of a strike against Iran, and a population which has turned its back on most of the above, it was, nonetheless, clearly underwhelming.
Meanwhile, in Iraq on Saturday, according to news reports, it was just an ordinary day, the usual harvest of decomposing corpses, deadly roadside blasts, assassinations, kidnappings, U.S. raids, and, bizarrely, the breakfast poisoning of 100 Iraqi soldiers. One American death was announced on Saturday. We don't yet know who the soldier was, only that he died "when he sustained small arms fire while conducting operations in Salah ad Din [Province]." He could, of course, have come from New York City, but the odds are that he came from a small town somewhere in the American hinterlands, from perhaps Latta, South Carolina or Lone Pine, California.
He might, or might not, have ever visited Disney World. He might have joined the overstretched U.S. armed forces for the increasingly massive bonuses the military is now offering to bind the poor and futureless close in a war that has been rejected by the American people; or perhaps he simply signed on with some of that residual sense of civic duty that's fast fleeing the land; or, possibly, both of the above. Perhaps, if he hadn't died, he would, like 12 former captains who recently wrote "The Real Iraq We Knew" for the Washington Post op-ed page and called our "best option... to leave Iraq immediately," have returned to speak out against the war. Who knows. Already, for 3,839 Americans in Iraq and 451 Americans in Afghanistan, we will never have a way of knowing.
Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com ("a regular antidote to the mainstream media"), is the co-founder of the American Empire Project and, most recently, the author of Mission Unaccomplished: Tomdispatch Interviews with American Iconoclasts and Dissenters (Nation Books), the first collection of Tomdispatch interviews. His book, The End of Victory Culture (University of Massachusetts Press), has just been thoroughly updated in a newly issued edition that deals with victory culture's crash-and-burn sequel in Iraq.
Tam Turse is a photojournalist working in New York City. Her photos of the demonstration discussed in this piece can be viewed by clicking here.
Copyright 2007 Tom Engelhardt
44 Comments so far
Show All“What would have happened if millions of American and British people, struggling with coupons and lines at the gas stations, had learned that in 1942 Standard Oil of New Jersey [part of the Rockefeller empire] managers shipped the enemy’s fuel through neutral Switzerland and that the enemy was shipping Allied fuel? Suppose the public had discovered that the Chase Bank in Nazi-occupied Paris after Pearl Harbor was doing millions of dollars’ worth of business with the enemy with the full knowledge of the head office in Manhattan [the Rockefeller family among others?] Or that Ford trucks were being built for the German occupation troops in France with authorization from Dearborn, Michigan? Or that Colonel Sosthenes Behn, the head of the international American telephone conglomerate ITT, flew from New York to Madrid to Berne during the war to help improve Hitler’s communications systems and improve the robot bombs that devastated London? Or that ITT built the FockeWulfs that dropped bombs on British and American troops? Or that crucial balI bearings were shipped to Nazi-associated customers in Latin America with the collusion of the vice-chairman of the U.S. War Production Board in partnership with Goering’s cousin in Philadelphia when American forces were desperately short of them? Or that such arrangements were known about in Washington and either sanctioned or deliberately ignored?.â€
Charles Higham, researcher, about U.S.-Nazi collaboration during WWII
Excerpts Trading with the Enemy The Nazi - American Money Plot
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Fascism/Trading_Enemy_excerpts.html
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com
I don't remember Yippies doing that ...I remember whipped cream pies.
And so whose liberty...? Your own.
and their kids...lol
rebelnow--Your observation demonstrates how deeply the "Culture of Narcissism" is ingrained in youth--almost anyone under 30--and the drift toward further societal atomization. These are both trends actively promoted by the dominant politicaleconomic forces and have reached the saturation point on MSM.
Only a crisis that is shared by a great majority of Americans will change the culture. Such an event seems at least several years away as the results of peak oil and climate change slowly become felt along with the associated economic fallout.
