Article: Post D-Day Depression

[moominmuppet]

By Geov Parrish, WorkingForChange.com
March 28, 2003

This week is when it really hits.


After the initial wave of 24/7 news coverage and demonstrations in the streets, the reality remains. The Bush Administration defied logic, international law, and the wishes of virtually all humanity, and launched an unprovoked and unnecessary military invasion of a country halfway around the world. The shock, horror, grief, rage, sputtering impotence all finally echo away into silence. And still the pundits chatter and the bombs fall.


What to do?


For me, in many ways, the U.S. street demonstrations of the last week have been nearly as depressing as the invasion itself. They have been primal screams, by definition unsustainable, when what is desperately needed is sustainable responses. They have been expressions of what protesters have felt they need to say, rather that what protesters felt other Americans needed to see or hear. They have been reactions to what has been done, rather than demands for what should be done now. They have used the shopworn tactics, iconography, and slogans of 40 years of left street protest.


And, by this conduct, they have turned their backs on the far broader segment of Americans who have in recent months also been alarmed by this government's direction, but who have over a matter of decades expressed quite clearly that they find the activist left's tactics, iconography, and slogans to be profoundly unappealing.


This past week's protests were nowhere near a scale needed to have an impact through (to use the more extreme rhetoric) "shutting down the country." Any remotely thoughtful organizer knew this, yet still, the tactic persists. My dog does the same thing; she'll leave my home office ahead of me, and then look over her shoulder to make sure I'm coming where she wants me to (i.e., to take her for a walk). She does it every time, even though, when working, I never follow her. She never learns.


This is what powerlessness does. Primal screams (or canine begging) happen when there is nothing else left, when citizens feel not only that they have not been heard, but that by definition they will never be heard. It's barely removed from simply giving up and tuning out – which is what more people in America than in any other Western democracy choose to do, and what many current activists, in this war as in past ones, will also choose to do.


The thing is, I don't want to be heard. I want the policies to change, the killing to stop, the living to start. If going mute would do that, I'd happily go mute. Policy change isn't simply a function of decibel level or of number of heads counted at a march; it's also a function of having clear policy alternatives, and putting into power people willing to enact those alternatives. Chanting "No justice, no peace!" (until we go home in an hour) is easy; building long-term change is much harder. And "The People" know it.


Until two weeks ago, there was a clear alternative to war: the inspection process, which at minimum bought time, at best was a path out of an artificially induced, but nonetheless real, crisis. When that was lost, so too were many members of the new anti-war movement, because there was no "next step," no contingency plans in the peace movement's demands beyond lame and hypocritical calls to "support the troops." Possibilities abound, from a movement to have the U.N., rather than United States, take part or all of the post-invasion administration of Iraq, to a concerted push to unseat Bush in 2004. Yet at the moment more protesters are trying to impeach Bush (which is not, repeat not, repeat not going to happen) than to elect a Democratic president in less than 20 months.


This isn't simply a matter of pragmatism; it's also earning, in the public's eyes, the legitimacy to make moral as well as pragmatic demands. In modern American politics, the messenger is as important as the message, and one does not gain moral legitimacy simply by having one's policy preferences ignored. I guarantee, for example, that 1,000 people registering new anti-war voters would get far more attention and respect, with more lasting impact, than last week's protests – from the public, from decision-makers, and from those numbers opposed to the war and to freeway blockades.


You're an anarchist and hate electoral politics? Fine. Don't just sit down in front of cars because we're waging a war to feed our SUVs and everyone should abandon theirs, and then wonder why people who could be on your side but need to get to work are angry at you and vote for Bush next year. Teach tax resistance (and redirection); start some alternative community institutions that meet a need other than your own. The socialist and anarchist movements of a century ago had some traction because they started with the community's needs, not their own ideas.


Take some risks that mean something to other people, not just to you and your friends. For goodness sakes, even take some time to study something about political science, military science, communication, mass psychology, something, anything more goal-oriented than what most of the protest left has over the past 30 years ossified as.


Long-term or even short-term organizing is not as much fun as marching on a freeway, but then, the people on the front lines waging this war probably aren't having much fun, either. A lot of them probably don't want to be there; some probably don't even like the orders they're getting. But they signed on to do what was necessary, up to and possibly including death, for a larger cause. That's a major reason why virtually every segment of American society gives them respect. Religious figures, until proven otherwise, command the same respect for much the same reason.


In the public's eyes, the average demonstrator, and the theoretically moral movement he or she represents, has done nothing within light-years of that level of moral legitimacy. Protesters may disagree, but if you want to change policy in this country, whose opinion is more important – that of the advocate, or the advocate's audience?


The United States, at the moment, is careening away wildly from all but one country (Israel) in terms of how its public views the world. Israel is for many reasons a special case; born of the Holocaust, surrounded by countries that for decades were intent on its destruction, it's easy to see (though not to condone) how the Israeli public could embrace its current fortress mentality, and its attendant abuses.


America has no such claim; 9/11 was not the Holocaust, and this country, far from being threatened, has lived an existence of remarkable isolation and ease. Before the Cold War, it hadn't faced any meaningful external threat in over a century; even after a planet's worth of abuses inflicted in the name of that Cold War, it took another half-century before anyone caused harm on U.S. soil, and even then, it was a single act (so far) by an illegal private organization, not the army of a nation-state. To many around George Bush (and probably Bush himself), America's charmed history is a sign of America's unique partnership with Providence.


That sort of talk, and the power abuses now accompanying it, scare and enrage even traditional U.S. allies, who see it as evidence not of the moral authority of democracy and freedom, but the "might makes right" attitude of a bully. Among allies and around the world, people wonder why so few Americans seem willing to challenge this mindset from within, using a different type of moral claim.


