Quote:
Originally Posted by rhetorical
Where did it all go wrong? The most effective way to mollify a populace is to create a state of fear and a struggle. When I lived in the Soviet Union during the cold war, they kept the population under their thumb by creating a struggle for peace.
This administration created a struggle for safety.
This contributes to an on going state of fear and a cowed population and the government can do what it likes, until it runs out of resources as we are witnessing.
I disagree with you about protests. The cumulative effect of large rallies is something a government cannot withstand. We see it in France today when labour organizations hit the streets. More to the point, it ended the Viet Nam war. When people forget that power or are too afraid or fat to wield it, then the government is given a free hand to run amuck. It does way more than cause traffic jams and minor disruption. Kent State was hardly a minor disruption or a blip in a news cycle.
It is the only hope the citizenry have when their elected or empowered elite become megalomaniacs.
|
Are you sincerely drawing a parallel between the current world and the world in which Kent State and Altamont took over the news cycles for days on end?
Really?
'Cos I'm sorry, Rhet, but I gotta call bullshit on that one, because that's about like putting
The Exorcist and
Saw up against one another and calling them the same movie. They're not - and the general reception of each is a fairly clear indicator of shifts in societal mores and inurement to things that in the period you reference would have been unimaginable. Immersion in breaking news and the media shrieking at the top of its lungs on the NEXT BIG STORY drives home the point.