Regarding comments above on the subject of 'Dirty Protests' -(as it were), in the official's bathroom, well, -the IRA guys like Bobby Sands did some heavy-duty scatological stuff in their cells at the Maze Prison in Ireland!
Also, way back when: the Yippies had something called the 'Brown Eye Club': (This involved an acute insult to bourgeoisie diners in very swanky restaurants)
The Yippies, - as a group, would line up in front of the big glass window of said restaurant, pull down their pants, and all defecate against the glass, then run away --thus off-putting the rich diners from their luxury meals!
(I DO hope they washed their hands afterwards!) :)
Still on matters lavatorial: Beware if you go ahead with your protest involving long-term occupation of *Nancy's P's* washroom, -you may be accosted by a Repugnican government official if you loiter in there too long! ;)
________________________________
Someone above mentions the notion of being more CREATIVE in our protests:
Yes! this is *exactly* the right spirit! ~ Even two or three people, doing something guaranteed to get press attention, is a worthwhile action.
And... that action then inspires young folks ::: and so it goes...
To paraphrase the operatically-challenged sports commentator: "It ain't over till the Fat Cats sing".
~ Never, but NEVER give up! - coz at that very moment you have ceded all power to the fat-cat morons who *want* you to do exactly that! ( -as in: 'Just go play in Disney Land, my hapless little sheeple!")
Fight till your very last breath, -and we have a very good chance to do as the gods wish, namely: ensure that LIGHT wins out over darkness. ~ Overthrow the cretins in power and let them know, once and for all time, that our LIGHT will, -indubitably, eventually defeat their dark machinations.
Be valiant, be damned *persistent*, be annoyingly 'single fingered' to authority! – As per the 70's Donovan song: 'Dare to be different'.
As per Chairman Mao: "Dare to struggle, dare to win".
Be outrageously true to the cause of liberating humankind from the tyranny of the maniacs in power, ~ and we'll get there eventually.
But: ... be indifferent, lacklustre, uncreative, ground-down, depressed, scared, and as torpid as a dead stick, and you'll have no complaint when your government rolls over you like an oppressive Tiananmen Square tank...
Maybe don't wait for 'someone else' to take the lead? that's *sheeple-land* stuff! BE the leaders who inspire others, - (esp the young).
As Ghandi said: "BE the change you want to see in the world!"
Onward and upwards guys!
Mr. Engelhardt already has one answer but overlooked it. Bush hasn't forced the people to sacrifice anything for this war. Yes, they saw early what a botched job it was, and they want it to be over soon, but it's not high on their list of things to do. Whose children are being drafted? Who is paying more taxes? Bush has been an idiot in most ways, but he was clever to ask for no sacrifices. That has made the war easier to swallow at home and made the financial cost some other president's problem. Under conditions like that, who but a few idealists who feel ashamed of their country's misdeeds would bother showing up for demos?
Another answer is that the country is more conservative and Southern than it used to be. Protesting a war is unpatriotic. Even people against this war may have been conditioned by years of the right-wing lie that unpatriotic demonstrators against the Vietnam War stabbed the troops in the back.
Yet another answer is that the American people have been demobilized and atomized. We're all working harder in more widely dispersed automobile suburbs and spending our spare time in front of the TV and computer (like me, now). "Organized labor" is now almost an oxymoron. We're not only bowling alone, we're not even bowling.
Someday, we'll bring the troops home, but long after we've forgotten how and why they went there in the first place.
You could work at McDonalds in the late 60s and buy a top of the line automobile. Beer was far less expensive. You have less cataylst, economicaly speaking, for the discomfort of mass protests. That has to be one difference, but authority today also uses the bellicosity, the spirit of rebellion to further a crushing facist agenda. While rock and roll may have been "Satan's Music" to a crew cut conservative in the 60s, it's sometimes used to motivate religious fervor or the destruction of other people (muslims occassionally) today.
i was talking to a friend's 20 year old son and 25 year old daughter. i was stunned how conservative and uninformed they were. both had been raised in what i would have called a liberal environment. the present is all we have to reach all our childern and yet....i can not seem to find an avenue by which to approach them. the older needs to support the younger and the younger needs the older.
