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If TV channels are any measure, the U.S.
presidential elections, now less than four months away, are the permanent
stuff of headlines. If candidate A sneezes, it's breaking news; if
candidate B hiccups, it's film at eleven.
It's hardly worthy of headlines, but the
beast [the media] must be fed.
For far too many people this news overdose on
the elections has bred a kind of passivity among millions, as they wait
in front of TV screens and computers, like deer caught in headlights.
What happened to antiwar protests? What
happened to housing rights protestors? What happened to anti-FISA
(Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) activists?
People are dulled by the almost sure
expectation that the Democrats will prevail in the next election due to
the low ratings of the Republican Party, and its lame-duck President
George W. Bush. And those dull expectations are based upon the totally
unfounded faith that a Democratic win of the White House really means
an end to the war. (We might ask, which war?)
Millions have apparently forgotten the bitter
lessons from the 2006 mid-term election, when Democrats prevailed in
congressional elections, formed a slight majority in both houses, and
proceeded to do—nothing.
Peace in Iraq? Off the table. Instead, like
lemmings leaping off a cliff they voted for more and more billions for
war. And what of the recently renewed FISA bill, which legalized the
law-breaking of the Bush administration—and gave retroactive protection
to phone and communications companies that violated prior law?
FISA—signed, sealed and delivered: and even
the Democratic candidate (Sen. Barack Obama, D-Il.) who blasted the
measure, put his John Hancock on it, voting "yes."
The great abolitionist (and women's rights
supporter) Frederick Douglass supported Abraham Lincoln, yet that
didn't stop him from protesting against him, when he moved too slowly,
or not at all. Reading his criticisms are still biting, even though
over a century has passed. And yet, his teaching remains just as
relevant, for Douglass said, "Power concedes nothing without
demand."
If people demand nothing, that is precisely
what they will get. These lessons from history must teach us today,
that protesters must PROTEST.
Elections aren't endings—they are
beginnings—and movements mustn't stop moving; they should protest more!
© COPYRIGHT 2008 MAJ
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