The great civil rights marches of the 1950s and 1960s should be studied and emulated as closely as possible. People in those marches looked as if they were assembled for a serious purpose. They wore serious clothes. They marched both joyously and solemnly. They were a picture of dignity itself. If they chanted or carried signs, the chants or signs didn’t contain language you couldn’t repeat to your grandmother.
The antiwar protests I’ve attended in New York City, by contrast, were often more like moving carnivals than protests. [This is 2006.] Costumes, banners, and behavior on display were often juvenile and raunchy. Lots of people seemed to be there to get attention, and the message they conveyed was LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME LOOK AT HOW CLEVER I AM, not NO IRAQ WAR.
This guy right here. This is how you should do it. Aside from being firm, knowledgeable, and respectable, he's also sporting that bitchin' Civil War hat. Fox News interviewed this guy at Wall Street, and you are never going to see it on television.
I don't know if the crowd is made up mostly of people like that, or by attention-whoring hippies. My guess is that it's pretty close to 50-50. That's a guess. About a week ago, I saw a redditor's account of the protests when he walked by it, he said he saw a couple topless chicks hoola hooping, and he was called an "asshole" because he was wearing a suit, even though he supported their cause. Assholes.
Anyway, with all these different kinds of people showing up to this same protest, it's going to be difficult trying to find one consistent message. That's because there isn't one. Liberalism is often a difficult concept for the masses to grasp, because it's not as simple or catchy as quicker phrases like "DRILL BABY DRILL" or "WHERE'S THE BIRTH CERTIFICATE" or "FAGS BURN IN HELL." And when that kind of mindless football groupthink is brought into liberal thought, you get stupid hippies calling you an asshole for wearing a suit.
Liberalism, empathy, and humanity is difficult because it takes a bit of research. You can't summarize it in a few words, you have to go on in a lot of detail like what that guy in the Civil War hat did. If you want to hear a quick summarized reason why we're so pissed off, we're not going to be able to give it you, because you just can't generalize this stuff. The only way you can understand it fully is if you know about all the little, specific atrocities, and bring it all together into one huge picture. The reason why it's so difficult getting people on our side is because people don't want to think.
Information is power. That's where these come in. I found these links on tumblr (except Manufacturing Consent, I'm adding that myself). Here are four fantastic documentaries that everybody needs to watch, all up online. I even put the trailers up here too, aren't I awesome? Have fun.
The Corporation - Since the late 18th century American legal decision that the business corporation organizational model is legally a person, it has become a dominant economic, political and social force around the globe. This film takes an in-depth psychological examination of the organization model through various case studies. What the study illustrates is that in the its behaviour, this type of "person" typically acts like a dangerously destructive psychopath without conscience. Furthermore, we see the profound threat this psychopath has for our world and our future, but also how the people with courage, intelligence and determination can do to stop it.
Inside Job - 'Inside Job' provides a comprehensive analysis of the global financial crisis of 2008, which at a cost over $20 trillion, caused millions of people to lose their jobs and homes in the worst recession since the Great Depression, and nearly resulted in a global financial collapse. Through exhaustive research and extensive interviews with key financial insiders, politicians, journalists, and academics, the film traces the rise of a rogue industry which has corrupted politics, regulation, and academia. It was made on location in the United States, Iceland, England, France, Singapore, and China.
Why We Fight - He may have been the ultimate icon of 1950s conformity and postwar complacency, but Dwight D. Eisenhower was an iconoclast, visionary, and the Cassandra of the New World Order. Upon departing his presidency, Eisenhower issued a stern, cogent warning about the burgeoning "military industrial complex," foretelling with ominous clarity the state of the world in 2004 with its incestuous entanglement of political, corporate, and Defense Department interests.
Manufacturing Consent - This film showcases Noam Chomsky, one of America's leading linguists and political dissidents. It also illustrates his message of how government and big media businesses cooperate to produce an effective propaganda machine in order to manipulate the opinions of the United States populous. The key example for this analysis is the simultaneous events of the massive coverage of the communist atrocities of Khmer Rouge regime of Cambodia and the suppression of news of the US supported Indonesian invasion and subjugation of East Timor.
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