The American population is the most fire-armed nation in the world. What good is this, if you cannot extirpate the vicious cancer of militarism in your country, that feeds on hundreds of billions of dollars of money and manpower, taken as theft from the nations body. The bureaucracy and military are not going to stand down just because a few people ask nicely. They are not going to stand down just because all their justifications for war amount to specious lies. They are only going to stand down if you rip the money and weapons from their hands, fight if necessary, and lock them up for a trial of crimes against humanity. They have blood on their hands. Be prepared for blood on yours.
I think the marches were small and subdued because there is no consnesus that Iraq is a mistake (Fox News is very persuasive), the campuses are filled with future chickenhawks (no McCains or Kerrys there, and the kids are actually ratting out their liberal profs), and the admin has been able to prosecute the war with professional soldiers and support(marines, volunteer army, Blackwater, Haliburton... and those poor National Guard folks who got caught up in all this.
If/when we run out of these people, reinstate the draft, and 10,000 conscripted kids are dying each year, maybe that will get the attention of media, parents and college students.
All I hope is we don't bomb Iran, the PNAC radicals leave the White House with Bush, and his successor finds a way out of the Iraq mess.
My local protest was confined to 4 sign holding spots around Honolulu. I went to the one nearest my home and found about 10 individuals total in the two hours plus we were there.
I spent most of my time waxing nostalgic about the good old days of the Viet Nam protests with a similar old timer. One that stood out was in S.F. when South Vietnams General Hue (?) came to give a talk at the Fairmont Hotel. There were thousands of protesters with lots of college types both professors and students, with a good deal of the latter being the long haired hippy types with more then a few on acid. Naturally there where lots of cops with a huge contingent on horseback.
Everything seemed to be going smoothly until for some reason a few cops flipped out and started wadding into the protesters and beating them with clubs. I don't know if the order was given from above or it was just a spontaneous combustion deal. I was the first time I had seen cops beat females with clubs. I got ugly fast with the protesters trapped in front and on the sides they started to retreat down the steep hill of the main st leading up to the Fairmont. The cops were in hot pursuit clubbing away and riding their terrified horses into the crowd..... then an amazing thing happened. The apartments doors that were right out to the sidewalk San Francisco style began mysteriously opening and letting the protesters rush in for cover and then just as quickly close as the cops followed. It really reinforced my belief in humanity.
Firefem: I took a look at bill 1955 and just shook my head. What is to be done? Maybe we should all just start wearing swastika's on our hats... The paragraph you mention about the internet ties in with a vibe I got the other day about all these hearing and testimony about how to "save" our children from sexual predators on the internet. I realize this is a legitimate problem but somehow they seemed to be overselling it. Then it hit me. This could be a way to crack down on the internet. It will be sold as a way to protect our children from sexual predators on line but will really be a way to protect government and corporations from the true danger of a people's democracy, which the internet still is. Add to this the "protection" from terrorist on the internet and we have a one to punch that could make the internet go the way of radio and television as a legitimate vehicle for democratic exchange.
BugsB, "the liberty you save is your own....and most of all your children's".
Ray McGovern, the former CIA analyst and now political activist, spoke at our local University. The talk was scheduled in the evening, in one of the classrooms on campus. I arrived about 5 minutes early and was surprised to find the room already full. I found some standing room in the back and squeezed in shoulder to shoulder.
I was happy to see so many young people in the room along with the older crowd of activists. Some elderly people arrived, they also had to squeeze in along the now filling sides of the room. One elderly man, well into his 80's, stood next to a group of young men who were seated. Another older man shuffled in with a his elderly female partner. They too looked for room along the wall, found some space and stood. These "elders" stood within inches of the young men in their late teens and early twenties. Not a single one got up to give their seats to these older people. Finally, just before Ray began to speak, a young women from the center of the room went to the older woman and asked her if she would like to sit. She did so gladly. No one else moved from their chairs.
