(Untitled)

[humperdido]

Just to codify it for myself, and because I know it annoys some of my more idealistic (about which I will shortly argue) friends and I would like to explain myself

Comments

[drumrollz]

Two thirds of the American public are against the war. (CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll- http://www.pollingreport.com/iraq.htm)

Where's that visible in our society? It isn't.

Protesting creates public visibility- and reminds people that no matter who Spitzer hired for sex, we're still in a war that has cost us more than $500,000,000,000 as a nation(http://www.nationalpriorities.org/) and 4,300 coalition deaths.

The problem IS public apathy. Sure, voting is through the roof this election season, but it's still a pathetic percentage.

[humperdido]

Apathy is still a problem, but I would argue that though they garner a bit of screen time every now and again protest of this nature by protesters with little at stake does very little to rouse public outrage or dissatisfaction towards the government and therefore does next to nothing to change policy.

Sorry about the run on sentence. It looks just about impossible to parse and I hope I didn't shoot myself in the foot with poor grammar.

[humperdido]

I meant to say that though they garner a bit of screen time on the cable networks... implying of course that the networks do much of the controlling of public sentiment regarding government policy.

[frank_grimes]

I feel like the current generation of radical youth are looking back to the 1960s at the wrong group. Instead of the meaningful boycotts, sit-ins and other gestures of civil disobedience which took place during the Civil Rights movement, the focus tends to be on the hippies and the summer of love, a period of time that rivals the antebellum south in how romanticized it's become. While the summer of love, Woodstock, and other such things could be considered part of a meaningful cultural and artistic movement, it generally accomplished nothing in terms of politics. Yes, the hippie movement had substance at the time and for what it was, but the Vietnam war ended six years after Woodstock and eight after the summer of love. In contrast, the Montgomery transit system was desegregated after a year of boycott.

However, even looking back at the Civil Right movement does not work. There isn't much now to which civil disobedience can be applied (to clarify, purposefully getting arrested at a rally is not civil disobedience). There's no

[humperdido]

I've found it really surprising recently how much our thinking on these sorts of things has become more and more similar

[yungurbncodkilr]

I think there are a couple things to consider here.

1) What is wrong with the situation today?
2) Who or what is responsible for this discrepancy? Is there historical evidence of tomfoolery?
3) How do you get this behavior to change?
3a) By which rules are these individuals or entities playing?
3b) Is there a lawful approach to change?
4) What is the outcome of a cost benefit analysis of what should be done versus what needs to be done versus what is happening?

For example, I challenge you to consider what one should do about this whole sub-prime lending scheme going on right now.

[spiritualstoner]

I'm not completely sure but I think the difference between then and now is that there's no draft now. Back then even if the college students didn't get drafted, their friends back home did. Then people had an actual stake on ending the war so they'd show up to protests and such. Now the people fighting signed up to fight so most of the people know they chose to go.
There's also the low number of deaths and the left's fear of "not supporting the troops."
I agree with you that protests don't work. People have to call their representatives or write to them. Politicians listen to their constituents. Protests don't communicate with politicians directly, they communicate with the public. If during the protests they handed out the numbers of the offices of the local politicians and everyone called in they'd have a lot more impact.
I have no idea what you're talking about with the ironic, sincere, insincere sentiment stuff. You'd have to explain that a bit for me to chip in.

[humperdido]

mostly me just incoherently babbling i guess... but i think a lot of the problem with protest is that it's impossible to take the protesters at face value as sincere... the gesture is too weighted with conflicting and sometimes ironic meanings. i know it's a little too abstract a point to take seriously right now, but i think there is a real connection there if i keep digging into it.