Some excellent points have been made in comments about my previous post comparing Iranians and Americans, and I think they deserve a bit of exploration.
First, it’s certainly the case that a huge number of Americans turned out to protest the (most recent) war before it started, and that the TV news largely ignored those protests. To me, this indicates the problem with TV news. In general I think a word is worth a thousand pictures; the former conveys information, the latter feelings and sensations. (How many pictures does it take to tell you how to make beef bourguignon?)
From Iran we get tweets and mobile-phone videos, and I think we probably agree that this democratization of reporting is mainly a good thing. Disintermediation, it was called back in the dot-com boom days. If we had similar public strife here in the US we’d probably get similar tweets and videos.
Which leads to my second point. To my mind a critical lesson is that the struggle won’t be won soon. It won’t be won in this generation, for example. We can certainly hope to make significant strides; we can even dream, and not without reason, of taking bigger steps than those who struggled before us. But it’s not reasonable to expect to finish the fight, because we’re struggling against aspects of the human psyche that are likely to remain with us for some time to come.
That’s not meant as a downer, but as a realization of what’s actually possible. I fear a movement that overestimates its possible impact, because it will dissipate when it fails.
It’s also meant to help us stay grounded in the fact that our problems lie in the human method of thinking. It’s not just a few bad apples, any more than torture is. Humanity in general, and Americans in particular, have some habits of thought that get us in trouble. We need to recognize them in ourselves first, then we can help the community to eliminate them.
So it seems to me that the most recent war against Iraq could not have been stopped, no matter how many Americans took to the streets. Unless we made it impossible to raise an army, the invasion would have happened in the teeth of the strongest protests. But as Chomsky said, never before in history have millions of people protested a war before it started.
These protests had an effect quite evident to a historically educated eye. True, they had no chance of stopping the war; but they did force it to be short. They did force the Bush administration to forbid coverage of anything war-related, including the return of flag-draped coffins, which in previous wars were used to inflame public distaste for The Enemy, but have now become another reminder of a war the American public would rather switch channels away from.
In short, I think the American economy, what Chomsky calls the Pentagon system, depends on relatively regular wars. Modern manufacturing is so efficient it needs increasingly large markets, of which the modern world has a decreasing number, producing an obvious tension. What’s the best market? A bottomless pit called War, a market that can never be satisfied.
Thus we have to protest war and the ravages of globalization and environmental exploitation just as others have protested racism and slavery and religious intolerance. We have to know, as we do so, that these are long-term struggles. Martin said he might not get there with us; we have to take the same view toward future generations. We’re part of a multi-generational, indeed multi-millennial, struggle. We’re not tasked with winning; what we have to do is our share of the heavy lifting.
As a particular instance of this precept, my feeling is that large demonstrations in a few major cities would make a difference in the health-care debate. Suppose that one day everyone wore white armbands or whatever; wouldn’t that scare the crap out of Congress?
I did not know so many protested this war before it started, were there crowds five miles long marching thru cities? I'm out in the boonies soif MSM doesn't report it I don't see it. Well things are different now, I've got my internet and my blogs so I'm not so limited.
I would go with black for all the dead our health care system has left us, but any color would be better than no color. I could do with less authoritarianism but I think it might be genetic, but it would be nice to see them contained.
Posted by: knowdoubt on June 23, 2009 6:10 AMI wanted to compliment you on one of the best posts I have read lately. Not only is it completely true, but it is something that should be read all over. It should be wherever progressives can see it. I hope it is picked up by other blogs, and I am emailing it to be sent on. Human thinking is short sighted. However those who have some concept of history actually can see progress---hard though that is to believe some days--we can only ever be part of the fight, but we have to carry our part of the load or the progress will not be made.
Thank you for this excellent post.
Well, knowdoubt, there were millions of people protesting around the world. I doubt there were five-mile-long marches, but that might depend on how you measured to some extent. The impressive thing to me was that protests took place in so many different countries, as a global consciousness began to arise among those who had previously thought themselves unusual.
Betsy, thanks so much for your kind words! I hope you and I and others like us can help people get a bit more historical perspective, because I think it helps prevent hopelessness and keeps us going.
Posted by: Chuck Dupree on June 23, 2009 4:40 PMI disagree with your generational assessment, and the transformation is happening more rapidly and more broadly across the entire globe all the time. Within a shorter time period than you might imagine, everything can change.