Ray's talk was great. He spoke primarily about the urgency of action, about the erosion of our constitution, about the neocon takeover of the presidency, the threat to our free speech, the threat to our right to free assembly, etc. Some women were there from the Raging Grandma's as well as some Code Pinkers who added some insight to Ray's entertaining but frightening tales of empire.
As he ended his 75 minute talk, there were applause and as soon as he said "I'll answer your questions now" half the room jumped up in unison, backpacks swung across shoulders, cell phones flipped open, and about 50 young people headed quickly for the exits. The empty seats now filled with those from the back, the sides, and the hallway. As the commotion settled it finally occurred to me that all the young people attending were there as an assignment.
Those who remained for the lively question and answer session were men and women who were nearly ALL in their 50's and 60's. People spoke about actions that had been taken and about what may or may not be working. Most talk was about the urgency of some kind of action. It was heartening to see such rage being channeled into creative discussion.
But the young people were gone.
And they must have thought that if "we're required to have to sit through this shit, we're sure as hell ain't gonna give up our seat to some peacenik geezers." Either that they just weren't thinking at all.
So BugsB, who's freedom is it that we are fighting to save?
Done yet? I mean are you ready to give up and just take it? Saint Misbehavin forgive us!
Oh dire warnings of police states and WW3... warn us anew for our faith in what we believe we do not renew.
Did you really believe that police states were wrong? I mean really believe it? The assaults on our constitution, the being lied into unjust war, the corruption, the blood and misery done in our name and all the rest... was that wrong? Is it still wrong?
There it is people... it is all still wrong and likely to worsen. I mean if you're interested in stopping WW3... if? If ?
Oh gee... protesting hasn't worked... next time I'll stay home ...that will show em! That will show whom what may I ask?
You talk about media control not telling the story. Well guess what... they didn't much tell it back then in the sixties either. So?
Yeah you noticed... it won't be so easy. That the game is rigged and they don't play fair... and you noticed that you are getting scared.
As if the approach of the fascism you fear would be so easily stopped... as if somehow they really didn't mean it? They wait. Yeah they do. They wait for you to tire and give up. They know how easy that is to do and do everything they can to encourage you to do just that... and for good measure they intimate just a taste of fear.
Just a taste... but do you really believe the fascism we all fear will rest so easy when the yoke is really upon us? There is the rub and real fascism is a rasp.
Back in the sixties we didn't have the net. People handed out and put up fliers and posters... now those committed to change check a web site and attend a march perhaps. Only them it is beginning to look like. The handed out fliers and posters told everyone and over time people talked about what the fliers said and in time more and more attended a march because though they may not have been as committed as one handing out fliers still they agreed with what they read. We do get the 'net' out but not the lead out!
Do you think non-political people go to political websites? They only find out about a march after it is over... if that. Professional protestor websites defend their territories rather than communicate and share. Divided we conquered ourselves, in effect. Hey Tom... for all the good work you have done and I hope will continue to do... you who have the ability so many do not... I hope you remember ...that 'they' wait.
You know they do. So think about those who'd best be described as ravening and rapacious waiting. The iron fist in a velvet glove dosen't need an iron heel but they'll have it ready if we let them get that far.
So if you tire ... then sit back and prepare to greet them. They dog our heels and would undo the freedoms once hard won. No they don't care... we are the who do. Or thought we did until it seemed to be getting difficult. So demonstations organized by the net (reaching only those who chose to find out) haven't done the trick? So learn some new tricks or some old ones... here's an old one ... ORGANIZE!
People you've got printers ... print up a call to action to hand out or paste up an announcement of a coming demonstration. Be a God blessed fool beloved by the world like Wavy Gravy... have some heart and dedication... the liberty you save is your own... and most of all your children's.
