Tony Long, the copy chief at Wired, posted an article today entitled, What If They Gave a War…? Looking back on 1968 and comparing the political climate to today, Mr. Long asks why the streets aren’t clogged with angry Americans, why we aren’t marching, why we aren’t irate and camping out in the lobbies of the media conglomerations, why college students aren’t storming their campuses, why we aren’t lynching oil executives, and why aren’t we demanding that religion keep its holier than thou hands off our government; he asks, “In short, where the hell is everybody?”
A few days ago, while I was watching Control Room with my girlfriend’s mother, she asked pretty much the same question. She wanted to know why she didn’t see people marching in the streets to protest the war, and why, when she watches the nightly news, she doesn’t see crowds facing off against the National Guard, the way they did back in the sixties.
The gist of my answer was the same as Mr. Long’s:
I’ll tell you where they are. They’re at home, tuning in to root for the next “American idol.” They’re plugged into their iPods, utterly self-involved and disconnected from what lies just outside their doors. They’re spending 25 hours a week playing video games in virtual worlds instead of fighting to save the only world that really matters. They’re surfing porn. They’re text messaging and e-mailing and scheming to close that next big deal. They’re flogging their useless crap on eBay… Bread and circuses. The government and the corporations are giving us bread and circuses to keep us sufficiently distracted so the powers that be can pursue their agendas.
But what I added, and what Mr. Long left out, is that I’m not standing up either. Sure, I write a lot of crap on my blog about where I think the government and the media is screwing us, but I can’t forget that we live in a democracy, and that if I really want something to change, I have to get off my ass and try to change it, and to convince as many people as I can that they should try to change it too.
And yet, despite that intellectual connection to democratic activism, I am still sitting in this chair and typing about it on my computer, rather than standing up and beginning the long, slow march to Washington.
I can’t connect my physical apathy to bread and circuses. Instead, I connect it right back to the anti-war protests of the sixties that Mr. Long and others of the previous generations would have us mimic. Because at the end of the day, the protesters didn’t end a damn thing. The war lasted another seven years. The march on Washington, the dead bodies at Kent State, the Chicago debacle, the circle around the Pentagon, the self-immolation of Norman Morrison outside of Robert McNamara’s office window and Thich Quang Duc in the streets of Saigon, Woodstock, the burning of draft cards, the exodus to Canada, the Life magazine issue that displayed the high-school yearbook photos of the 242 American soldiers who were killed in the previous week, even the death of Ho Chi Minh in 1969…none of it mattered. The war continued on, despite the best efforts of almost everyone to stop it.
What keeps me in this chair is not American Idol, but the failure of the protesters who came before me. What keeps me in this chair is the realization that standing up isn’t the best way to fight. What keeps me in this chair is my complete dependence upon you, and my hope that you, too, will refuse to stand up.
Mr. Long entitled his piece, “What if they gave a war…?” The rest of that sentence is “…and no one showed up?” That is the only way to protest. It’s not to stand and march. But to sit and ignore, and to use the power of the pen to persuade others to do the same. The problem is that there are a lot of people who feel it is their duty to “show up.” Those are the people we must persuade. We don’t have to convince the President to send the troops home. We have to convince the troops to stop leaving in the first place, and for those who are already there, to convince them to get on a plane and come back.
We can’t change anything because we’re not doing anything. It’s those who have stood up and said, “I will die and I will kill because my President asked me to” who have to change things. I’m not saying the troops are to blame. But I am saying that it is only the troops who can stop this thing. If you want to support our troops, you must make them understand that.
The way to stop this war is not to convince the world to start marching, but to convince the world to stop.
7 Comments
You said:
“What keeps me in this chair is not American Idol, but the failure of the protesters who came before me. What keeps me in this chair is the realization that standing up isn’t the best way to fight. What keeps me in this chair is my complete dependence upon you, and my hope that you, too, will refuse to stand up.”
-That’s BS. Just plain not true. Seemingly spoken out of some sort of weird apathetic guilt. its like your saying, “I feel like I care, but I’m not doing the things that some may expect out of those who care, therefore I must create a rationalization that proves my innaction is in fact, some sort of cerebral action.”
Why not just acknowledge that you too, are extremely self involved with extemporaneous activites (many of which, are done in a sitting fashion) and that in light of this, you still spend far more of your time thinking about what ails the world (more than the average joe), but do not have the persona to do what so many before you did (march, protest, sit-in, etc)….thats ok, does not make you a bad person…sometimes its ok to not know why you do (or don’t do) things.
