Well, only Fox commentators -- but guess what? Fox is losing viewers. Hannity on MSNBC has falling viewership, but Olbermann's ratings are rising. Olbermann's courage in speaking the truth as much as he can has been rewarded with ratings success, the only measure that the TV powers-that-be care about. Guess what advertisers want to buy advertising on what program?
In order for most Americans to believe our warnings of catastrophe if those Goldwaterite-Reaganite-NeoCon policies were instituted, sadly, I now believe that the idiots had to have their chance. There was no way they would stop blathering and no way that their blathering wouldn’t influence people until they had a chance to prove just how ghastly awful, just how dangerous, just how futile, just how destructive those policies are.
Now they’ve done it. Well, actually, the reality of their catastrophic rule is even worse than I feared in 2000. And now we have to work to undo the damage as best we can.
Yes, it's slow. Damned slow. And heartbreaking for every life lost.
I will say what no presidential candidate can dare say:
Every one of those lives lost in Iraq -- American or Iraqi -- has been wasted -- carelessly, willfully, selfishly thrown away by BushCheneyRumsfeld et al.
Unfortunately, the waste of life won't end soon. And with every new casualty announcement, the ache in my heart becomes more throbbing, more piercing, more permanent.
But, history shows us that violence does not make things better. Violence is not an effective means for social change. In fact, violence against an oppressive government usually strengthens that government. Violence that targets innocent people through terrorist acts drives the rest of the populace into the embrace of the oppressors. Let me give just two examples.
1. Peru. I know Peru well. I've done field work there and have spent quite a lot of time living amongst Peruvians and working with them. Quite by accident, a friend and I witnessed some of the early history of Sindero Luminoso in Cuzco. During my travels there, I witnessed the results of the violence. Thankfully, I was not a victim of violence myself, but I was afraid – often, very afraid.
The history of economic and political oppression and repression in Latin American is long and horrible, and it can't be recounted here. But that history does still live – there is still a callous, unthinking brutality in the way Latin American elites control their countries. As a Peruvian friend said to me, the legacy of the Spanish Conquest is insidious and it lives throughout the society.
There have been times when I've witnessed things in Peru that made me feel that there was no option but to take up a gun and fight. I can easily comprehend how the people who must live with it day after day, year after year, lifetime after lifetime, reach such despair that joining a violent revolution seems the only way to change their country.
One of the major studies of Sindero Luminoso cited social advancement as a principal reason why it attracted the support of many middle and lower middle class people. Sindero was not much supported by the desperately poor, but rather by educated people who saw themselves forever locked out of any meaningful status in their own country.
And guess what happened? There was a brutal civil war, complete with horrific terrorist bombings that killed women and children, massacres of peasants by both sides, many incidents of "desaparicidos" -- students, workers, writers, artists who left with Sinderistas, police or military escorts and never came back. When Sinderistas entered a highland village, they usually massacred all the older men in the village and forced young people to join them -- they used child soldiers, just as in Africa today.
Over time, the Peruvian population grew to hate Sindero Luminoso far beyond whatever resentments they had because of their social situation, and they began to cooperate – enthusiastically – in tracking down Sinderistas. It was that engagement by the population that eventually brought down the SL leadership and got them all sent to prison.
But, guess what? Peru is still and will remain a terribly unjust place. It is a country where "injusticia social" is a way of life.
When I was there, I would say to my Peruvian friends, "Well, you really need non-violent resistance. You need a Gandhi-like figure to lead a non-violent resistance. Nothing will really change until thousands of people march in the streets non-violently in support of their demands for justice."
