If this were the 60's, many people would rise up against the Trump regime. Without the threat of the

[RKP5637]

draft as in the sixties, the implications are not always felt. Also, maybe there is more suppression today against uprising against Trump. He seems to just sail along. The investigations will hopefully derail him. It seems no matter what he does, the GOP is with him. I smell a dictatorship in the future if congress does not take action. Am I way off base here? IMO there is a coup.

[sharedvalues]

1. We have a corporate cable media machine today

And Internet media which the right is heavily investing in: Facebook, Breitbart, Ijc, daily caller, RT, Sputnik , Reason.

The biggest difference in the response to these scandals is the way Americans get their information today. And Putin and the GOP donor individuals and corporations are waging an information war that the middle class of America is losing.

[PoiBoy]

8. +100,000...

totally agree...!!!

[sharedvalues]

22. We're losing the information war - who is fighting back?

We need grassroots groups to fight back...

[RKP5637]

55. Consistently, the RW has the upper hand in the media/information war. It's so damn

corporate owned now by a few, the RW is just a shoe in. No democracy in that.

[sharedvalues]

75. We should be resisting the corporate media. Grassroots groups can do that.

[RKP5637]

83. That, is where much of it emanates from, and really what brought us Trump. Profit over country. Yes,

grassroots groups can go around corporate media.

[RKP5637]

27. I was looking at this recently, the prevalence of right leaning entities wherever one looks. Left

leaning are far and few between. The wars of information and control are really where it's at. A resolved mind is often hard to change. It seems to be how humanity often works, primacy principle and all.

[Warpy]

29. Yes, people ARE rising up

The news media look the other way. We can't depend on them AT ALL to tell us anything.

The news is on the net and in print. What's on the television is just plain fucking useless.

[RKP5637]

53. It is useless. Television has become a damn useless medium, and a propaganda arm. n/t

[sharedvalues]

76. TV is corporate. Exactly. How do we get this message out to 80% of Americans?

[NobodyHere]

2. Sure they would have

[MineralMan]

3. They're rising up now, and in about the same numbers, frankly.

It was always just a few percent of people who actively protested. They're out there right now, if you want to join them.

[RKP5637]

7. Maybe I felt it more because I was in school back then. n/t

[MineralMan]

12. Yes, and so was I, most of that time.

When you're in the protests, they seem larger somehow, but anti-Trump protests are turning out large numbers of people, too. I no longer do street activism. I'm too old and can't walk so far as I could. But, people are turning out. They did yesterday, too.

I'm not seeing a lot of difference between the 60s and now, really. It takes some time to build huge numbers, but there have been many protests with very large turnouts already, and Trump's term in office is still new.

[bettyellen]

9. But it's women in vast numbers, men appear to be sitting it out.

Not just the women's march but the lawyers showing up the first weekend of the travel band 70/30 women. Most of the protests- well except the pro Trump ones.
Sure if we had the draft they'd be out.

[MineralMan]

11. I don't know about that. Here are some photos:

Looks like men are representing, too.

[bettyellen]

14. Dem congressional reps were quoted saying 75-80% of phone calls were from women...

Lawyers at the airports- 70-75% female. When I read those reports I thought it was notable.

That bottom pic is the first one I've seen where men are out in equal numbers. That's actually an anomaly if you've been paying attention. The middle pic looks like more in the very front row and also the photographers, but also appears to be a majority of women.

[MineralMan]

15. OK, bettyellen. I'm not keeping counts, frankly.

Nor do I see all of the protests. So, I'll defer to you on this.

[bettyellen]

17. It's not something I thought of until I noticed it a bunch of times, and read about it too.

then it becomes something that's hard not to notice. When they do the money shot at the start of the protest it's always a much heavier bunch of men in the front row, and then you notice the ratio reverses in the back. Maybe it's about the banner and signs? I'd never noticed that before either.

[marybourg]

68. Our local Indivisible meetings are 90% female-attended. nt

[bettyellen]

69. Same here, and I'm in a liberal area. Have heard and seen much the same but was reluctance

To bring it up because I didn't save links and much of it is anecdotal. Even when I did a tour to meet human rights activists in northern Ireland over twenty years ago- it was the women who carried all the weight. I think it was one man to a dozen women- and he was one of the two making a good paycheck from it. The only woman I met who wasn't volunteering was a spokesperson for Amnesty International.

The stats about phone calls I saw a while back really drove it home. Will it take a draft to see men active as they were way back when?

[marybourg]

70. And we know who was REALLY the engine behind the civil rights

movement, way back when.

[samnsara]

43. there are more protests now.. and everywhere!

[marybourg]

4. Well, he IS presumptively the duly elected

president, and no amount of protesting or even rioting is going to change that. And as you note, without a draft there's no immediate threat to life and limb, so rioting is not called for. All we can do is speak out, protest, RESIST, and do our best to turn out the vote next time.

If everyone right here on DU who is physically able to do all that actually did it, we'd be on our way.

[oberliner]

5. Rise up in what sense?

What do you mean exactly?

[RKP5637]

6. I come across a fair number of people that don't even get what's going on. They think it's just

a passing phase, not even bothering to contact their congressman, make a donation, sign a petition or anything.

[oberliner]

10. Gotcha

I do think, though, that there are quite a few folks doing exactly those things you mention. Notice how much attention, for instance, the Congressional race in Georgia has garnered across the country.