The spineless dems won't do anything because they really want the war to go on so they can leverage the anti-war sentiment to win in 2008. The 'aftermath' of Iraq is not going to be pretty, and they don't want that on their hands going into an election. I think this could backfire on them, though, because everyone sees right through their plaintive cries that they just don't have the votes so their hands are tied. We all know Pelosi decides whether or not to bring those spending bills to the floor. They think they can just sit back and watch the Repugs hang themselves. But their complicity is almost worse than the Repugs impunity.
I went to a small (90-100 bodies) protest in my city of 3 million people. My 6 year old daughter held a sign that said "I haven't had a moment's peace since I was born." (she was born 3 weeks before 9/11)
I too took part in many of the anti-Indochina wars protests in the early 70s.
However, our protests were prominently displayed on TV. In addition, when we hit Washington, we could protest almost anywhere we wanted (May 1970, protesters took over the DCs many water fountains, statues and public monuments.)
Usually, well known people from show business and the entertainment industries would show up to give a speeches and perform.
We also developed many singable songs which everyone could collectively join in (as people still do at football games). These songs were composed by popular protest- and folksingers of which we have none, today.
People could express their views on TV even if it got them kicked off as was done with the Smothers Brothers.
Some of us identified with the elan, ideas, intelligence and courage of the Vietnamese revolutionaries. Their movement was thoroughly secular and it couched much of itd directing ideas in the language of Third World national liberation movements.
Of course, the draft placed the burden of war on most young men.
In Western society -and much of the world-there was a general feeling of liberation, progessive social change and a radical rethinking of everything.
Last, the government still financed CETA and Vista programs that trained and enabled youth community activism.
i was checking over my emails to find the one that told of dennis kucinich determined to use some sort of house privilege to get impeachment considered (on the house floor, i think).
if he can do that, maybe some of these neanderthals will make sense and vote for impeachment. the evidence is certainly there. then we wouldn't have to worry about an impending attack on iran, because the perpetrator would be behind bars.
think positive! think impeachment.
I just scimmed the text of HR1955 and, apparently, our "leaders," or should I say our OPPRESSORS fear there will be a violent revolt by some of our OPPRESSED. IMO, this is a real possibility, but more of us will have to wake up homeless after being dispossessed by the Banks, are forced to work two or three meaningless minimum wage jobs just to stay afloat while our currency collapses, or sacrifice our children to the "war without end" our leaders - both Rep's and Dem's - want to perpetuate. Yes, it will come. Stay tuned.
Kivals
Positive feedback loops resulting from not buying? Think about the situation for a minute: if we just boycott shopping from tthanksgiving to NewYear. Nobody could get tased for not shopping but thinki of the opportunities it would give us to talk about issues w/ people at work (why you're not going to the office party), w/ neighbors (how's the decorating going?), w/ the kids (why we're not celebrating this year, at church (WWJD).... Why haven't we been seriously discussing a Black Christmas? Christmas plans already in place? Too much sacrifice? Easier to post and posture than do something the press couldn't ignore--like produce lower than expected seasonal sales--a sudden drop from the last week in November til the first week of January?
If I wrote a description of the turnout in Boston, it would have read much the same--depressingly low, police estimate was remarkably accurate, etc.
The only explanation I might add for folks to consider is that, notwithstanding betrayal after betrayal by the Democrats, the majoirty of registered Democrats are all giddy about 2008 and the prospect of taking control of the White House. They fully appreciate that Democratic candidates have distanced themselves even further from the street, and appear to have agreed to go along, themselves tacitly boycotting dmeonstrations that cannot help but make their chosen candidates look like traitors. The only exception to this observation are the Kucinich Democrats, who are always out in force at these protests, as is their candidate.
I also didn't go to the protest on Saturday in San Diego where I'm visiting my mother. Why? Lots of reasons: the air was bad and I have asthma, a feeling of hopelessness, not to mention the fires in the area.
