In 1970, Howard Zinn (my personal hero) and one hundred others were arrested for sitting in the middle of a road at the Boston Army Base and blocking "the road used by buses carrying draftees off to military duty." The judge found them guilty and sentenced him and eight others who refused to pay to two days in jail. They were given forty-eight hours to reconsider and pay the fine. Zinn did not reconsider, and he didn't show up after forty-eight hours. Instead, he flew to Baltimore to debate the war at Johns Hopkins (The Zinn Reader, Seven Stories Press, 1997).
The following is an excerpt from the opening statement of that debate. It can also be found in The Zinn Reader. He spoke these words twenty-seven years ago, but just like most other things in this foul year of 2007 when compared to the late sixties and early seventies, they ring just as true today. I want to include them before I begin posting so that those who decide to read this blog will know the direction of my thoughts.
I start from the supposition that the world is topsy-turvy, that things are all wrong, that the wrong people are in jail, that the wrong people are in power and the wrong people are out of power, that the wealth is distributed in this country and the world in such a way as not simply to require small reform but to require a drastic reallocation of wealth. I start from the supposition that we don't have to say too much about this because all we have to do is think about the state of the world today and realize that things are all upside down.
Zinn goes on to give examples of thwarted protests and jailed protesters and of the war criminals allowed to continue the course of their unjust war. Today, we still have the war criminals, but where is the dissent? Where are the protesters? Where are all of the people who care?
If you take a close look at the parallels between the current Iraq war and the war in Vietnam, you may start to believe your a part of some twisted historical/sociological experiment gone wrong. Could Orwell have written of a more ass-backwards plot of perfect symmetry? Everything is there, from the misinformation campaign to start the war, to the denial that plagues every speech made to the American public as the war continues to rage. Communists are now Terrorists, and The Soviet Union is now Anycountryharboringterrorists.
There is no denying that Bush drank from the same cup as those who orchestrated the war in Vietnam. There is one striking difference though. As that cup was passed down the presidential line, they learned from their mistakes in Vietnam. But, instead of learning what they should have learned about the horrifying consequences of unjust and unjustified wars, they learned that the only way to pacify the public is to control the media. In Vietnam, there were no protests until the media began to uncover the horrors of what was going on over there. They showed pictures of the carnage and wrote stories about the numbers of casualties. They questioned the government. They did their job. And people responded. And the war was ended.
Today, the media is spoon-fed every sound bite and leaked every bottom line. They spin the facts to paint whatever picture gets them the most ratings. They are controlled by money and a carefully worded agenda. And instead of an outraged public, we have an apathetic one. Instead of activism, we have a couch, a remote control, and a three hours of mindless indifference. We are fed up with news stations that devote twenty-four hours to hearing themselves talk. We're so fed up that we have decided to stage a protest. Only, this one is much different than those of the sixties and seventies. We protest by not paying attention. Not voting. Not caring. And just like during Vietnam, we are sending a message with our protest. But, this message does more to start wars than to end them.
