Posted on 06/03/2007 7:12:10 AM PDT by gpapa
That shrill sound you're hearing isn't coming from the cicadas. It's the cackle of conservatives reveling in war protester Cindy Sheehan's abrupt decision to leave the anti-war movement and return home to California.
Typical liberal, they're saying. Cut and run.
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
Maybe because the “anti war” movement has more to do with the childish narcissistic tendencies of it proponent’s then any sort of commitment to “principals” They want everyone to say “Oh how noble and brave you all are for standing up to “BushHitler”. When the bulk of the American people instead say “Are you all NUTS?” they cannot handle it.
Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
They lost Cindy Sheehan, they lost their best spokesperson.
Like they had a lot to say before. “Anti-war” only works if there is an active draft in effect. Bemoaning the fact that some relative was “lost” in combat, ignores the reality that the relative VOLUNTEERED to step into harm’s way.
Sounds like old Rex has a sincere tingle for Ms. Cindy or anyone who openly expresses hate for their country and it’s military, for that matter. Must be another aging hipster who misses the “good old days”.
You were kleenex Cindy, activists. You were slimed and are no longer of any use. Off to the trash with you.
If you look at other threads, our military, in Afghanistan dn Iraq, is just SLAUGHTERING these jihadists. In Afghanistan, there is a report of 3,800 dead over a period. That’s a LOT. I think these moonbats are just reading the Arabic on the wall.
Today's activists seem easily bored and distracted, content to simply blog away their angst and then move on to the next issue that flares up. One has to imagine Abbie Hoffman -- Vietnam War protester and proud member of the Chicago Seven -- writhing in his grave.
So what's keeping people from raising hell? Where is the fervor and esprit de corps of the American protester? Why were the rabble-rousers of the '60s and '70s so potent, while those of today are so, to put it politely, "non-potent"?
There are likely several reasons.
For one, there's no military draft. That means fewer opponents are frontline stakeholders in the war. Nothing incites passion quite like fear, and as long as we have a volunteer military, the butts on the line won't be those of the anti-war contingent.
Outlook is another factor. The youthful idealism of generations past has largely given way to a cynical view of politics and life in general. It's harder to get into a good college. It's harder to get a good job. Politicians seem increasingly disingenuous.
"People really feel like they lack efficacy today," said Rachel Einwohner, a Purdue University sociologist who studies protests and social movements. "Despite what lots of people around the world think, despite opposition, this administration just proceeds with a particular agenda. Maybe activists look at that and say, 'What could we possibly do?' They're forced to wonder how they can stop it."
In 1962, a group of college students meeting in Michigan created a manifesto called the Port Huron Statement, which laid out a path for a near-Utopian democracy. Those young men and women truly believed they could change the world, and their fervor carried on through the sweeping civil rights and Vietnam War protests of that generation.
Now when Suri, the Wisconsin professor, shows a copy of the Port Huron Statement to his students, they laugh out loud, mystified that anyone could ever have been so naive.
"It's not that they don't care; it's that they don't believe they can make a difference," he said. "Students have become very risk-averse. They care, but they're afraid that if they go out and get involved in something they might not get into law school or get the job they want."
Indeed, since camera phones and YouTube, would-be rebels engage in sit-ins and other forms of civil disobedience at their own peril, knowing that images some might deem incriminating could easily come back to haunt them.
As counterintuitive as it may seem, better communication technology may actually be taking a bit of oomph out of political activism. People once had to come together in smoke-filled coffeehouses to plan demonstrations. Now they just stay home and hammer out mass e-mails, expanding their reach but eliminating the close personal bonds that were the glue of past protest movements.
"People can have these virtual online communities and have all these conversations online without ever coming together," Einwohner said. "That might explain why we have this massive disapproval of the war, but we don't see the visible public mass protest. Maybe all those folks who in another era might have been out on the streets, maybe they're home sharing their ideas and opinions with their best blogging buddies."
“Oh how noble and brave you all are for standing up to “BushHitler”. When the bulk of the American people instead say “Are you all NUTS?”
Yeah. At first, some had sympathy because of her son. Then, she started using the anti-america and Bush is the biggest terrorist foolishness. Then, she started swearing. She probably got frustrated as the money dried up and the sycophants stopped kising her ass. Being booed at Purdue must have been the final straw.
Good riddance, traitor.
My favorite was the picture of her being arrested. Two burly officers picking her up and carring her off and all you could see on her was a big #&*!-eating grin, you could just about see her writhing in pleasure at it. Her report of the arrest had all the usual brown shirt brutality cliches, but then those pictures came out on Drudge.
“That might explain why we have this massive disapproval of the war”
DO we have massive disapproval of the war? Are most people against fighting this war or against fighting it the WAY it has been fought until recently?
‘Cackling’? I am 60 years old and I don’t believe I have ever cackled in my life.
The writer seems to have a case of transference, it seems. Perhaps he has spend too much time on DU.
Sheehan’s cessation of her anti-US activities could also simply be due to being told to sit down and shut up by the dimocRAT bosses. They say, “Look Cindy, we are now in power and we will achieve what you want albeit a bit more slowly than you or we want; however, everytime you go out a agitate against Bush, you cost us votes from those folks in the middle. We have elections coming up shortly and your efforts could hamper or complete takeover of Washington, so go to the sideline for a while. We’ll take it from here. Capice?”
No doubt there was some stronger persuasion used but look at the result. Some fence sitters will now say, “Maybe I can vote for the dims, at least they are moving us toward getting out of Iraq”.
The more Mr. Bush advocates finishing the job in Iraq, the more the dims benefit, or so they reason.
The question I have is this: If those four men had succeeded in blowing up the JFK jet fuel tanks and killed countless thousands of folks and severely hampered our economy, who would benefit the most in the post incident reaction and response, the dims or the right?
I know the picture. Sure looked like she was mourning her son, didn’t it?
She was a useful idiot who the democrats disposed of as soon as she had served her usefulness. She spewed the liberal medias venom and that was the only reason she got air time. How many mothers who had lost sons and disagreed were ever heard? Scarcely any!
I would say her funding was cut off.
Future presidential elections are going to be very interesting as you will be able to pull up all kinds of minutia about any given candidate that was never accessible before.
Like it or not, our lives are in the process of being fully documented. Should I ever run for public office, my opponent will have access to thousands of posts that I've made on Free Republic alone over the past few years. Now I'm a pretty easy-going guy on these forums but I'm sure I've said a few things here that would make a few headlines if I was ever engaged in a tight senatorial race.
So while the Internet has the potential to give a voice to the individual person out of proportion to what they would have received 20 years ago, it also has the power to destroy your reputation and render you unelectable with just one poorly-thought out posting!
Now with YouTube and sites like it, you will be able to pull up video of just about every public gathering from this point on (my son's high school graduation is just one example). Google is in some hot water for photographing people without their knowledge for Google Maps so now you can't even enter an adult bookstore without fearing that a photograph of you leaving the store will be posted to the Web (this actually happened with Google).
Their nubers are shrinking because the U.S. military is killing of many of their members in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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