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    Flap’s Links and Comments for April 21st on 06:09

    These are my links for April 21st from 06:09 to 06:11:

    • Under Protest – Megan McArdle – Have you noticed all the huge antiwar demonstrations in the last twelve months?  Yeah, me neither.  It turns out that a lot of the energy for the movement seems to have been provided by Democrats who are a lot less worried about wars conducted by Democratic presidents.  Or at least who believe that advancing the Democratic agenda is much more important than trying to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  This is by no means the whole movement–but it was enough that once a Democrat took office, both the numbers at the demonstrations, and the organizational capacity of the movement as a whole, dwindled away to near-nothingness.

      Scott McLemee meditates on what this means:

      At this point it seems worth mentioning an insight by another friend whose education in such matters took place in the laboratory of the 1960s. For many years, he said, being engaged in antiwar activism or civil rights work meant going to events where, after a while, you were able to recognize almost everybody. Then one day he attended a demonstration and saw that something had changed. There were some familiar faces, but he had no idea who most of the people were.
      "That's how you know that the cause has actually become a movement," he said. "You look around and see a lot of new faces. It's no longer just the usual suspects."

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      Read it all

    • Have you noticed all the huge antiwar demonstrations in the last twelve months? – MEGAN MCARDLE: “Have you noticed all the huge antiwar demonstrations in the last twelve months? Yeah, me neither. It turns out that a lot of the energy for the movement seems to have been provided by Democrats who are a lot less worried about wars conducted by Democratic presidents. Or at least who believe that advancing the Democratic agenda is much more important than trying to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is by no means the whole movement–but it was enough that once a Democrat took office, both the numbers at the demonstrations, and the organizational capacity of the movement as a whole, dwindled away to near-nothingness.”

      Yeah, it’s as if all that self-righteous moralism, and cries or war criminal and illegal wars and concentration camps at Gitmo was just a lot of lying, self-serving twaddle by people who really just wanted power for their team. Who knew?

      Well, some of us did. And pointed it out at the time. And, well, we’re going to keep rubbing it in now.

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      You think?