Shortly after the October 27 anti-war march in San Francisco, in which 10-20 thousand demonstrators marched from Civic Center to Dolores Park, I received email from someone who didn’t march. He expressed regret at not being there, but also skepticism that peace-marches affect policy. We emailed back and forth a few times. Below is a summary of our discussion, paraphrasing him in some cases, and including both things I said and things I should have said. The two main issues addressed are:
- How much futile effort can people stand before they succumb to self-preservation and apathy?
- What is the “breaking point” that will cause most Americans to stand up and take action?
Comments are welcomed.
Cynic: Sorry… I was in a work-crunch this weekend and couldn’t come to the march. I’m also not sure anti-war marches make a difference. I hate to be so cynical.
PeacePundit: I too am skeptical that marches and anti-war demonstrations by themselves make a difference, but of course inaction definitely makes no difference. Nonetheless, I feel a lot better when I get out there on the street, add my body to the crowd, wave my sign, and voice my opposition.
But it goes beyond the marching. Participating in demonstrations builds personal commitment to ending the war. People who march are more likely to vote, write congress-people, hand out leaflets, help register voters, work for candidates, lobby for tamper-proof voting machines, etc. Marches also build camaraderie. They are an excellent way to meet like-minded people, swap ideas, network, and organize.
Remember too that a tide of anti-war public opinion brought an end to the Vietnam war.
Cynic: But Bush and Cheney aren’t Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. They couldn’t care less what we think. They fundamentally do not believe in democracy.
PeacePundit: Perhaps, but Congressional representatives — or at least the Democrats and independents in it — believe in democracy. They can be swayed by public opinion. Polls show that about 70% of Americans want us out of Iraq. If most of that 70% became vocal in opposing the war, Congress would grow a spine and assert their Constitutionally-mandated authority to stop the war and, if necessary, remove the President.
Cynic: I wonder if this is how the Germans felt who found themselves living under Hitler’s regime.
PeacePundit: Most of those who actively opposed Hitler were carted away after the Nazis came to power. Those who stood by and did nothing watched their neighbors get carted away. Some of them got carted away too.
Some people I know fear that Bush/Cheney/Rice are hoping for — maybe even planning — another 9/11-scale terrorist attack on U.S. soil to give them an excuse to void the next election. I wonder what most Americans would do then?
Cynic: I won’t be at all surprised if there is a timely terrorist attack, and I expect it will work just fine for them. You can count on fear I guess.
PeacePundit: “Naturally, the common people don’t want war; but after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag people along whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.” — Hermann Goering (Hitler’s Reich-Marshall), at the Nuremberg Trials after WWII.
Cynic: I think, like most rational people I keep assuming this can’t go on, and then somehow it does and I’m forever stunned and surprised. … Well at least we’re not getting carted away. I guess that’s something to be thankful for — but then again Bush/Cheney are trying to start another war and… see now I’m all depressed again.
PeacePundit: Interviews with now-elderly Germans who lived through the rise of Nazism indicate many felt frustrated and stymied as to what to do. And then, suddenly, it was too late.
Which leads me to this: Every American should be asked to consider what it would take to get them off of their butt and out on the street, or at least on the phone to their Senator. For everyone this “breaking point” will be different. But unless we can get people to think about and identify their “breaking point”, there will be no breaking points; people will continue to sit on their butts and grind their teeth about not knowing what to do.
What would the “breaking point” be for most Americans? Reaching 5000 U.S. military deaths? (Note: as of 10/29/07 we’ve lost 3850.) Their own son or daughter being sent to Iraq, or worse, killed there? Mass arrests of anti-war demonstrators? Bush nuking Iran? Dissolving Congress? Your brother being hauled away at 4 am and disappearing? What is your breaking point?
For some, the breaking point has already been reached. Here are events that were breaking points for some of us:
- Bush is in the White House despite credible evidence that Gore won in 2000 and Kerry won in 2004.
- Bush usurped Congress’s authority to make war. The U.S. Constitution clearly assigns that authority only to Congress. Yes, Congress voted to grant Bush authority to invade Iraq, but:
- it was on false grounds: Saddam had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks and had already destroyed his weapons of mass destruction;
- the authority was supposed to be limited in scope and time. It was for a one-time invasion of Iraq. Congress did not authorize Bush to attack any other country, e.g., Iran;
- most importantly, the Constitution does not authorize Congress to cede its war-making authority to the President.
- The Bush Administration, with Congressional complicity, is funding the war largely off budget, by running up unprecidented deficits. They are not raising taxes to pay for the war because Americans wouldn’t go along with that. Instead they are effectively taxing our children and our children’s children.
