Re: [Pen-l] Dying of Consumption

["Jim Devine" <jdevine03@xxxxxxxxx>]

raghu wrote:
> That's exactly my point: it matters hugely what Obama is "fundamentally
> sympathetic to". In contrast, no amount of popular pressure is likely to
> persuade someone fundamentally unsympathetic like Bush. Witness the
> anti-Iraq war movement.

Of course, we don't _know_ what he's fundamentally sympathetic to.
Just because he _says_ something does not mean he means it in
practice. It's easy to favor Love, Mom, Peace, etc.

Nixon was pretty unsympathetic, but he did some (reasonably) good
things under popular pressure.

The Iraq anti-war movement was pretty weak, as far as I can tell. The
Vietnam one was much bigger and had the advantage of being "first" in
a lot of ways. The current crop of politicians learned from the old
anti-war one on how to deal with more recent ones.

Cheney worked for Nixon and learned how to avoid bending to popular
pressure. For example, to keep anti-war sentiments down, he prevented
us from seeing any flag-draped coffins coming home... On the other
hand, Obama seems to go the other main route: co-optation. Say "I
agree with you" and then, in practice, ...
-- 
Jim Devine /  "Nobody told me there'd be days like these / Strange
days indeed -- most peculiar, mama." -- JL.
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