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Will Any Americans Ever Again Give Peace A Chance?
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Tonight, we're too tired to type much.
Nonetheless, we two old lions still want to send a special message to today's young lions.
We're both bloody well weary -- of war.
And we're wondering what went wrong.
And we wish with all our hearts ...
Well, watch this and listen if you really want to know what we wish.
Understand what we're saying?
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posted by Richard at Thursday, March 22, 2007
14 Comments:
Brit, you made me cry.
Memories of when we still had some balls and pride.
That will be emailed everywhere I can. Thanks.
I remember KENT.
Brutal, totalitarian regimes?
We don't need to leave the US to find them.
Time for the big R word.
Same old, same old.
One set of laws for the rich and another set of laws for the poor.
Brilliant. I loved it. There's a bunch of Quakers out on the corner, I think I'll go over and stand with them awhile.
Peace.
Oh, and the side of me that is a conspiracy freak and doesn't doubt for a moment why Lennon died for our sins, says that I was right when I figured that 3/23/07 (3/2+3=5/07: 3/5/7) is another interesting day, vis a vis the warmongering in the Gulf. Of course they could have played this game 3/5/07, but they didn't and I guess there are other funny numbers too....enough already ... there are those who want war and those who want peace and the ones who want war won't rest until they have it, but they are low individuals, immature souls. By the way I keep reading about random naval personnel dying : these two on a sub, this one drowned in weird circumstances. Could there already be action in the Gulf? Sorry, you can just drop this paragraph. It's neither here nor there.
Ah, young baby boomers changing the world. Maybe we can still do some good before we kick off.
Too many talkers and not enough doers - that's the problem. The ones with the guts are the ones that's too old to do it all over.
A good question though ~~ were are today's young lions?
Watching TV, playing video games, chatting in chat rooms, stuffing themselves with junk food, ahrw....
forget 'em and eff 'em they deserve to grow old in the country they've helped make what it is
me and the others who did the job last time will be out of the whole effin mess soon enough -- the cowards that are left deserve all the get!!!!!!!!!
Terminal apathy.
Those old footages evoked long buried memories, and many complex, contradictory thoughts.
My first routine reaction was a pride for belonging to that depicted generation, and the frustration I feel about the present one, who doesn't 'rattle the cage', or clashes with our oppressors as energeticaly as we once did, along the line of anoymous and jukebox.
Then the more I thought about it, the more it troubled and humbled me. In one of my somber mood I observed, how little we have accomplished through all that protestation: We couldn't even hold-on what we had inherited from our elders, instead we lost a significant portion of it, and as a result, we give markedly worse Human and social conditions to our inheritors to deal with, than what we have enjoyed during the post-war boom.
Secondly, I questioned myself: Why do I pretend that our generation invented Resistance, and Revolutionary spirit? Ours were just one among the Human chain of life and never ending succession of generations, and in comparison only a pale shadow of past examples, like the late 18 century Americans, or the mid 19 century (1848) revolutionary generation of European youth, (just to mention two), who shook the autocratic monarchies of the day to their core, in a spectacular chain-reaction, spreading from one country to the next. The fight for freedom and dignity for the Human Mind, Spirit and his Being is a very old one, which ebbs and flows in the ocean of time.
It appears that the 'masters and the 'oligarchs' have the upper hand now, and scant hope left for us. We need to face the reality, that they have almost succeeded to atomize and alieanate contemporary Western society, in order to eliminate social solidarity and cohesion, and indeed sowed plenty of animosity among us worldwide, using any characteristics which might divide us, be it religion, nationality, language or culture, so they never have to face all of us at once, and also how they harnessed technological powers to their diabolical purposes, such as to keep Humanity under constant surveillance and in chains, instead of using it to liberate Humanity.
Yes these are grave set-backs, and they ache my heart deeply. Yet doesn't matter how much Evil, and those who serve Him succeed to promote hatred and wars among the people, or how much their manipulation and exploitaiton turn many people to desperate poverty, and spiritual and moral blindness, I believe, that they will never succeed to break Humanity's Spirit completely.
Untill Human life exists, the idea and hope of Humanity will exists also, that we will ultimately be free and empowered to do our Divinily determined destiny, to do good things for ourselves and to our children, to our fellow Human Beings, and indeeed finally to all creatures small and large, in this long suffering Planet of ours.