- The U.S. government has imprisoned hundreds of alleged terrorists without trial, denying them any way to contest their imprisonment. Furthermore, they claim the right to hold them indefinitely, in violation of the Geneva Convention, which the U.S. signed. Yes, some of those jailed are probably terrorists, but some are not; they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
- The U.S. government has used “aggressive interrogation” (a euphemism for torture) to extract confessions and information from alleged terrorists and even from people not accused of terrorism but just assumed to know something about terrorists. This is despite decades of evidence that such methods yield little or no useful information. The U.S. government has also sent alleged terrorists to foreign countries where real torture — not just aggressive interrogation — is practiced; this is called “rendition”.
- Over 4140 Coalition servicemen and women have been killed, including 3850 U.S. servicemen and women. Tens of thousands of troops have been wounded physically and psychologically. We as a country will pay the price for this for decades to come.
- A huge but uncertain number of Iraqi civilians have been killed as a result of the war. Informed estimates range from 76,000 to 1.2 million. Millions of civilians have been wounded and/or displaced from their homes. On top of that are all the Afghan civilian dead, wounded, and displaced.
- The U.S. government has spied on U.S. citizens without warrants. Bush asserts his right to continue doing so.
- The U.S. government has created a “no fly” list, but will not say who maintains it, how names get onto it, or how to get one’s name off of it. People on the list are apparently not considered terrorists — they are not arrested; they are only kept from flying.
Cynic: The bottom line, for me though, is this: You can keep pulling people into the cause of raising their voice, but everyone has their limit as to how much discouragement they can take. Pretty much everyone will run out of steam and get disillusioned about the “battle” when they realize that only one side is really holding a sword. People will keep joining the cause and dropping out again.
There needs to be some victories to motivate people’s energy. People need to know that their effort means something. For each of us it represents a different level of sacrifice. For those concerned with the survival of family, the cost of energy spent in vain quickly becomes too high — not to mention the personal cost of the discouragement itself.
I want a champion to get behind who has a chance of defeating the monster. I want to know that there is a strategy that might work. Then I’ll drop whatever I’m doing and take to the streets.
But OK, if I’m not in a total work panic I will come out next time — even though I find it demoralizing to see all those people and know that it makes no difference.
PeacePundit: Maybe 10-20,000 marchers won’t make a difference, but what if 200,000, or 500,000, or 1 million people had been out on the street in San Francisco on Oct 27? Don’t you think at least the national press and Congress, if not Bush and Cheney, would take a strong message from that?
Cynic: Yup, I expect one million people might get noticed. And 20 million would even more. No big numbers like that will ever happen in the U.S. without some really major event to catalyze it. (Not to say that they shouldn’t — just that they won’t.) I know that sounds pretty cynical. … If there was some movement that could hope to generate the momentum to get a million people in the street I’d jump on in a flash. I hate to ever argue against idealism. I’m all for the drops of water and grains of sand thing. And it has to start somewhere etc. And I would certainly go out myself if I wasn’t busy trying to survive. But if I’m perfectly honest I don’t believe it will make the slightest difference, and while some get energized by it, I find it depressing to hope in vain.
PeacePundit: How can we get to that magical million number if most have your attitude? Help us get there. Besides, it’s not a distasteful chore: most anti-war demonstrations are colorful and even enjoyable [see photos].
And if you can’t make it to the next march, assuage your guilt by taking action in other ways, e.g., write a letter to your Senators. I keep a stack of blank pre-stamped postal post-cards in my desk for just that purpose. The post cards force me to be brief and focus on one point, so it doesn’t take much time and my message is clear. Also, post-cards get through quickly, whereas letters in envelopes have to be screened for anthrax etc. Calling their offices works too.
October 31, 2007 at 4:23 pm |
Many of us in the anti-war movement in the 60′s spent years working to end the war….it was a very long process. In the earlier years, in San Francisco, huge numbers turned out for the Mobilization against the War and other peace marches. The goal at the point was to arouse the public and make it clear the horrors of the Viet Nam war. That has happened already, at some levels in the U.S. today. So, that goal, if we can believe the polling has been reached
But, later, it took determined and sustained effort for keeping the pressure on to get the political will to stop the war. Many, many of the demonstrations and protests in the early 70′s were a few hundred, not hundreds of thousands. I don’t think it is the numbers of demonstrators, but the directed focus of the work is what we are called on today. And, public protest is a valuable tool to keep the elected pols aware that their constituencies are paying attention. A few thousand votes can make or break an election….and protesters are voters.
