Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

An address to the graduating class of The New School in New York City by student speaker Jean Rohe preceded the remarks of the guest speaker, Senator John McCain. Ms Rohe showed a great deal of courage as she set aside her prepared speech and addressed the points that she already knew McCain was going to make in his speech. McCain had previously spoken at two graduation ceremonies and said the same things each time.

Jean Rohe is one college student graduating in 2006. She is merely one. Where are the rest…?

On May 4, 1970, four college students were killed at Kent State University in Ohio. The situation that culminated in this tragedy revolved around a student demonstration against the Nixon Administration’s invasion of Cambodia.

Kent State may be the most well known college campus anti war demonstration that took place during the sixties and seventies, but it was far from the only one and far from the largest.

In fact, starting in 1964, almost immediately after the Gulf of Tonkin non attack that gave Lyndon Johnson a congressionally approved blank check to send Americans to fight a war in Southeast Asia, college campuses began to become the sites of almost constant protests. Throngs of people attended them and they weren’t all violence free, as Kent State proves.

College students didn’t merely protest and demonstrate, they actually overtook by force and occupied the offices of deans and college presidents.

During the Vietnam war, middle aged people didn’t use an internet to encourage other middle aged people to show up at rallies against the war. In fact, those who were in their thirties, forties and fifties mostly supported the war.

We, the people who belong to groups like The Mount Diablo Peace Center, MoveOn, etc., were the kids who were demonstrating against a war that we saw as anything but in defense of the safety of The United States of America. We are now the middle aged, and older people trying to stir up opposition to The Regime’s War in Iraq.

There have been relatively large demonstrations and marches in opposition to the Iraq War. These protests and demonstrations are few and far between. They’re also pre-planned with everyone on a Progressive mailing list informed well ahead of time.

Large demonstrations may not have taken place daily during the Vietnam War, but there was college unrest, a daily uneasiness caused by the fact that, at any moment, students might spontaneously gather and start to speak out against the war.

Today, students are still initiating demonstrations against the war in Iraq. In fact, the same students who kept the fires against the Vietnam War constantly burning are coordinating the demonstrations against the war in Iraq. Literally, the same people, who are now in their 40s, 50s and 60s, and older, are coordinating these well planned demonstrations.

There is no unrest on college campuses. I dare say that one may be able to find almost as many college students who “support their president” on campuses as students who don’t support “him”.

This essay asks the question, “What’s the difference between the college students who opposed the Vietnam War and the college students of today, some of whom support “their president”?”

Representative Charles Rangel, Democrat of New York, knew what the difference is when he introduced a bill in 2003 that called for reinstituting conscription.

Actually, the reason Rangel called for the return of the draft was to level the playing field. Rangel believes that those who need a job or need to learn skills but can’t afford to do so join the military to reach those goals with the help of Uncle Sam. Wealthy people don’t need to join the military.

I disagree with Rangel because, as people like Bush and Cheney proved during the Vietnam War, money can buy one’s way out of the draft or at least out of combat. A draft will not level the playing field.

What it would do, however, is to end the war in Iraq fairly quickly. Centers of higher education would once again become centers of major anti war activity. Those who “support their president” may revisit that position.

I spoke with a young woman not too long ago. I told her of my song, Casey’s Song. She asked who Casey is. I told her that Casey is the name of Cindy Sheehan’s son. She asked me who Cindy Sheehan is. This young woman is 24 years old.

Some people abhor Cindy and some adore her. However, I would not have thought that there was anyone who didn’t know at all who Cindy is.

The young lady knew that there were Americans fighting and dying in Iraq, but she seemed emotionally detached.

I know people who do lots of work to help find a cure for cancer. These people all know someone who’s been affected by cancer. It seems that every time I meet someone who feels strongly about an issue or volunteers to help address the issue, that person has had a personal experience with that issue.

We had a vested interest in the war in Vietnam in the sixties and early seventies. It seems as if there were a lot more pacifists during the Vietnam War than there are today. We also had the draft.

Bringing back conscription is very close to bringing back slavery. However, one difference between the draft during Vietnam and a draft today would be that, back then, kids were sort of resigned to the fact that they were going to have to eventually make a difficult decision concerning the Vietnam War. They were going have to decide to accept their induction and go kill people they’ve never met, let alone known, go to jail for refusing to answer the call or move to a country like Canada with whom the US didn’t have an extradition agreement.

If The Regime reinstated the draft, kids who feel very comfortable today, even comfortable enough to support “their president”, may begin to see combat in Iraq as undesirable. They may even become born again pacifists.

I believe that it’s the nature of most people to care little about an issue unless and/or until it potentially affects them intimately.

I am absolutely opposed to a draft. As I said, it’s akin to slavery. Forcing people to kill others and to put themselves in a position to be killed is a sick game that governments can play.

However, it appears that nothing short of reinstating the draft will gain the attention of college students. Young men and women will become antiwar activists in a hurry.

To friendship,
Michael

“We must get away from the idea that America is to be the leader of the world in everything.” – Francis John McConnell

ps Neil Young put out his fantastic collection of songs entitled “Living With War” because he didn’t think that people were using music enough to inject life into the anti war movement.

Well, I’ve got good news for Neil and anyone who feels the way Neil feels. My album, “Flameland”, is now on sale at CD Baby. It contains“Casey’s Song” and 13 other songs, all aimed at “giving peace a chance.”

I don't know Michael. I was thinking in terms of the 100 years war. I don't see a way out.

