3412

No doubt there is some truth to this.

In the 70’s my area had 4 stations. I actually think the fragmentation of the media makes it harder for important events to coalesce (sp) into the national psyche. Back in the day if the TV was on and something major happened there were no TV options. You watched what they showed. It’s why the casualty count was so important, it was on 3 of the 4 channels on network news every night, and people watched network news.

I don’t think my daughters have ever watched the news. What they get is from twitter or some subscription service. The media has split and become less important in doing so.

3413

I wonder if anything can be as important now? Too many ways to consume media, too many ways to express ideas, too many tribes and too many issues.

Willpower, outrage, and attention are finite. Should I be protesting BLM, MeToo, Climate Change, other environmental issues, immigration outrages, or health care?

3414

The reason they died down is because Republicans have made it clear that nothing but force will make them care. They would walk to work past hundreds of thousands of protesters with a shrug (or past he hundreds of women protesting Kavanaugh). Peaceable protesting only works if the system is responsive to it and Republicans have made it clear that unless they have some electoral worry from their side, the other side doesn’t matter.

I guess what you’re advocating is just shutting everything down with protests. I’ve been advocating giant pro-2nd amendment protests with tens of thousands of AR-15s held by rainbow flag waving liberals.

3415

Yeah. We had huge Moral Monday protests in downtown Raleigh constantly for a year or more. The Republican state congressmen I talked to through work more or less said they laughed them off and even got energized to continue working against teachers by the protests. They realized they didn’t need to listen to their constituents, and so they stopped.

3416

Byproduct of gerrymandering. They no longer fear their voters, only their donors.

3417

I don’t know if I am advocating for that. All I have done is point out how a protest movement from 50 years ago differs from today. But change will only come from a national movement, and a national movement requires a lot of people giving a damn and staying with it. Saying you give a damn isn’t enough.

3418

Eh, to a point. I work 40+ hours and still manage to get to marches and protests, although I certainly can’t make it to all the ones I’d like to because if I lose my job then both my son and I are turbo-@#$ed. I’m sure that’s far from a unique experience, and this leads into the typical populations found at protests; I suspect those with less fiscal responsibilities (the young) and those with more time (retired) are disproportionately represented.

3419

I do think war becomes too clean for the general population if they are never asked to give up anything. In today’s world they don’t even have to give up their sons (or daughters) because the military is all voluntary. Had the government needed a draft to stay in Iraq we would have been out much faster. We didn’t even see a tax increase to help pay for that war. I am no expert but I believe there were tax surchages during the Vietnam Era.

3420

A deliberate move by the Bush admin to obfuscate the costs of the war. Basically push all costs out to the future while stripping down things like the VA for funds while generating a huge surge in people needing those services in he future.

3421

Well, his dad raised taxes to pay for the first war, and the American people threw him out because of it.

3422

Sure there were cost but they weren’t the same right. How far back do we have to go until we hit something that’s real enough, important enough, significant enough to count? It’s an endless game. Vietnam a real war, pfft, they didn’t change their recipes, have basic goods rationed out, put new groups of people in the workforce in order to replace the people sent to war. WW2? What do they know right? They got to fight most of their wars on foreign soil. Not only did the Civil War vets have to fight in their own backyards, they fought against their brothers, their neighbors and fellow Americans. Should we go further back then that when we put the leaders in nations on war fields? What hell do any these other people know. We put our leaders of our nations on the battlefield and all hell broke loose if they died.

I mean trying to hold the future accountable to replicating the past is a… it’s a fool’s game. The future will be different. The future has to be different, and there is just no guaranteed way to know what will be lasting, Hell we talk about an ancient slave rebellion, today, that wasn’t even successful. Some of the creators, the authors, poets, playwrights, songwriters weren’t seen as that meaningful during their time, but they have impact and are studied today.

So yeah, maybe there won’t be another Woodstock, and there won’t be a handful of songs out of who knows how many offerings released and performed at any given time that can try and claim to be some sort of defining generational piece, but that doesn’t mean impacts aren’t being felt, aren’t being seen, and aren’t going to be lasting just cause it’s not obvious. I think several of these movements, these ideas, and these leaders have been impactful and will be felt for decades to come, and downplaying the death of one young woman in a protest parade, quick mobilization when a questionable death has occurred, a movement that instantly triggered it’s own counter movement, and trying to suggest that one giant movement is more than several mobilizations in several places at once is just not looking at right.

No matter how you paint 2010s, it’s not going to look like the 1950s, and if that is the requirement, I question that… because maybe the demand for it to look like the 1950s has to do more with the people who were around in the 1950s. Otherwise, we might be hearing more demands for it to look like the 30s or 40s, or maybe 10s.

3423

Some truth to that.

So the lesson learned was lie about the cost of war, instead of don’t get needlessly involved in foreign wars.

Not that Iraq 1 was needless. It was far more justifiable. Whether we properly executed and extracted is another matter, one the Kurds have words for I’m sure.

3424

You seem to think I am comparing the 70’s to today to somehow discount today. I was just using it as an example of what it took 50+ years ago to actually get the government to do something. It took a decade and a cultural change. The same with the women’s movement and the civil rights movement.

Clay wondered what it would take for that to happen now. I guess short and sweet is it will take longer than Trump’s term in office (hopefully only 4 years) to get that kind of cultural or social change.

People need to face it, short of Trump going totally bonkers in public, or being assassinated, or simply admitting publically to a crime that even the GOP couldn’t ignore, Trump is going nowhere.

3425

We probably got out the first time to quickly, and stayed much to long the second time. Bush 1 had no plans for conquest, Bush 2 wanted conquest but had no plans after that.

3426

I’ve had this thought. I’ve also known Secret Service agents whose jobs were to go out an investigate/interview potential threats to POTUS.

If they ever show up at your door, invite them in, give them a coffee/tea, and then say:

“Seriously guys. Why don’t YOU kill him? It’s your duty to protect this country and he’s damaging it.”

3427

It was more like… indicating that there haven’t been protests… big ones, ones that had people bitching about traffic jams, and dangers, putting their lives at risks, clashes with the police… like indicating stuff like that hasn’t happened since the 70s, and then when challenged, when pointing out that yes, we’ve had very large marches, several small ones, some mobilized in unison in several places, police clashes, sit-ins… all this has happened since the 70s only to be faced with well it’s not exactly like the 70s because… xyz.

People aren’t just willing to take to the street, risk themselves… they’ve been actually doing it.

3428

The protests for the second Gulf War were pretty massive, in DC at least. That’s the last big protest movement I remember (didn’t moveon.org come out of that?).

But yeah, I agree, it’s not going to happen over immigration. That’s about dead last on people’s list of actionable concerns.

3429

and that does seem to be your job here…

You, like you often accuse others, only read and comprehend what you want to read and comprehend. We do this way too often. I am done with this and we can get back to immigration.

Have a nice day Nesrie.

3430

Unnecessarily personal, but hey… right.

It is impossible to ask people to get engaged more with immigration and expect them to act if you don’t understand or can’t acknowledge how they are engaging and acting with everything else they are involved in.

It’s that simple. That just sets everyone up for failure.

3431

These people ruined lives. I hope they get nailed for it, hard.