Brit: That was saddly beautiful. I don't know what happened to the people in my country other than being called traitors by our government.
Not all Americans are "bushies", in fact, only 22% actually agree with him. Congress is starting to grow a backbone, which is a slice of heaven! There is one thing the majority of us 88%ers have, which is something we didn't have two years ago - Hope.
PS Just a trivia, which I'm proud of, and I'd like to mention:
To the best of my knowledge, this famous globally televised 'Love-in Live', was broadcasted from the Queen Elisabeth Grand Hotel in Montréal, Québec, Canada.
Watching those thugs in uniform is mind blowing. That's their own people they're treating that way. God, no wonder none Americans are treated with so much contempt, so little regard and almost worse than animals.
Why do they do it? And look as thought they are actually relishing it?
Is it the power? Is it the money? A combination of both? Or something far worse?
As I watched the footage of the Protests of 40 years ago, my reactions were much the same as Tom V's --- same range of thought: pride, contrast with today and why, reflection on where it fits in the short 200+ years of our country's history, and so on --- and naturally I thought a LOT about myself and where I fit into this bit of history. So, I guess I will say something about that.
I am part of a generation born when birth rates were quite low, 10-15 years before the baby boom era that began with the WWII years, so I was already some years older than most of those who protested in the Sixties. I never joined a war protest march.
The only "march" I joined was a somber, but large (several hundred strong), spontaneous walk across the college town of Palo Alto, California, on the day that Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. I had been at work when I got the call with the news of his death and that a march was about to happen.
I dropped everything I was doing and went without a second thought or even getting anyone's permission (or even getting out of my high-heeled shoes--big mistake, the latter was!).
The walkers were mostly older than I, men and women who's kids and/or grandkids were likely in Viet Nam or on their way there. Or their kids and grandkids could have been at work (jobs were plentiful). Or perhaps that generation stayed home because they were just being cautious about the dangers for them of joining public gatherings. It was at least a 90% African-American group. Many were blinking back tears.
If you look at Richard's video or any other films of anti-war protests from that era, you will see few, if any, Af-Am people in the crowds. The reason for that is real.
To a large extent, their absence is still true today. Many white activists, revealing their naivety, lament and wonder why.
The nods and warm smiles and spoken "thank-you"s and even handshakes I received that day are even more embarrassing to me now 40 years later than they were then, even though I am grateful to have received them.
I never told my relatives about it. They would not have understood. For them, the power of MLK was something to be feared.
Today, I am too old for anti-war Protest Marches. I do occasionally buy a batch of bumper stickers or pins and hand them out at the weekly vigils in my small town or provide a few videos/DVDs for them to share, especially the ones intended to be shown to the high school kids to inform them and provide them with ammunition to resist the Military Recruiters. I am happy to report the videos find their way to the schools.
The United States is a big country, spread over a lot of ground. It still has profound regional differences in spite of the homogenizing effect of the uniform television media, the near uniformity of newspapers, the almost uniform curricula of the public schools, the Wal-Marts and the McDonalds fast food in every town, and the mostly rural growth of Christian fundamentalism.
All Christians are not alike, and even all fundamentalists are not alike. It's counter-productive to lump them together.
This country can't just be looked at through the prism of any city or especially through the prism of the Washington DC beltway.
The anti-war movement is alive and getting itself better educated (I hope), and it's finally waking up to the fact that whatever happens will be up to them on the ground in their own communities.
They can't count on Washington. THEY CAN'T COUNT ON EITHER POLITICAL PARTY. This is a truth that has to be faced and understood.
Most important of all, getting media attention for massive protests is only one way to accomplish what needs to be accomplished, and it may not be the best way. If only selected snippets of a protest march are shown along with some sneering commentary when or if the media chooses to notice it, it becomes a set back not progress.
It has to be more fundamental than that. Along with other groups the churches will need to be a part of it, an important one.
Rosemary, thanks for that outstanding and insightful comment, which was enriched with your personal experience, and wisdom.
You are absolutely right in your observation and comment, that the various groups, communities will have to reach-out, embrace each other, and band together on their own initiative and volition, starting from the grass-root level all the way up, and also that there will be no help from either the mass-media, or the existing establishment parties, indeed it needs to be outside of the framework and influence of those.
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