They are waiting for us to give up. Will we?
Off22---Young man, I'm glad you are involved in protesting the war and all and are looking for creative ways to do so... BUT shitting in congressional toilets isn't gonna help anything and will just make protesters look like filthy idiots.
Surely you can come up with some better ideas, man! Read up on the YIPPIES! like Abbie Hoffman (May his soul RIP) and Jerry Rubin and the protests they did at the NY Stock exchange in the late '60's and early 70's.
Don't stop peaceful protests! I can't afford to, but that doesn't mean I don't want to.
Sad, disheartening and oh so true...
I keep wondering when the people will wake up and hit the streets in huge numbers but I guess it's just wishful thinking...almost everybody is willing to just wait it out until the '08 elections and depend on the Democrats to end the war.
It's a damned shame. I weep for this country and the sheeple who call themselves citizens, but I weep more for the people of the world we hurt by our actions and INACTIONS.
What will happen if the Dems DON"T end the war? Will that be enough to get us out of this national coma? Somehow, I doubt it. The MIC has already won and The War Machine will keep grinding us into oblivion, it seems.
What an unconscionable lack of meaningful action. This nation is doomed, damned and despicable!
Maybe I have lost any vision or hope...but I just don't see any real movement or concern out there. I keep trying but this complacency and acceptance of the inevitable is a deadly disease.
If nobody is having fun at these protests, maybe we just need to get more creative. Saul Alinsky was great at that, and our movement could use some creativity on par with his to compensate for our lack of outrageous numbers.
As everybody seems so pessimistic, for fantastic reasons, we need to remember that the public is on our side. As long as non-violence is at a premium, any mass arressts would look bad on the government, and perhaps spark more numbers?
As somebody in my early twenties who just attended my first march, I am actually energized (remember that naive feeling)--and far from burnt out and hopeless. But if everybody else is, lets get creative. I am not sure what to do, but according to these posts we need some life.
Forget sit-ins in congressional offices, lets have some shit-ins in the bathrooms. Even Nancy Pelosi has to take a dump now and then right? Nobody wants to shit their pants. There is not much I wouldnt do for a bathroom when I really have to go. I might even cut war funding. Besides, the media might actually love it.
I have no idea if that is even possible, but it is just a thought.
The most striking thing I noticed, as a citizen of Hawaii, where no demonstrations were planned, was that there wasn't (and still isn't) any network TV or newspaper coverage of the events. You wouldn't know they had happened, if you didn't know they happened. I looked over the weekend for news about the marches. I had to dig down into MSNBC and ABC websits to find references to it. CNN did not report it at all. Even BBC barely covered it. So, it might have been cathartic for all who attended. It might have made local news where the events took place, but for the rest of the nation and world, it might as well not have happened. Sad.
Haha, you dont actually shit, well, i guess if you actually have to shit you can, but occupy the bathroom so others cannot ... Alinsky threatened to do it in Chicago's O'Hare airport but the city cut a deal with him at the last minute...only reason I reference it.
And I will check out some of those others, thanks.
I followed firefem's link to check out the "Homegrown Terrorist" Bill. Horrifying! The language of the bill is so vague that it could easily be used against anyone who dares protest anything this government does. It has a special clause regarding citizens' Internet activity, too. And worse still, the thing passed the House last October 23. How come nobody has heard about it?
Two words: Media Complicity.
firefem
thanks for the news. violent radicalization and homegrown terrorism. i guess we now have all the pieces in place for the total totalitarian state.
Dems in power (princess pelosi et al) have pulled the rug from under the feet of any who march in resistance. They stand a close second in their self-centered egotism and lust for power. Their game is the same as Bush and co. Neither has anything to do with the well being of the nation. Marchers, for now, stand flat footed with their jaws dropped. The left has counted far too long on the ability of government and politics to instigate change. We can be sure of one thing in 08...Hope is not on the horizon. Politics has become the game of the weak and ineffectual. If you seek change, find a more creative, less self-centered outlet. There are plenty out there.
