[Peace-discuss] We can hope

[C. G. Estabrook]

"...what's past is prologue, what to come / In yours and my discharge."


John W. wrote:
> So what you're saying, Carl, is that we CANNOT hope?
> 
> 
> On Thu, Oct 2, 2008 at 4:50 AM, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at uiuc.edu 
> <mailto:galliher at uiuc.edu>> wrote:
> 
>     "...It's a measure of how depoliticized we are that a speed bump
>     like the Congressional rejection is viewed as the beginning of some
>     kind of revolution. If liberals like William Greider and Al Giordano
>     really believe that a game-changing populist shift is looming,
>     they're either hallucinating or cynically yanking their readers.
>     Because if a serious groundswell is about to erupt, where can it go?
>     What will be its ultimate destination? There's no real alternative
>     support network for such a thing. No opposition party which this
>     energy and anger can animate and empower. There is only one route,
>     and that is right back to the Democrats. And if you are at all
>     conscious, you know exactly what that means.
> 
>     "Too harsh? Think back to a real populist period, say the late-19th
>     century, when massive strikes shut down industry, when millions of
>     working people were politically active, published their own
>     newspapers, and created their own grassroots power centers. The work
>     required to organize and educate workers in those days was
>     especially hard, given the lack of instantaneous technological
>     outreach. Yet it happened, all across the country. The elites of
>     that time did tremble, until they unleashed federal troops on
>     strikers and marchers, mowing them down with gunfire and clubs,
>     throwing organizers in jail, suppressing newspapers. This continued
>     right through the Woodrow Wilson years, a Democrat whom I credit in
>     "Savage Mules" with creating the first modern American police state
>     model, a gift that subsequent elites modified and streamlined to
>     this day. And all along the way, people's political power has been
>     crushed, bought off, or simply steered into the corporate parties.
> 
>     "...I don't see anything remotely approaching the collective
>     activism of those earlier years..."
> 
>      From <http://dennisperrin.blogspot.com/2008/10/halluci-nation.html>.
> 
> 
>     C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> 
>            Bailout Lesson: Capital Crisis Will Wreck Both Parties     
> 
>            Wednesday, 01 October 2008
>            by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
>         ...
> 
> 
>