I’m babbling…but there is a part of me that thinks a lot of writing like this is like trying to back into reasons……trying to explain action (or innaction) by creating plausible reasons instead of acknowledging simple reality. I can’t imagine that you think that all of the protesting done in the sixties didn’t do anything (in that, this was an established reason, before you fell upon this topic while net surging)…that’s horrible…if they didn’t accomplish anything, why are we still talking about it today, how come everyone knows what you mean, when you say Kent State….just because the “war” didn’t end on a dime, or even in six months time, does not mean that their protests “didn’t work” I’m suprised to hear such a blatant disregard for such an important time in history….never do you usually take such a narrow minded view. War is a complicated thing run by powerful people….and while the voice of the people is powerful, it takes a long time to move mountains…six or seven years is a drop in the bucket in history (especially in the history of war)….many wars have lasted FAR LONGER than that….maybe it was precisly becuase of all the protest that this war didn’t last 20 years (lord knows it EASILY could have)….
I guess when you blog every day and every day you are forced to put opinions down on paper…sometimes you just have to come up with opinions (such as, I don’t protest and in thinking why I don’t protest, I’ve decided that protesting never worked, and therefore I’m actively not protesting - instead of simply actively playing video games)
I guess that is an unfortunate byproduct of constant blogging.
I’m definitely babbling now. ignore this post.
I appreciate what you’re saying, but I disagree.
This is not a conclusion that I am coming to now. If you read “Of Creative Nonphilosophy,” (which you did), and if you read it for what it was, not for what it wasn’t (which you didn’t), then you would know how much I believe in non-action as being a stronger response than action.
Further, in my post, “Hope as Desire (for the world of the child),” I explained why writing is the only possible (non)action to be taken by an individual who would deny the power of violence. I hold this view because of my recent investigations into Buddhism and Taoism, and my readings of Levinas.
You suggest that this post is a rationalization for my sedentary lifestyle. I disagree. In “One way to open a door,” I described my goal with this blog: “I’m trying to become more and more self-reflective (and at the same time, engage in less and less rationalization).” I wrote that back in November, and I feel pretty good about my development as a blog writer since then. I use this blog to understand my way of thinking, not to excuse it.
Basically, my response to you, Hootie, is that where you once would have been right, you are now mistaken.
Time moves. People grow. Change is good.
Like I said, I was babbling….
Although I would like to say that I have trouble engaging in conversations when explanation is done bibliographically. In other words, while I appreciate you lending background by way of hyperlink….its not a very user-friendly way of having a discussion…I’m not going to click your links and read all those articles just to understand your point (or believe your claims) nor do I think it makes you sound smarter because you can provide hyperlinks to articles and websites that provide more “depth” to your posts….
I would prefer to just read your reasonings….however long winded…
And I have trouble engaging in a conversation with someone who would accuse me of “B.S.” when they obviously don’t know my background.
All of links included above are to posts that I have written. I’m not going to re-explain the notion of writing as a form of non-action, nor re-explain my feeling that such non-action is the only ethical maneuver for individuals who can admit their own ignorance of what goes on in the mind of the Other. Nor am I going to re-explain the concept of the Other. I’ve done all that explanation before, in the posts that I’ve linked to and in posts that I did not link to.
Perhaps you should remember the temporal nature of the Web. There should be no difference (for you) between what I am writing NOW and what I wrote weeks and months ago in those posts.
If you want to read my long-winded reasonings, go read those posts. And feel free to leave your comments on those posts.
It’s not about making me “seem” smarter, but about making you more qualified to continue the conversation about whether this post was just a rationalization.
I only accuse you of B.S because of “this” as well as “that” and for all the years that we have spent together discussing “those”.
vietnam was a different war at a different time… - the protesters in the sixties were riding on the successes of the civil rights movement… - a peaceful - nonviolent movement… - there were major changes in the air… - acid was exploding onto the scene like wildflowers and the successes of the civil rights movement was a motivator to keep protesting…
george w. has the fear factor to keep the citizens sedated… - he has ordered spy tactics and possible interrogation on regular citizens - which - in turn - quiets the anti-war crowd… - he rides 9/11 to justify death and destruction in a way that the anti-war protesters rode the civil rights movement to justify peace and love…
what can i do?
i’m not a lawyer in washington… - i don’t have the kind of connections that could get me in the arena to kick some executive ass… - however… - if i was or if i did… - best believe that i’d be working overtime for some positive results…