Firefem/PJD:
Two words - "shadow government". Check out the term length of the appointees, and the composition of the seats.
Firefem,
Agreed, this "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007" is very spooky. Why the need for such a bill? What "homegrown terrorism"?
I can only assume that it is preemptive measure - in anticipation for expected massive public discontent in the near future.
Mr. Duncan,
But those feedback loops would be disconnected from group activity. The right naturally creates its own positive feedback loops through business relations, with tangible greenback rewards, and through religious organizations, with positive personal interactions. Those feedback loops energize and motivate.
The left needs to develop group feedback loops to energize and motivate in the same degree if it is ever going to be competitive.
I wept at the end of this article. The scenario described above was identical to my experience in SF except here it was a sunny beautiful day and I didn't check the mailboxes, but would not have been surprised it was the same. The thoughts in the article were almost identical to mine and were I a better writer I could have written them also. As I walked to the streetcar stop, all the beautiful people in my neighborhood were sitting outside at the abundant amounts of cafes enjoying coffees, chitchat and the sun and I wanted to scream at them: "Get your damned asses downtown and participate! How long do you think you will have your pleasant little tete-a-tetes after Bush completes his madman's dream." I weep again. The beautiful dream of this country's promise is over.
Well, I've stopped shopping for everything but necessities because I'm finding I can't afford it anymore! And, man is it hard to do! But, just like my caffeine and chocolate habit I kicked years ago, I'm sure I can lick this one too.
My husband and I attended both the march in DC on September 15th and the one in SF last Saturday and what a difference in the two! The DC march was more emotionally charged overall. We didn't come for the speeches, just to have a show in numbers for the actual march. The SF march seemed toned down in it's rhetoric. Even the cops seemed more laid back than the DC cops, and they see protests of one sort or another nearly every day.
I'm with PJD and starofthesea, I think it's all been said and done, we need something new. But, I'm not giving up on writing letters to my reps. Perhaps this is where we need to concentrate most of our energy. Our reps can turn off the news (not that protests get aired anyway), but they can't turn off the emails and letters. I say flood them with your thoughts.
Speaking of thoughts, have you seen this: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h110-1955
Check out Section 899B. Findings: #3. What were they thinking when this got passed?
Here in Chicago it was almost a Bizarro march. The televised estimate was for 10k. Odd for them to even announce an amount prior to. So the turnout was less.
Then the police presence was very small compared to recent protests. I think they know we are worn out and plain old fed up with lack of enthusiasm for the movement. I really think the time is upon us for something a little more creative. With so many active military members and police who are on our side, can't we come up with a force big enough to just carry the thugs from the White House and the halls of Congress? I'm afraid that anything short of that will render the same results -- which is of course
'nothing'. I will contribute the first 100$ for the plane trip to the Hague.
A strike on Iran just cannot happen !! So we will be doing a pre-emptive coup.
kivals,
One could stop buying things they don't need and use the savings to reduce the amount of time spent at work. Then they could spend their time and money on catalyzing positive feedback loops.
The web tells us where to demonstrate. It also makes us forget to get on the bus.
PJD,
It seems that human group activities typically require positive feedback loops of some sort in order to grow, to grow the group and the enthusiasm within the group. I do not see how one can create strong positive feedback loops by not shopping.
I believe the biggest reason the MSM gives protestors no attention is that protest isn't an economic activity. In out hyprt-capitalist "libertarian" era of homo Econimicus, only economic activities - buying and selling stuff - are considered to be concrete, "real" activity. So, like the old story (untrue, but still as good analogy) about native Americans being unable to "see" sailing ships coming from the east - because sailing ships were utterly beyond their conscious experience, the MSM fails to "see" us because we aren't an economic activity.
The solution - become an economic activity. Stop Shopping! Food and basic necessities only.
