In other words, if you’re over the age of 14, and don’t have an opinion about this war, you’re probably brain dead.

As someone once recently said, once these protests start to include soccer moms and dads, then there’s real trouble for the Bush administration.

There could be no more powerful statementl, no more powerful image that this war is wrong, than 500,000 “average Americans” marching on Washington, D.C. That may be a long-way away.

The two strategies can co-exist as well. So, I don’t see why calling for an end to the traditional protest is particularly productive.

JK

Really! Then everyone of these ‘average’ people must have visited Fred’s Used Hippie Clothes Shop and Sign Emporium before their protests.

Dugger, “I’d Like to teach the World to Sing in perfect Acrimony”

As for the whole idea of “working within the system”, the reason we ended up with hundreds of thousands of people in the streets is that it didn’t work. Now, I am personally able to report that for the past 30 years I have been trying to work “within the system”, and it still doesn’t work.

If you’re happy with what you’re getting from the system, stay home and watch television. The system is going to give you what you’re getting now regardless of what any single person does.

As for chowderheads comment, do you think the telly and movies are going to show you boring peaceful demonstrations or teach-ins? European workers still fill the streets regularly and now have a higher standard of living than we do. Get a clue.

Aging hippies singing Joan Baez songs just don’t generate that kind of urgency. I like peaceful protests, but, alas, they don’t accomplish shit.

Marches and protests used to be the warning signs of revolutions, uprisings. Masses of people marching carries the implicit threat that the masses would drag the aristocrats out of the castle and behead them. Even in the 1960′s, the police were outnumbered and underequipped to deal with the throngs of angry hippies.

What the olde farts have forgotten– and us young folk weren’t around to experience– is that hippies used to be *scary* and *dangerous*. They threw rocks, they burned down ROTC buildings, they broke stuff, they screamed and cursed, and the cops didn’t have much recourse except to mow them down, which they eventually did at Kent State.

It’s a modern age and that whole “mobs in the street” model doesn’t work anymore. Today, all that matters is money. It’s all the economy, stupid. Money is political power, pure and simple. We wanted to see Howard Dean get appointed to run the Democratic Party because of his courageous stands and straight talk, but that’s not what got him the job. What got him the job was his demonstrated ability to *raise money*. From us, of course.

The wingnuts have taken over our country because of one thing only: they are extremely good at raising money. Those fuckers can sell like there’s no tomorrow: representing the combined expertise of Huge Megalithic Corporations with all their marketing know-how, massive evangelical TV ministries like Robertson’s, Falwell’s, and Dobson’s, and the nattering nabobs of nutdom in the hate radio industry.

Fuck protesting. Send money instead.

Even more importantly, the progressive movement cannot suffer another twenty-five years of ossification where we offer unrequited worship to the institutions and methodologies of our forebearers.

Not to mention the fact that for the next 30 years, the Democratic Party lost the faith of the American people on National Security matters.

But hey, if you want a return to those days, more power to you!!!

They are criminals and should be treated as such. No protest needed.