From DailyKos, who appears to not even comprehend there is a thriving antiwar movement.
agnostic over the march this past weekend because I can appreciate that
people want to gather to fight for the cause, I appreciate that they
want to feel like they’re doing something.
Golly, how thoughtful of you. Or was that condescending? Watching
DailyKos steadily morph into a pliant fund raising tool for the
Democratic Party has been instructive indeed. Sometimes there’s still
genuine outrage, but never ever is there actual criticism of the
system, or of a Democratic Party that moves in lockstep with the
Republicans on the war.
question, then, becomes whether the money and effort people expended
getting to DC to march might’ve been better spent in other forms of
activism — letters to the editor, contributions to anti-war
candidates, politicians, and organizations, calls and letters to their
elected officials, creating anti-war media (e.g. Flash animations,
documentaries), and so on.
How lame. Well, that always has been the role of the Democratic Party anyway; to defuse,
subvert, and co-opt genuine protest. As if an antiwar letter to a
Congressmember will get any real response. Sue did that for years on a number of issues including the war and
never got anything back but a form letter that was usually off topic.
And I’m not aware there are any anti-war politicians in the first place.
As for “creating anti-war media”, well, there’s hundreds if not
thousands of such media out there now. But you would have to actually be
active in opposing the war to know that. Like I said, clueless.
I’ve been critical of peace protests in the past, and I’ve definitely got nothing good to say about ANSWER.
How unsurprising. ANSWER is
anti-imperialist, a view that calls into question the bedrock
foundations of both parties – and of Democratic Party feeder
organizations like DailyKos and MoveOn, who (deliberately or otherwise) function to defuse and
channel genuine activism into the Democratic Party where it will be
neutralized.
This isn’t a Republican vs. Democrat thing. Both parties
currently support the imperialist wars of BushCo almost without exception.
It’s imperialism that is the root cause of these wars, not the policies
of one party.