Like PJD, I think those of us old enough to remember our first anut-war rally in the 60's, there was a sense of community, and a sense, too, that our efforts would be covered by the media so that others would hear and hopefully come over to the side for peace. I protested the first Gulf War with my then young children. Millions worldwide came out to try to prevent the premptive attack on Iraq prior in 2003. Did the MSM offer the rest of the population any serious coverage of the woldwide scale? DId they even talk to organizers or participants about the lies that were being promulgated to sell the war? No. Like donor fatigue, I think most activists have just about had it with marches, and most Americans no longer believe that their govt listens or cares what they think. How powerful is the victim archtype so many have embraced! We'd better give it up before it is too damned late, as I fear it may be already on my darker days.
The difference between demonstrations then and now is that back then we still has some semblance of democratic governance. The politicians in those days, including Nixon, would at least aknowlwge the demonstrators with a reply and even promises - even if they were empty promises.
The current batch of politicians - don't even give the coutesy of a reply, helped by a media that shoves all those million angre voiced down a memory hole. They all treat popular demonstrations with complete neglect borne of utter contempt.
I was in New York on February 15, and in Washington DC on Jan 21, 2001, and a dozen times in-between, before and since, plus numerous demonstrations at home.
I'm through with them.
Everything has been said. Something else needs to be done.
The last protest I attended, I stood dazed in front of a fresh piece of poster board, marker in hand, for 15 minutes, then gave up. I could think of nothing to write that wasn't totally hollowed out and empty of meaning from years of repetetion.
The one part of the analogy with the Vietnam Era wars that TE is missing here is that the Iraqis, like the Vietnamese, are defeating the US-led military and mercenaries on the ground -- albeit at a ghastly human, ecological and human cost. The Us forces don't control anything other than the ground they are standing on at any given moment (which could explode, even as they are standing).
Also, TE fails to point out the tremendous stranglehold that the pro-Israel lobby has on both the US body politic and the US media on this particular issue. That fact alone continues to profoundly divide both the US public and activists.
Also, the fact that this is a "holy" war against Islam -- i.e. a religious/ideological war; the US public is deeply confused, as in the ideological "war" against communism.
Even when US military units rise up in rebellion (which will develop much more slowly in the volunteer military of holy warriors and store-bought patriots)the effect will be much more muted than in the Southeast Asian wars.
Juliania - I'm with you, but in a broader sense. I'm disappointed, in general, with the women who have held pivotal roles in this seven year disaster called ShrubCo.
The female AG in Florida who purged the voter rosters; Sandra Day O'Connor who appointed Georgie Pordgie; Condi Rice, a sell-out of magnificant proportions; Nancy Pelosi - you've said it all; Hillary, never to get my vote. Even the newly elected female democrat from my district - has voted party line republican. There are probably many more that I'm not listing.
All of these women had a chance to change the world for the better - to be gently strong. But they all backed away from their chance. Why? How can they live with themselves, seeing the results of their actions?
And yet, there are the female heroes - Molly Ivins (god, how she is missed), Amy Goodman, Cindy Sheehan, and many more that I'm not listing.
Some might say that the world isn't ready for strong female energy - that the pheonix isn't yet ready to be born - just a few more years, 2011, 2012. How sad that so much more damage will come while the world waits.
This change from the Vietnam era to now is DIRECTLY ATTRIBUTABLE to the election of 2006. Then, we enthusiastically overcame the Republican monopoly on Congress, and the possibility existed for a few brief moments for our representatives to actually represent us.
Nancy Pelosi has committed the greatest crime of all against our country - she took away our ability to affect matters of state, shoved it back under the table and stomped on it with her pointy high heels. What she did to the hopes and aspirations of our citizenry, that they could actually affect what was happening in the hallowed halls of Congress, was - I repeat - THE GREATEST CRIME OF ALL AGAINST OUR COUNTRY.
Americans call their flag the Star Spangled Banner. The world calls it the Star Spangled Butcher's Apron.