[Peace-discuss] Why Obama has to do that...

[John W.]

On Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 4:18 PM, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at uiuc.edu> wrote:

Stuart---
>
> I have no trouble agreeing with the principles you put forth but more
> difficulty accepting the conclusions you draw:
>
> [1] Politicians are not "divinely consistent." True.
>
> [2] We are not oracles.  Also true, altho' I'm not quite sure what you take
> to be the essence of that oracularity that is being denied to us. AFAIK
> oracles are classically ambiguous and misinterpreted. I haven't thought that
> anything I've written on these matters has been particularly ambiguous, but
> it does seem that I've failed to make myself clear to some of our
> colleagues.  (And I do have to admit that, since I read Edith Hamilton's
> "Mythology" at an impressionable age, I've felt some sympathy for Cassandra
> -- always right, never believed...)


Yes.  My goodness, yes.  I can attest from personal experience that it is
indeed a heavy, heavy cross to bear.




> [8] Regarding "how to sustain an organized movement" -- today it's the
> absence, not the presence of an anti-war movement that has to be explained.
>  The largest anti-war demos in human history occurred before the invasion of
> Iraq, and three-quarters of Americans say they disapprove of the war.  So
>  why -- in contrast to 40 years ago -- no movement?


Very, very simple.  Today there's no draft.  Self-interest, in the form of
self-preservation, played a HUGE role in the anti-war movement of the 60s,
much as we wanted to pretend that our dissent was purely ideological and
moral.

J.W.
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