November 1, 2007 at 1:05 am |
Keeping silent about this war implies you agree with the administration’s policies. Peace marches are one of many ways to voice dissent. None of these individually will end the war, but put all together they may help.
In any case, I refuse to be disempowered by this administration. I continue to believe that my opinion matters, if not to George Bush, then certainly to the 70% of the rest of the country that agrees with me. Besides I have to look at myself in the mirror every morning. That would be difficult to do if I did not stand up for my beliefs.
November 2, 2007 at 11:59 pm |
I’m German, was born in 1941 in Szczecin (now a Polish city). So I lived through WWII as a child. In 1944 my family fled westward, ultimately to a city between Cologne and Bonn on the Rhine River, rightly fearing reprisal from the Russians because of the immense human rights violations we had inflicted on them.
In my view, PeacePundit, the biggest obstacle to getting involved politically in the Nazi period was (and still is) that we usually do not have large enough networks connecting people who wish to act responsibly. Advice and dissent that aim at checks and balances have been -in my view- largely missing throughout all social groups (work place, partys, friendships, families). So during Nazi times regime critics were disorganized, and the last resistance had to rely on the inept Graf von Stauffenberg for planting a bomb on Hitler. Compare this with your Kennedy murder, or even the suicide bombers. No one even in Hitler’s immediate vicinity had the stamina to voice his alarm at the misjudgements Hitler fell into. Even Hitler’s closest friend, Albert Speer, saw no way to free Hitler from his neurotic landscapes of reality and joined plans to kill him with poisonous gas through the air conditioning system.
Arthur Solmssen’s novels have as (hidden) subject our (German) inability to join existing networks (unless they are really big and fun), as opposed to the American culture that tries out ways to overcome the threshold (breaking point – I love your list of possible ones). And, most explicitly in “Awakenings”, Oliver Sacks comes up with a psychiatric interpretation of this peculiar kind of inactivity (his term is “Standstill” of the mind), which is formulated in a way to help us get out of this trap.
In Oliver Sacks’s view inactivity in situations that urgently call for activity is a general deficiency of the human mind (due to either a “too much of activity” which we have learnt to suppress or too little activity), most obvious in men and women with Parkinson’s disease:
see footnote 14
Common to Parkinsonian inactivity is “not feeling at home in this world”.
Literature, music, sports, personal contact with other people can efficiently counteract this, according to Sacks. (Judging from my own experience I agree with PeacePundit: demos help forming networks and opinions among the participants, liberating them from inactivity).
Here is an extended quote from Oliver Sacks’s Awakenings, Chapter III. Parkinsonian Space and Time,
“We have seen, again and again, that patients’ own kinetic melodies can be given back to them, albeit briefly, by the use of an appropriate flow of music.
…
The art of ‘handling’ Parkinsonian patients, learned by sensitive nurses and friends – assisting them by the merest intimation or touch, or by a wordless, touchless moving-together, in an intuitive kinetic sympathy of attunement – this is a genuine art, which can be exercised by a man or a horse or a dog, but which can never be simulated by any mechanical feedback; for it is only an ever-changing, melodic, and living play of forces which can recall living beings into their own living being.
Such a subtle, ever-changing play of forces may also be achieved through the use of certain ‘natural’ devices, which intermediate, so to speak, between afflicted patients and the forces of Nature. Thus while severely affected Parkinsonians are particularly dangerous at the controls of motorcars and motorboats
… or in politics, I (Jochen Gruber) would like to add …
(which tend to amplify all their pathological tendencies), they may be able to handle a sailing boat with ease and skill, with an intuitive accuracy and ‘feel’. Here, in effect, man-boat-wind-wave come together in a natural, dynamic union or unison; the man feels at one, at home, with the forces of Nature; his own natural melody is evoked by, attuned to, the harmony of Nature; he ceases to be a patient – passive and pulsive – and is transformed to an agent – active and free.
in your browser window search for “kinetic melody”
Sacks notices that his patients are extremely happy when they are liberated from their inactivity. For many of his Mount Carmel post-encephalitic patients L-Dopa opened the door into an active, happy life (most vividly shown in Penny Marshall’s film “Awakenings” with Robert DeNiro and Robin Williams), but after an initial phase of exaltation most of them were pulled back into their numbness in spite of taking the drug. The desire to live an full life seemed too feable. Exceptions were people who got involved in activities that were self-perpetuating, e.g. work in a job they loved (or, I would add, “active work on political or social issues”).
Contrary to “the cynic”, I experience no frustration during such work as long as I can identify with it. So, at times I need to come up with a new idea or direction of my work and unite that with the work of the group I am in.
