Watching a Pete Seeger special last night, I got to wondering how the anti-war movement shrank to invisibility. And why we don’t have better songs to mobilize patriotic opposition.
Otherwise, open thread.
8 thoughts on “Sunday Thoughts: A Song for Peace”
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Makes me wonder if, when I’m Pete Seeger’s age, we’ll inevitably still be fighting the wrong wars in the wrong places for the wrong reasons. What a bitter future that would be.
The term “shrinking to invisibility” really touches on two sides of the story. On the one hand, there’s the shrinking: are there really fewer people today who genuinely aspire to a world without war? Perhaps; it certainly seems like many Americans have become completely numb to the consequences & costs, and are able to deal with the cognitive dissonance between their perception of themselves as “peaceful” and their desire to blow up or otherwise harm random people around the world because that apparently is de rigeur. Add to that the concerted effort by the powers that be to criminalize & chastise anything even remotely anti-establishment (and what is war, if not the epitome of the American establishment?), and there’s little wonder that few have any desire to get involved in something like an anti-war movement, no matter their sympathy for the cause.
But the invisibility issue is in part a question of, well, visibility, which in turn depends in large part on media coverage and the ability of the anti-war movement (shrinking or not) to penetrate filters put in place both by the mainstream media, as well as by their audience of mainstream Americans who (in my opinion) have become so attuned to the propaganda they elect to consume that they themselves further filter out anything that might jar their perceptions of reality.
Thus, a million people marching in the streets in 2003 against the pending war in Iraq could easily be dismissed a) by the media by simply not covering an event of that scale (too busy providing an outlet for generals and pundits to gush about “shock & awe”), and b) by Mr. & Mrs. Apple Pie (coached by their friends at Fox News) as merely a ragtag band of “radicals, misfits, and unpatriotic terrorist sympathizers”.
The sad fact that such a massive outpouring of public disgust with the Iraq War had absolutely no effect on the plans then underway just further helped enforced the notion that it would be an exercise in futility to object, so why bother.
Let me see if I can explain what I meant. It isn’t about remembering unclearly. It’s about the fact that then there were many places — like Pete Seeger and Clearwater — where there was a “communal” effort to get things done and yes contemporary, evolving music to do it by. Today is much sharper edged and, even here in Vermont (at least here on the eastern side of the state) much harder to find organizations that are open and welcoming to folks with a multitude of opinions. The posts here are talking about the events of the day, I was talking about the more private activities that supported us outside of the “heat of battle”.
“wondering how the anti-war movement shrank to invisibility”
It was when Clinton was elected in 1992. The anti-war movement, which had been going hard for 25 years all took a break, thinking that since Clinton was a Democrat, that he’d carry on the fight in the White House after the previous 12 years of Bush I.
Of course, Clinton was always a Republican in disguise (just like Obama is today), and Clinton never had any intention of upholding the values of the Democratic Voter (just like Obama today). As a result, the momentum went out of the left, Clinton got more pro-Republican laws passed than the entire Bush I era, and set the stage for the far-right to come in in 1994 with Newt’s Contract On America.
And here we are today.
Imagine my surprise when I found an article in the Tuesday Free Press about the Sing for Peace concert to benefit the Burlington Peace & Justice Center.
The concert is Saturday at 7 pm at the Unitarian Universalist church at the top of Church St., site of continuing peace vigils once a week. Six choruses plus audience on, among other tunes, Pete Seeger’s “Turn, Turn, Turn.”
NanuqFC
“A time for peace, I swear it’s not too late … ~ Pete Seeger