Sometimes being active means being aware and voting for the right candidate. The real reform candidates did not win in the primaries and had the people understood the issues they would have elected the right people. The majority of this bunch are just hand picked party hacks that will follow corporate party orders and will rubber stamp Bush's escalation. Bush understands this and knows he can steam ahead but will try to "resell" the war with new spin words. The corporate media continues to help him keep the people confused.
The actual step that ended the Vietnam war was congress ending funding for it. Every few months congress rubber stamps more money to fuel the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations.
I know the media made a lot of fanfare about the democrats taking over but it's just a distraction. Even the 100 hours agenda is just token reform that will make headlines and make everyone feel good but will do little in the end. If people really understood this they would not be fooled into settling for less. It's one of the reasons people become "disenchanted" with politics. They work to support candidates that say all the rght things but in the end nothing really changes. During Vietnam enough real reform democrats got into congress that started things rolling and the rest of congress began to go along or risk losing their own seats. But an interesting thing is McGovern was trounced by Nixon.
There are now major demonstrations against the war every few months or so that draws tens of thousands of people but Bush ignores them and marches on. He knows Congress, Corporate America and the Corporate Media are behind him so he doesn't care what the people think. They never really do anyway, unless of course we have informed and active citizens, on every level.
Bush claims history will vindicate him which shows me that he is after the oil. And if he succeeds that's all that will be remembered. Not the tens of thousands of dead and wounded and the suffering and hardships that were inflicted. That's how history is written, it sanitizes the suffering.
Of course if we continue to use oil Global Warming will destroy the planet. Corporate America profits from the war but it's the people who pay the price. A war for oil is not in the best interests of the American people. Safe, clean, renewable energy is, which is what we should be spending our money on, not a war for the profits of corporate elite's.
There are a few reasons the US ended the Vietnam War. The demonstrations were one but people began to question the war deeper as more of the soldiers deaths came closer to home. Also soldiers began to return home and tell a different story about what was happening. It was awaking the people into aware and active citizens, which they fear, so they ended the war. According to Noam Chomsky the real deciding factor was the military was "mutinying." The army was beginning to crack and the generals were concerned. It's why the eventually ended the draft. Check out the documentary "Sir, No Sir."
When I say we need to inform the people I mean so they understand the issues, vote for the candidates that represent their interests and act.
QUESTION: I couldn't agree with you more on that - but there's the rub: how do you get an informed pubic in this age of partisan bickering, with the people bickering with one another and divided over everything from abortion to liberalism vs conservatism to prayer in the schools to smoking to drunk driving? We can't even agree on a sensible health insurance program without people dividing along ideological lines and insisting that it's either "my way or the highway!" Petty dictators around here are a dime a dozen.
Well, keep trying to raise public awareness, my friend, but I'm afraid you have an uphill battle around here.
it's definitely an "up hill battle." But to begin with we don't have an informed public. We have a public that is distracted with nonsense and deliberately misled and confused by the corporate media. They are not informing us. They even have us divided into "Red and Blue." If more people were informed of the real issues there would not be this division. It's the people vs corporate power. Most of us are not in that 1% or the top 10%.
IFYou are reading some of the alternative media on the net and watching Amy Goodman on Democracy Now. You see they are giving the real answers to real problems, like the war and Israel and corporate theft. If you compare it to the nonsense they have on TV and print you can see the differences. There are not two sides to the War, it's a lie and illegal. There's no debate. It's about stealing the oil. They wrote and spoke about the importance of the region in the 90's and now here we are. We got rid of Saddam, there were no WMD but now it's a new excuse as to why we have to stay. You can watch them lie about Iran and Syria also.
Same with Israel. It's like what they did with racist South Africa, trying to make it appear as if there were two sides. But there is not "two sides" to racism and apartheid, aggression, ethnic cleansing and murder. There's not "two sides" to this issue.
Certain issues are social, like abortion and school prayer, are important but the bottom line is they have sold out our country and our taking away our rights. Global Warming will destroy the planet. These are the real serious issues that the people are being lied too about. The corporate media "muddles" the issues because they are nothing but huge corporations that are owned by wealthy conservative CEO's who use it to present the issues in a manner that will promote corporate interests.
Checkout FAIR's site were they list who owns the media, it's an eye opener.
While they had constant almost 24 hour debate over a handful of demonstrators on the Terry Shavio case they were robbing the country, waging war and passing a bill that basically makes it impossible to go bankrupt, with little debate in the news.
They built us up on debt and are pulling the bottom out and will be putting people in "Debt Slavery."
It's the same with Universal Health Care. If people knew the truth, about how much money is being made and how we are suffering and getting ripped off and they would understand how to vote. It's not about our care but about protecting corporate profits.
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