Posted by: Mike Goldman on June 24, 2009 12:15 AMWhite armbands for healthcare is a good idea, though.
Posted by: Mike Goldman on June 24, 2009 12:17 AMI'm color blind, so white suits me too.
Posted by: knowdoubt on June 24, 2009 5:59 AMThere are already black armbands for this.
Posted by: Colin Escherich on June 24, 2009 9:03 PMSorry guys but I'm holding out for a lapel pin health care logo that you wear on your lapel. Wait, I don't have a lapel. So where would I put the thing?
Posted by: Buck on June 24, 2009 10:38 PMInstead of wearing an armband or lapel pin that is meaningless to anyone outside your small group, all of whom are already persuaded, do something useful for advancing your viewpoint: write to your senator, sign up with DFA for physically taking their petitions to your representative's office, get a letter to the editor published, or participate in the Obama health care actions this weekend (around here, passing out brochures and doing free blood pressure checks, holding rallies, etc.).
Posted by: Joyful Alternative on June 25, 2009 12:24 AMJoyful, My senators are from Georgia, they don't give a shit what I or anyone else thinks, unless you're a lobbyist and pouring money in their campaigns and pocket. The newspaper will only publish letters that don't threaten it's interests. It is hard for me to participate in Obama's stuff since I feel betrayed by Obama.
Posted by: knowdoubt on June 25, 2009 6:48 PMWhere in Georgia, Knowdoubt? Anywhere near St. Marys, or the Okefenokee?
Posted by: Jerry Doolittle on June 25, 2009 8:11 PMI wish, I love the water (salt) and the Okefenokee, but I'm in Northwest, GA. Sort of triangulated between Rome, Cartersville, and Calhoun, a very Red area, I might add. How I got here is a whole nother story, but suffice it to say it was not of my own free will.
Posted by: knowdoubt on June 25, 2009 9:10 PMPersonally I'm for doing anything and everything. I've written to my Senators and my Representative, two of whom are probably (ya never know with Pelosi) on board with some sort of personal option and the third, Feinstein, might conceivably be shoved in that direction. But I also think that if there were a day or a week when people wore a color or something visible like that, just as a general show of how many people are watching, it would affect the debate strongly in our direction.
Most politicians can be manipulated if they realize that large numbers of their constituents are paying attention and care about an issue. That's where democracy actually works, when people stop being consumers and start being citizens.
Finally, it's great to read "a whole nother"; I've always loved that expression. It makes so much sense, it's such a great illustration of how we use language contextually, tear it up and re-use it differently, and so on. I grew up in the hills of eastern Kentucky, where we all used the phrase constantly, and most people would have been aghast at anyone suggesting a grammatical issue with it. "How else would you say it?" they'd ask, a question that illustrates perfectly part of what drives language development. It's a human-interface issue, and if the user is saying, How else would you say it?, you go with that. So I'm proud to be "a whole nother" user myself, and it's good to encounter others.
Posted by: Chuck Dupree on June 25, 2009 11:00 PMThanks, I needed that, I've been castigated over my language most of my life. My Mother in law has reminded me numerous times that her revered relatives went thru their whole lives and never said a bad word. I tried, but I always slipped under duress. I never could get rid of this infernal accent that caused me so much trouble amongst my more Northern brothers and sisters. I've come to accept it.
Posted by: knowdoubt on June 26, 2009 6:35 AMToo bad,knowdoubt,you were not fortunate enough to make it further south in Georgia. Our Representatives are very special HUMAN BEINGS.
As for accents, they only exist when you are out of your own homeland. Have you ever listened to and quietly laughed (just to be polite,of course) at those Yankees, Asians and Europeans when they invade our territory?
Obviously, they come from a wierd whole nother world.
mfd
mfd, Tell me more...I thought that if they weren't extinct they were on the endangered list, around the halls of Congress. I want names.
Posted by: knowdoubt on June 26, 2009 5:44 PMI'm getting one of the armbands, seems like I can legitimately claim to be uninsured, since they routinely deny my prescriptions causing me no end of grief. When it comes to pain nothing will suffice but pain itself, you can't grow your own to alleviate it because that would be cheating the pharmaceuticals, if you don't enjoy the kind of coverage our good representatives do in Congress then you probably deserve it, it's all biblical and all that, I'm told by people that "know."
Posted by: knowdoubt on June 26, 2009 5:50 PM