-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 08/30/2016 01:43 PM, Razer wrote:
I was up on the walk overlooking Monterey Bay the other morning at 6 am or so. A 70 year old woman who was taking a stroll and picking up small trash on her walk stopped to chat. The conversation turned to the news, and global mayhem and at some point I said: "We're involved in every conflict on the planet. Where IS the US antiwar movement?"
She smiled, and with a twinkle in her eye said: "There never was an antiwar movement. There was an anti-DRAFT movement"
I would differ /somewhat/ with that position. There was an antiwar movement - it brainwashed me, for instance. But I would not deny that this movement became a large scale popular 'issue' only because of the draft: What does not personally threaten comfortable middle class people does not get them up on their feet and down to the street. That's why I support compulsory military service: It is, in effect, the conscience of a nation. I also observed the State's political warfare response to the anti-war movement as it gained traction: Sponsorship of the New Left and its expressly Marxist, pro-war, anti-American message, promoted by spokespuppets "Hanoi" Jane Fonda et al. The New Left was repulsive to the vast majority of the U.S. public. All reasonable efforts were made by network TV to exclude pacifist messaging from the airwaves, but the New Left was presented and promoted as a political freak show. As it "just happened to" take place at the same time COINTELPRO-sponsored bombings were in progress, and provided living proof of J. Edna Hoover's assertion that anti-war organizers were working for the Vast International Communist Conspiracy, and received nearly unlimited free promotion via mass media, I am confident that the New Left originated as a State sponsored black propaganda campaign. After the fall of Saigon, a coalition of anti-war organizations headlined by Joan Baez took out a full page ad in the New York Times condemning Hanoi for the purge (mass murder) in progress against "reactionaries" in the South - anyone who had worked with the U.S. in any capacity was subject to summary execution. In response, a coalition of pro-war New Left celebrities headlined by Jane Fonda took out a full page ad congratulating Hanoi on its victory and condemning the pacifists who dared to criticize proper revolutionary justice. Once promoted via a full saturation propaganda campaign, the New Left attracted ideological adherents and "grew legs" of its own. Although it was not viable without external support and has since declined to a historical footnote, the New Left's influence on U.S. political discourse neatly countered the inherently Populist a.k.a. Anarchist influence of the anti-war movement, and helped lay the foundation for the crypto-fascist NeoLiberal ideology and agenda that is so prominent in U.S. politics today. And that's all I have to say about that. :o/ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.22 (GNU/Linux) iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJXxeNYAAoJEECU6c5XzmuqTbYH/RGxfD3QBTc7/bjquZrluwCh uqkWhBNoPiFUVsxjg+4OuJPYdv49xR8FhSZ38TkVfbkyuNtSh6L+fSTyfTwnnsz+ RVlUvacztNbb6GvSRfZrwU72ndPYin/b2cYMG9Ev4FVXKmohiUJwxGZoxowxIgbH GDcTyqa1fh0Nq/ou6JSCN35bgX/FVuE/2rYZOttVmBYskE+Km12uHGKpshrFbHFx ZkotNJMPkTQV8DHqHwdrlJ64ULaw4eA8VWohIlj8NQhA+OPrzA/DFm72hlVAwPuN w+1VNpz9/4/DTp5qjcAQkNZHrdSz0xh0CoWpNIjDWOd76vXy+zyY0O8OrfXhjSY= =wQsF -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----