And incense and hallucinogens don't count, hippies
As the third anniversary of the Iraq war arrived, the Bush cabinet went out on a Sunday media blitz tossing up ludicrous historical analogies not worthy of repetition and touting the virtues of staying until we've achieved "victory" (though at this point, anybody who can define what that would look like deserves not just a cookie, but a year's supply of precious Girl Scout Caramel DeLites), apparently forgetting its fearless commander in chief declared it "mission accomplished" less than two months after the war began.
Of course, the anniversary was also met with retrospective graphics and news stories, and the perfunctory anti-war protest in downtown Madison calling for immediate troop withdrawal and seemingly thinking if enough people get together and chant loud enough that this war was unwise, this time, those in power just might admit to that fact and somehow make amends.
It's no secret–but also not something I tend to publicize unless I'm feeling up for taking a lot of crap–that I think in the contemporary political moment, protest is pretty much useless.
To get news coverage, you have to do and say things that media effects research has demonstrated discredit your group and your message. We have lawmakers so caught up in partisan sniping, even if they did happen to listen, it's a wonder they ever get anything done at all, much less things responsive to specific preferences of the people. We also, last but not least, have a presidential administration that brags about ignoring public opinion and press coverage lest it corrupt the "decisive leadership."
I know it runs counter to the spirit so many people my age stoke that doing anything at all short of actively calling for revolution, even if no one listens or cares who doesn't already agree with you, is traitorously aiding and abetting the corrupt status quo–but there is something to be said for trying to change the system from within.
If you stop imagining yourself some kind of ideologically reincarnated '60s radical and look at present reality, perhaps your little snippets of visible, group-sanctioned rebellion allow you to feel better about yourselves, but slapping a sticker on your mode of transport, listening to a particular band or dismissing the president as a terrorist and ignoring everything he ever says isn't going to accomplish much, either.
I've met more than one self-professed "liberal" who is also proud of not following the news–because, you know, it's all lies anyway, and we already know everything anyone in power does is tainted and wrong. Apparently they think they're just going to come up with workable ways to change things in an ethically pristine vacuum and then move the masses by virtue of their claims to self-contained, enlightened truth, which practical experience has proven time and again always rise to the top by merely existing. And if not, at least they can smugly recuse themselves from the entire state of affairs with a tragic sigh and emerge unsullied.
I used to stay it creeped me out to step back and notice my career path seems to be leading toward politics–but the more I keep paying attention, the more going the official route looks like the best bet for accomplishing anything at all, helpful or harmful.
Though we don't yet have any Iraq war veterans running for office (and being told by Democratic Party leaders, as pissed as you may be about losing those limbs or loved ones, try to tone down the war opposition as not to spook the moderates) this year, Madison is also hosting a referendum on the spring ballot brought by the Bring the Troops Home campaign to declare support for troop withdrawal. (And of course, opposition has sprung up, in the form of the Dane County Republican Party's refreshingly restrained in title "Vote No to Cut and Run" campaign.)
I interviewed one of the referendum organizers for coreweekly back when they started this effort in the fall, and he said then and is still saying now that this is not so much about making a conscience-clearing, symbolic statement against the war, or even trying to make supposed representatives in Washington listen. It's about trying to bring Iraq–not "national security" and not "terrorism"–back onto the list of salient, consequential election-year issues on which candidates will have to state meaningful positions for their political survival.
If the people in power aren't going to start listening, it's time to make it clear we will replace them with people who do–and then actually follow through at the polls despite the inevitable reduction of the entire issue back to the poles of "anti-war, pro-defeat, pro-terrorism" vs. "pro-troops, pro-victory, pro-freedom, pro-security."
The reality is this administration and the national partisan majority are not going to pull out of Iraq unless it will be a guaranteed peaceful, 2008 Republican-vote-getting, extra-shiny banner-worthy, ceremonial masturbatory spectacle. (Or unless something massive, violent and horrible happens that makes it a politically palatable option.)
Iraq's own leaders are calling for a timetable for U.S. troop withdrawal, but of course, that would be merely setting a date for formal "defeat" and handing "victory" to the terrorists, who everyone conveniently neglects to mention weren't active in Iraq until after the United States invaded.
Around the time of the last anniversary of that invasion, I interviewed a then-27-year-old named Joshua Volz who decided to use his decidedly over-achieving education and experience in foreign affairs to go over to Iraq as a civilian worker for the State Department, for a piece (pdf) I did in the Daily Cardinal.
At first, I thought he was just arrogant, opportunistic and overly optimistic. But as I talked to him via cell phone from Baghdad for more than two hours beginning past midnight his time, I began to notice just how much I had become conditioned by my fashionably cynical and world-weary ideological peers to reflexively take those traits as flaws.
That conversation helped me to appreciate a hell of a lot more than I had ever had reason to before just how complicated the situation is in Iraq, and how the right thing to do is not nearly as clear as any of us, on either side, would like to think it is and constantly judge those involved as if it is, mistaking our most realistic champions for our enemies.