For those of us who do want to challenge it, there's much we can't control. Barriers to such changes in U.S. public perception are formidable. The military complex in this country has enormous money behind it, enough to employ millions of people earning (except for the soldiers) a comfortable living building pieces of a repugnantly deployed whole. Mass media are currently dominated by a range of political opinion that makes Genghis Khan a centrist, and that usually acknowledges dissent only to ridicule it. Both major political parties are corrupted by corporate money almost beyond redemption.


But what we can control is what we say (and hear), how we act, who we appeal to and work with, and to what ends. Much of the political rhetoric in this country – with or without a war in progress – is so over the top and intolerant as to be anathema to a secular democracy, and many Americans know that, too. What is lacking is a coherent, appealing alternative. Times of crisis and maximum dissent are precisely when those alternatives should be on display – not when they should be abandoned for the protest equivalent of comfort food.


Many of us who have opposed this war feel frustrated and powerless; it is an emotionally charged time. Remember this sensation. Remember how unpleasant it is. Then resolve to do what you can to ensure that neither you nor future generations of people who care about their world will be put in this place again. And start working to do something about it.

Comments

[heron61.livejournal.com]

The only problem with this logic (which makes excellent sense) is that I do not in any way believe that it will work. Bush and company have a strong hold on the nation and will a 60s style uprising might have a chance of changing things (but it will need to be a lot bigger and louder than anything going on now and will need to involve artists and [especially] musicians in ways that will prove difficult now that a few huge corporations own the media in the US).

However appealing and sensible playing by the rules looks, campaigning, registering people to vote, making reasoned arguments in the few national newspapers and magazines that will print them are fine tactics. However, I do not believe that they will be enough to make any real changes. I do not believe democracy works any more (on the national scale) in this benighted nation. The 60s made changes in this nation because people rose up and made trouble. I think the only way we are going to make further changes is to make even more trouble.

OTOH, any alternatives to this are bound to be easier, so I'd be very interested in them.

[calebbullen.livejournal.com]

But even the sixties were democratic to a point or at least capitalist. The anti-war/ Youth movement had this huge baby boom chunk of the population. Even though the very political weren't the majority, there were still enough to be both a dangerous voting group and an appealing sales demographic.

But our generation has a much smaller pool to work from. We would need a much higher percentage of people to make any real change the radical way.

Of course, it took almost ten years of protests to stop vietnam. And Race relations haven't changed too much since those days. Some times the situation gets worse like rodney king and the subsequent riots and sometimes we can all get along in our fear and hatred of arabs.

Of course it's easy to detract and much harder to actually think of something that could work. But beyond doing the one on one thing, I think it will have to get much much worse before you can get enough people interesting in making it better.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

But beyond doing the one on one thing, I think it will have to get much much worse before you can get enough people interesting in making it better.

I agree, and am fairly disgusted with this fact, I am deeply troubled that most people aren't outraged by dangerous nonsense like the proposed Patriot II act and have begun to wonder if most people in the US would really prefer to live in a theocratic police state.

The fact that a recent New York Times article stated: 46% of Americans described themselves in a Gallup poll in December as evangelical or born-again Christians.greatly troubles me.

I'm about at the point of deciding that if the right wing stays in power after the next election I'm heading for Canada. My partner is re-learning French (college degrees and fluency in both French and English will get you in). I'm tired of voting, writing letters and emails, donating money, and occasionally marching volunteering to call people near election time and having the neo-cons and the fundys stay in power as they have since 1980. I'd have more hope if Clinton has been something other than a hypocritical pseudo-liberal. I'm mostly convinced that the swing to the right in the US may not end for several more decades and I'd prefer to live someplace that I don't loathe.

Re:

[calebbullen.livejournal.com]

I don't know what to say. On the one hand, I'm not actually convinced that this war is wrong. Well, no more wrong than any way. It seems plausible that there if there was a link between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda, we might not be able to reveal it without endangering intelligence operations. On the other hand it's also plausible that this is completely unjust and either a short con for oil cash or a long con for imperialism.

Fortunately there are enough other things to dislike the president for that one needn't focus solely on that for shock and outrage.

Personally, I think the change has to be cultural. I think we need to stop looking at the gap that divides right and left and look for the bridges, I think we do need to start voting again and not re-elect anyone until we get decent candidates. I think this might be the best thing that ever happened to the country because it might just get bad enough to have to be rebuilt from. It's like a forest fire. Horrible on the short scale but required on the large scale.

Although, I can't recall when the swing to the left was. I thought we were always motivated by greed.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Although, I can't recall when the swing to the left was. I thought we were always motivated by greed.

Yes, but it was once far less bad. You're likely not old enough to remember. I was a kid during the late 60s and early 70s and a teen during the mid-late 70s. The US was vastly more liberal then. Wrt economics alone, the situation for both women and blacks improved far more between 1967 and 1980 than they have in the succeeding 23 years. I watched the slow and terrible rise of the fundys in the late 70s - before that, I remember that religion was something the few people outside of the bible belt cared much about (at state I greatly preferred). The most liberal TV shows came very close to openly mocking all organized religion - I miss those days.

The fundys and the neo-cons changed this nation is huge number of subtle way and generally made it meaner, greedier, and more paranoid. It was far from paradise in 1978, but it was far better in many ways that it is 25 years later.

Wrt any link between Iraq and Al-Queda, I find that deeply unlikely since the Wahhabi terrorists of Al-Queda hate Hussein almost as much as they hate us, they are getting all the money they need from Saudi Arabia (including from their royal family, close allies of the Bush family).