The SDS is back?!

[BrainGlutton]

@gonzomax

It is harder to protest now.

That’s one side of the story, but see “Stabbed in the Back! The Past and Future of a Right-Wing Myth,” by Kevin Baker, Harper’s Magazine, June 2006:

What has really robbed the conspiracy theories of their effectiveness is how the war in Iraq has been conducted. Bush and his advisers have sought to use the war not only to punish their enemies but also to reward their supporters, a bit of political juggling that led them to demand nothing from the American public as a whole. Those of us who are not actively fighting in Iraq, or who do not have close friends and family members who are doing so, have not been asked to sacrifice in any way. The richest among us have even been showered with tax cuts.

Yet in demanding so little, Bush has finally uncoupled the state from its heroic status. It is not a coincidence that modern nationalism dates from the advent of mass democracy—and mass citizen armies—that the American and French revolutions ushered in at the end of the eighteenth century. Bush’s refusal to mobilize the nation for the war in Iraq has severed that immediate identification with our army’s fortunes. Nor did it begin with the Bush Administration. The wartime tax cuts and the all-volunteer, wartime army are simply the latest manifestations of a trend that is now decades old and that has been promulgated through peace as well as war, by Democrats as well as Republicans. It cannot truly be a surprise that a society that has steadily dismantled or diminished the most basic access to health care, relief for the poor and the aged, and decent education; a society that has allowed the gap between its richest and poorest citizens to grow to unprecedented size; a society that has paid obeisance to the ideology of globalization to the point of giving away both its jobs and its debt to foreign nations, and which has just allowed one of its poorer cities to quietly drown, should choose to largely opt out of its own defense.

Anyone who doubts that this is exactly what we have done need only look at how little the war really engages most of us. It rarely draws more than a few seconds of coverage on the local television news, if that, and then only well into the broadcast, after a story on a murder, or a fire, or the latest weather predictions. Even the largest and angriest demonstrations against our occupation of Iraq have not approached the mobilizations against the war in Vietnam, but a close observer will notice that we also have yet to see any of the massive counterdemonstrations that were held in support of that war—or “in support of the troops.” Such engagement on either side seems almost quaint now.

Who could possibly believe in a plot to lose this war? No one cares that much about it. We have, instead, reached a crossroads where the overwhelming right-wing desire to dissolve much of the old social compact that held together the modern nation-state is irreconcilably at odds with any attempt to conduct such a grand, heroic experiment as implanting democracy in the Middle East. Without mass participation, Iraq cannot be passed off as an heroic endeavor, no matter how much Mr. Bush’s rhetoric tries to make it one, and without a hero there can be no great betrayer, no skulking villain.

[FriarTed]

The JBS isolationist-nationalist-internationalist views have been mixed. Wanting us out of Iraq alone does not an isolationist make. Many of the Lefties & liberals who want us out of Iraq also want greater accountability to the UN.

Looking backwards, if it had existed at the time, the JBS would have opposed WWI, belatedly supported WWII, probably supported Korea & backed MacArthur over Truman. It did support VietNam but I do believe there was some behind-the-scenes controversy which was not publically stated. Through the late '80s up to now, the JBS has manifested various phases of libertarianism, a C’tian Rightism
with a limited Federal gov’t, and paleo-conservatism, with its attendant isolationism.

[BrainGlutton]

The JBS, BTW, unlike the SDS, has maintained a continuous existence since it was founded.

[gonzomax]

It is true that a lack of sacrifice is a large part of this quiet. I do feel that more people are afraid. though. This administration has put fear into tv newspeople and potential protesters. The Patriot act is a large part. We do not know how far they will go.
I for one don’t have much trust in the government. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was in my time.Powells speech at the UN will earn an equal spot in history.
SDS had no faith in the government. They felt we were being lied to . This government is the same.

[FriarTed]

@BrainGlutton

The JBS, BTW, unlike the SDS, has maintained a continuous existence since it was founded.

I meant that if the JBS has existed at the times of WWI & WWII, it (probably) would have opposed the first & belatedly supported the latter. The JBS came into existence in either 1958 or 1959, and yes, has existed ever since.

[BrainGlutton]

BTW, the new SDS has a website. (The original did not – guess them '60s Boomer radicals were too stoned to think of something so obvious.)

[BrainGlutton]

Decided to bump this old thread to link to this fascinating article from The Nation (and what magazine better suited to address the topic?).

[David_Simmons]

@BrainGlutton

@David Simmons

Confused here. How is the JBS demand that we get out of the UN not an isolationist step?

That’s nationalist. But isolationists also demand an end to American military interventions abroad – and during the Cold War, the JBS was all for our presence in Vietnam, etc.

Leave me out of this. That’s no post of mine.

[Will_Repair]

@BrainGlutton

Do we have any Dopers who remember the original SDS and can tell us something about it?

Because I was a card carrying member of SDS, which was on Attorney General John Mitchell’s list of subversive organizations, I had to carry a black square affixed to the rest of my papers during my draft physical. One other guy had a black square; he had watched a Klu Klux Klan rally. We both received 4Y classications: ineligible for the draft in 1970.

[Kalhoun]

If you’re interested in the activist groups of the 60s, http://www.blockbuster.com/catalog/movieDetails/2844 is an interesting documentary. They interview people who were actually there doing it. I found it fascinating, and a little sad.

[Linear_Crack]

Great. How long before we see the “New” Weathermen?

Let’s bomb ourselves…Yay! :rolleyes:

-LC

[Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus]

@RickJay

Today’s America is a different place. It’s pointed in a conservative and extremely nationalist direction. With respect to the war, specifically, soldiers are venerated; speaking as an outsider, it strikes me as if many Americans believe military personnel are some sort of contemporary saints. Opposition to militarism is utterly verboten, and those who oppose the Iraq war are forced to couch their opposition in apologetic “But of course I support our troops” lingo. The environment just isn’t there for the SDS to find broad based support.

You’re overgeneralizing a bit. Nobody I know venerates soldiers as near-saints, other than to acknowledge that they’re mostly poor kids who didn’t have a lot of opportunities. Opposition to militarism utterly “verboten”? What do you think this is, fascist Germany? And do you get any news from south of the border? “Extreme nationalism” usually engenders the belief that one’s country can do no wrong, and I don’t think you’d get very far proving that’s the case down here with most of us, or even very many of us.

[BrainGlutton]

@Will Repair

Because I was a card carrying member of SDS, which was on Attorney General John Mitchell’s list of subversive organizations, I had to carry a black square affixed to the rest of my papers during my draft physical. One other guy had a black square; he had watched a Klu Klux Klan rally. We both received 4Y classications: ineligible for the draft in 1970.

That simple, eh? Wonder why more guys didn’t think of that?

[BrainGlutton]

@Linear Crack

Great. How long before we see the “New” Weathermen?

One thing at a time, LC, one thing at a time.

[Will_Repair]

@BrainGlutton

Wonder why more guys didn’t think of that?

And to think I almost wasted that lid, those two four-ways, etc.

[TV_time]

I guess it is time for me to get my old SDS arm band out of storage.