November 11, 2007 at 4:00 am |
There is one fundamental and critical difference between the Iraq war and the Vietnam war. The Vietnam war had the draft. This gave a much larger population with a very personal reason as well as a moral one for opposing the war. In addition life wasn’t as competitive in the Vietnam era as it is today. Folks could hope for a lifetime middle class job with a pension whether blue collar at some place like Bethlehem Steel or white collar at E. I. Dupont, etc. College was more affordable to a great segment of the population. And they graduated debt free in much greater numbers. Folks with a high draft lottery number could afford to take a year or so off to do drugs, go into the Peace Corps, be a ski or surfing bum, attend an Ashram in India, work for political and environmental causes, travel the world, etc.
Nowadays at college, students put in as much time as possible to get as good grades as possible so as to have a good chance at one of those few jobs in their field. Students want to get through as fast as possible to keep the loan amounts down. Students may have a job on the side to keep the loan amount to a minimum. Upon graduation, there is pressure to get a job as soon as possible because loan repayments start immediately. At work one works as hard and as long as possible so when downsizing time comes, you might be one of the people who gets to stay. And in time you may have a kid or 2 on top of all this.
Of course, in the Vietnam era there was a segment of the population living in survival mode with very few options. Well, today, in addition to these people, a lot of people like me ( educated professionals ) are in the same position. How much time to they have to write to their Congress people or participate in demonstrations. If their brother disappears in the night, they will be doing what their counterparts in Iraq do, doing everything in their power to get their children and their brother’s wife and children out of the country.
I have been wondering for years if we are in a period like that one before Hitler really came into his own. I also feel that when the Roman Empire fell, there were people who saw what was happening, but didn’t see how they could stop it.
I was talking with my sister Saturday. I asked her what she thought were our chances of bombing Iran. She had the same thought I do. Bush will do it after the Nov 2008 elections. It seems obvious the Republicans aren’t going to do too well in these elections. They would do even worse if Bush bombs Iran before them. Bombing Iran after them will create an even bigger military mess than today and porbably raise the price of a barrel of oil above and beyond $100 initiating an economic crisis. The new president and Congress will be occupied cleaning things up to the detriment of what he/she and the Congress might prefer to spend their time on. And what they may prefer to spend their time on is not what the Bush’s buddies favor. Bush and his buddies will have the pleasure of saying, “See, this is what you get when you elect Democrats, a bigger war and a Depression.”.
Finnally let me use our Alaska representative, Don Young, as an example. I have listened to folks try to explain positions different from his to him on talk radio here in Fairbanks. He doesn’t listen to them, he ridicules them, he talks over them; it’s disgusting. You aren’t going to reach someone like that by writing letters, doing demonstrations, e-mails, phone calls. The only thing that is going to get through to him is voting him out of office. And I am sure that there are others like him in Congress.
I have been trying to get Don Young out of office for 30+ years. Maybe this year it will happen.
November 20, 2007 at 2:27 am |
As with everything else, we have to budget our time to spend it for the maximum result. I write letters to Sen. Feinstein, but I admit it gets harder & harder, knowing I will get another ‘I don’t care what you think’ message in return. Still, if we shut up, she definitely will not hear.
I’ve joined the Sunnyvale Voices for Peace for a couple of 3rd Friday rallies. We don’t get press coverage, so I don’t know if we are effective. But it helps me feel some self-respect, that I stood up for something in public. I hope it also gives heart to the others.
I try to remind myself “Everything matters! We do not always know what effect we have had.”
November 21, 2007 at 1:31 am |
Here is another essay on low turnout at anti-war demonstrations:
[View Essay]
March 26, 2011 at 3:24 pm |
While I view the happenings,war, I see the futile efforts of marchers, laughed at by the population of cynics and armchair warriors.
By not paying taxes and not attending to their attention,to their egos,
Not attending the vaunted Congress. That would make the press and the world note ,that the so called democracy doesn’t want the leaders.
War mongers all , shareholders in Martin marietta, lougheed martin or whatever it’s called. War transfers huge tax monies to the shareholders and stakeholders in the ordance industries.Too bad, the votes gained by the workers will keep the party in power.
Stop working and paying taxes. This is probably preaching to the choir, since the tax system now relies on point of sale tax collection plus less on income. Blood money is exactly what tax money is.
Barter may be the coming thing. And possibly a sector of the population will not be attracted to participate int he consumer frenzy built up over the decades.
Bombs drop , i can hear the Tomahawk missile assemblers cheer.