As Mr. Volz said, "It's important that the voice of dissent is heard, but while you're dissenting, get up and make the situation better. The situation is what it is. You can light a candle, or curse the darkness."
Of course, the anniversary was also met with retrospective graphics and news stories, and the perfunctory anti-war protest in downtown Madison calling for immediate troop withdrawal and seemingly thinking if enough people get together and chant loud enough that this war was unwise, this time, those in power just might admit to that fact and somehow make amends.
It's no secret–but also not something I tend to publicize unless I'm feeling up for taking a lot of crap–that I think in the contemporary political moment, protest is pretty much useless.
To get news coverage, you have to do and say things that media effects research has demonstrated discredit your group and your message. We have lawmakers so caught up in partisan sniping, even if they did happen to listen, it's a wonder they ever get anything done at all, much less things responsive to specific preferences of the people. We also, last but not least, have a presidential administration that brags about ignoring public opinion and press coverage lest it corrupt the "decisive leadership."
I know it runs counter to the spirit so many people my age stoke that doing anything at all short of actively calling for revolution, even if no one listens or cares who doesn't already agree with you, is traitorously aiding and abetting the corrupt status quo–but there is something to be said for trying to change the system from within.
If you stop imagining yourself some kind of ideologically reincarnated '60s radical and look at present reality, perhaps your little snippets of visible, group-sanctioned rebellion allow you to feel better about yourselves, but slapping a sticker on your mode of transport, listening to a particular band or dismissing the president as a terrorist and ignoring everything he ever says isn't going to accomplish much, either.
I've met more than one self-professed "liberal" who is also proud of not following the news–because, you know, it's all lies anyway, and we already know everything anyone in power does is tainted and wrong. Apparently they think they're just going to come up with workable ways to change things in an ethically pristine vacuum and then move the masses by virtue of their claims to self-contained, enlightened truth, which practical experience has proven time and again always rise to the top by merely existing. And if not, at least they can smugly recuse themselves from the entire state of affairs with a tragic sigh and emerge unsullied.
I used to stay it creeped me out to step back and notice my career path seems to be leading toward politics–but the more I keep paying attention, the more going the official route looks like the best bet for accomplishing anything at all, helpful or harmful.
Though we don't yet have any Iraq war veterans running for office (and being told by Democratic Party leaders, as pissed as you may be about losing those limbs or loved ones, try to tone down the war opposition as not to spook the moderates) this year, Madison is also hosting a referendum on the spring ballot brought by the Bring the Troops Home campaign to declare support for troop withdrawal. (And of course, opposition has sprung up, in the form of the Dane County Republican Party's refreshingly restrained in title "Vote No to Cut and Run" campaign.)
I interviewed one of the referendum organizers for coreweekly back when they started this effort in the fall, and he said then and is still saying now that this is not so much about making a conscience-clearing, symbolic statement against the war, or even trying to make supposed representatives in Washington listen. It's about trying to bring Iraq–not "national security" and not "terrorism"–back onto the list of salient, consequential election-year issues on which candidates will have to state meaningful positions for their political survival.
If the people in power aren't going to start listening, it's time to make it clear we will replace them with people who do–and then actually follow through at the polls despite the inevitable reduction of the entire issue back to the poles of "anti-war, pro-defeat, pro-terrorism" vs. "pro-troops, pro-victory, pro-freedom, pro-security."
The reality is this administration and the national partisan majority are not going to pull out of Iraq unless it will be a guaranteed peaceful, 2008 Republican-vote-getting, extra-shiny banner-worthy, ceremonial masturbatory spectacle. (Or unless something massive, violent and horrible happens that makes it a politically palatable option.)
Iraq's own leaders are calling for a timetable for U.S. troop withdrawal, but of course, that would be merely setting a date for formal "defeat" and handing "victory" to the terrorists, who everyone conveniently neglects to mention weren't active in Iraq until after the United States invaded.
Around the time of the last anniversary of that invasion, I interviewed a then-27-year-old named Joshua Volz who decided to use his decidedly over-achieving education and experience in foreign affairs to go over to Iraq as a civilian worker for the State Department, for a piece (pdf) I did in the Daily Cardinal.
At first, I thought he was just arrogant, opportunistic and overly optimistic. But as I talked to him via cell phone from Baghdad for more than two hours beginning past midnight his time, I began to notice just how much I had become conditioned by my fashionably cynical and world-weary ideological peers to reflexively take those traits as flaws.
That conversation helped me to appreciate a hell of a lot more than I had ever had reason to before just how complicated the situation is in Iraq, and how the right thing to do is not nearly as clear as any of us, on either side, would like to think it is and constantly judge those involved as if it is, mistaking our most realistic champions for our enemies.
As Mr. Volz said, "It's important that the voice of dissent is heard, but while you're dissenting, get up and make the situation better. The situation is what it is. You can light a candle, or curse the darkness."
posted by Holly at 3:10 AM
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