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You missed a lot of good parties. More to the point, in pursuit of a strategy for the moment Mattson writes shall we say very limited history. The 1968 Chicago protests were different in kind from the others, and they weren't the high point of 60s protest. What the marchers at the various protests did was to articulate growing pain about the war, creating from a vocal minority a conscious majority--by the end, families who couldn't have a peaceful meal together in 68 were marching side by side. It was the ground prepared for disengagement from Vietnam and a bunch of profound social changes. I think he's right that it's not the strategy for my side for now, but I think he rather misses the point in his highlighting of the organizational activities of YAF in contrast to a politics of protest. How could he be unaware that what makes the success of those organizational activities possible is right-wing protest, the accumulated experience of thousands of sit-ins and more at abortion clinics, school boards, outside Terri Shiavo's hospice? The last is a case in point. It seems to have failed massively with the general public, but it was also massively successful in maintaining the coherence of the core 40% or so. The public failure of the Sciavo protests, from the White House down, tells us two things. The first is not so useful as strategy: that the well-thought-out stategies and policies of the right have been trumped by hubris, because, in fact, with all their think tanks, they're missing some basic information. Which leads to the second point--that the failure at Chicago was not the failure of youthful hijinks as strategy, but the failure to speak to anyone but one's friends. It was finally, however achieved (protest was only a part of it), and the joining on of folks from the other side of the cultural divide allowed the success of the civil rights movement and the antiwar movement of the 60s and 70s. Those who didn't cross over, who simply couldn't be reached, formed the base of the current right wing, an increasingly embittered minority. The issue is how to reach the other 10% who voted for Bush and Delay's house of representatives. Bush seems to be helping us do that. As when he was elected, it's the war on terror alone that keeps him in office. It's good to remember, as we wring our hands, that the Republican Senate majority represents the votes of 45% of the electorate, a result made possible by our archaic constitution, and that control of the house, where the constitution distorts the will of the majority significantly, but to a lesser degree, is the result of Delay's inventive endrun around traditional redistricting practices. And that Bush, in wartime, won by only 1% against a painfully ineffective candidate. Mark At 04:30 AM 3/31/2005, you wrote: >I think this is a very fine article; certainly it illuminates some of >the sources of my own frustration and ennui with contemporary >political theatrics: > >http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=9389 > >I may be missing a small part of my soul; the truth is that even when >I was a student I had no time for marches and demonstrations. So not >only was I not there - by default - in '68, I was not there on any of >the occasions when I *could* have been there. I remember rolling my >eyes once at a "March against Militarism". If one did not believe that >Might made Right, why would one choose to express that non-belief by >massing together a large number of bodies and throwing their >collective weight around? The chap on the other side of the trestle >table thought I had a very queer notion of what marching was all >about. I don't know, though. I mistrust crowds. People get lost in >them. > >One of the tricks the article misses is that the '68-ers' emphasis on >authenticity was itself co-opted by the Reaganite right, retooled as >competitive individualism. The author's line about "the authenticity >of conscience pitted against the requirements of a pluralistic and >conflicted society" could be applied equally to the Reaganite creed. >Every stockbroker a little existential hero. Quite a few of them were >ex-Hippies into the bargain. > >Dominic >-- >// Alas, this comparison function can't be total: >// bottom is beyond comparison. - Oleg Kiselyov