I don't know if you remember Red China? A real scandal back in the early 50's about "who lost China” They pinned the blame on Democrats. You know, I know that our war in Iraq has nothing to do with terrorism except for our own terrorism. A political hot potato, nobody really wants to deal with. Especially when we have far more pressing problems like immigration, gay marriage, and flag burning….

I can think of one difference between now and then. Today's college students are in hock up to their ass with student loans. I saw a sound byte the other day about how the colleges are leading them to certain lenders because they get a kick back... There are much cheaper programs but the colleges don't tell them about it.

Well thought out and useful post. Helped me crystallize my own thinking

Thanks

st, you’re right. Time to pull out the big guns again. The Front Man’s poll numbers should rise again. Abortion, gay rights, flag burning and don’t forget The Ten Commandments! I just love the smell of electoral bullshit in the morning.

You say college loans are tougher to get and more expensive. I wonder what hand The Regime has had in that. All the more reason for the kids to be pissed off. All the more reason for dissent, protest, demonstration and voting the bastards off their thrones.

And if the exit polls and final results differ significantly, the Diebold machines should burn! Every last stinking one of them.

Then what’s left, nuke the blue states, the red states, the purple states, what color states? After all, isn't Armageddon their goal?

To friendship,
Michael

“Religion renders a brain useless.” – Judith Hayes

The Mind Of Michael
Speak Your Mind And Read Mine

from a whimsical deb post to Culture Board.

http://www.studioeight.tv/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=7153

I think that is a hopeful sign.

Here is some stuff froma Harper's Article on Leo Strauss who I never heard of until last month. I thought it was pretty interesting. I have only pasted a couple of excerpts


Leo Strauss, George Bush, and the philosophy of mass deception –
Earl Shorris, Harpers’ Magazine, June 2004

President Bush's advocacy of "regime change"-which avoids the pitfalls of a
wishful global universalism on the one hand, and a fatalistic cultural
determinism on the other-is a not altogether unworthy product of Strauss's
rehabilitation of the notion of regime.

-William Kristol and Steven Lenzner

ITHE GREATEST CLARITY IS A CONTRADICTION
For the uninitiated, "contradiction" is the key to the Straussian approach, and
more than anything else it defines the Bush regime and its circle of
irifluentials. The contradictory and absurd statements of George W. Bush
need not be listed here. His collected solecisms have been published in
multiple volumes and are scattered throughout the Internet. Donald
Rumsfeld's most inscrutable utterances have even been set in verse. Such
deformations of the English language are no accident: they reflect the
administration's general pattern of communication.
Contradictions are not lies: they are nonsense, unreason. An axis of evil
made up of countries that cannot be connected along any imaginable axis is
a nonsense statement. A constitutional amendment banning marriage
between people of the same gender would pit one part of the Constitution
against several others-more nonsense. And when a State of the Union speech
has for its peroration the problem of athletes using steroids, nonsense
appears to be the preoccupation of the state.
A government would collapse if it spoke nothing but nonsense. Under
George W. Bush the government has learned to speak on two levels at the
same time. What appears to be non-sense to most people makes perfect
sense to those who are initiated into a way of thinking and a certain set of
references, many of them biblical. From the constant use of the word "evil"
to subtle references to the Book of Revelation, the favorite text of endtime
thinkers on the Christian right, Bush's remarks and speeches have carried an
esoteric message.



WISE MEN TELL NOBLE LIES



The President of the United States told the world that Iraq had weapons of
mass destruction. His secretaries of defense and state made the same
assertions. They claimed to be telling the kind of truth that enables good
countries to go to war against evil ones. Secretary Powell showed drawings
of mobile biological-weapons factories to the United Nations Security
Council, and America went to war. From time to time after the occupation of
Iraq was complete, the reason for going to war changed, for there were no
weapons of mass destruction. Only a miserable dictator and the remains of a
once prosperous country were found. As a result of the war the Iraqi people
went from fear to fear and anger. The administration no longer spoke of
weapons of mass destruction but of a terrible dictator deposed, the sweet
flower of freedom planted in Babylonian soil.
One of the great services that Strauss and his disciples have performed for
the Bush regime has been the provision of a philosophy of the noble lie, the
conviction that lies, far from being simply a regrettable necessity of political
life, are instead virtuous and noble instruments of wise policy. The idea's
provenance could not be more elevated: Plato himself advised his nobles,
men with golden souls, to tell noble lies-political fables, much like the
specter of Saddam Hussein with a nuclear bombto keep the other levels of
human society (silver, iron, brass) in their proper places, loyal to the state
and willing to do its bidding. Strauss, too, advised the telling of noble lies in
the service of the national interest, and he held Plato's view of aristocrats as
persons so virtuous that such lies would be used only for the good, for
keeping order in the state and in the world. He defined the modern method
of the noble lie in the use of esoteric messages within an exoteric text, telling
the truth to the wise while at the same time conveying something quite
different to the many.
For Strauss, as for Plato, the virtue of the lie depends on who is doing the
lying. If a poor woman lies on her application for welfare benefits, the lie
cannot be countenanced. The woman has committed fraud and must be
punished. The woman is not noble, therefore the lie cannot be noble. When
the leader of the free world says that "free nations do not have weapons of
mass destruction," this is but a noble lie, a fable told by the aristocratic
president of a country with enough nuclear weapons to leave the earth a
desert less welcoming than the surface of the moon.


http://www.embeddedlive.com/pdfs/Harpers.pdf

isn't Armageddon their goal?

I think so.