[Voltaire2]

13. The 2016 election ushered in one party rule.

The Republican Party controls the house and senate, something like 33 of the state governments, the presidency, and probably the judiciary, although that is not clear yet.

Currently it is not a dictatorship. Until the constitution is overtly violated by the executive, it remains a "dominant party system", a deformed representative democracy. We are at this point similar to other deformed one party democracies, like Turkey and Russia currently and like many others in the past. Note that the Republican Party was in a similar position from the post civil war era up until the 20th century.

Until there are conditions that give people no alternative other than to get out in the streets, we will not see mass unrest on the scale of the 60s.

[RKP5637]

25. Definitely! "A deformed representative democracy." n/t

[MichMary]

62. There have been periods of

one-party rule in the past. Most recently, the first two years of PBO's first term. IOW, this too shall pass.

[KingCharlemagne]

72. NOT two years! More like 60 days (before Ted Kennedy passed), if memory

serves.

[Orrex]

16. Those people in the 60s didn't have student loans

The existence of these inescapable loans has been tied repeatedly to the suppression of dissent, on the grounds that the victims of such loans can't afford to engage in activity that could jeopardize their ability to pay off their indentured servitude.

It sounds trivial compared to the nostalgic recollection of the uncompromising 60s, but the world today is very different.

[RKP5637]

19. Excellent point! Thanks! n/t

[onenote]

34. I knew a bunch of folks that had student loans in the 60s

Student loans have been around since before the 60s. By 1967, one million students had borrowed more than $1 billion under the NDEA loan program.

Comparing the 1960s to now in terms of activism is foolish given the one, unmistakable difference between then and now: between 1966 and 1969, over 46,000 Americans were killed in Vietnam. That's what spurred activism.

[peggysue2]

85. Right, you are

I was a student during the late 60s, early 70s. And yes, the activism on the streets and on campus was huge because of the Vietnam War and the numbers of young men dying on a daily basis. The draft left little choice--enter the service or flee the country. My husband was part of the lottery system. When his number came in (bad), he enlisted in the Navy figuring he had a better chance of surviving on a boat than traipsing through a swampy jungle. The opposition to the Vietnam War was extraordinary. It was that opposition that drove the activism and yes, the draft was a big component.

As for student loans? I had loans that took me over 7 years to pay back. Granted the numbers weren't as humongous as they are today but salaries were far lower. My college loans equaled 2+ years salary. Everything in proportion.

[Chipper Chat]

87. I think my interest rate ws 4%

[Orrex]

88. At that time, you could declare bankruptcy to escape, no?

I believe that the law was changed in 1976, so any discussion of student loans from before that date has nothing to do with student loans after that date.

As you note, the times were very different.

[Oneironaut]

41. And the threat of having an invented felony on your record for protesting.

All you need to do is be in the general vicinity of a protest and have a few anarchists show up. Boom! Life ruined forever.

[RKP5637]

51. Picture/image tracking and all of that. It's getting damn hard to be anonymous at a protest anymore.

[malaise]

18. The American Political System

is way tougher than this current bunch of morons. Watch the proceedings. They're going down- follow the money.

[RKP5637]

21. I think the buffoon in the WH is getting slammed far more than he ever imagined. One

horrible thought I do have sometimes, is imagine the embodiment he will have if nothing significant happens.

[malaise]

24. He is hated and he knows it

He will never be king

[RKP5637]

26. "King Dump!" n/t

[Sugar Smack]

20. People are so afraid of pain.

Last edited Sun Jun 4, 2017, 07:24 PM - Edit history (1)

In the sixties, there wasn't the option of using those sound-cannons, pain-inducing microwave "crowd control" weapons, or the sort of torture it took fifty or so years to dream up. Back then, one sensed that the USA gov't wasn't all that eager to kill its own citizens. Sometimes I wonder what I'd do under those circumstances if it came to fruition. I would LOVE protesting in a sixties environment. I'm not saying it was easy, not at all. I'm a little envious: some profound results came of it. And I was born a month away from the 70's.

Pain machine or no, I'll be at the next anti-trump march, holding THIS:

[RKP5637]

23. ...

[Voltaire2]

28. The government notoriously shot its citizens, Kent State, Jackson State,

the suppression of urban insurrections across the US in 68 following the King assassination, for example.

[Sugar Smack]

38. I was implying the danger of that specific sequence to occur.

Take a large crowd of peaceful protests in the street, numbering in the hundreds of thousands. Add a high-tech instrument of torture and apply it to those numbers of individual people who would immediately be felled, wounded, knocked out or dead, if they wear a pacemaker and are incidentally in the area. I haven't meant to brush off the sacrifices made by 60's protests. I'm just saying that today, we have our work cut out for us.

[Progressive dog]

30. Nixon was in office for more than five years

in spite of anti-war protests and the draft. Trump has been in office for four months.
That comparison will have to wait another five years to be valid.

[RKP5637]

31. Amazing what Trump has accomplished. The world, just about all, hate him. n/t

[JI7]

32. people are doing what they can. the protest after he got into office was huge

And many differrnt groups have been protesting him.

[RKP5637]

44. Yes, I think it will continue to build. n/t

[wishstar]

33. I'm glad current protests have been so calm that Trump can't push need for "law and order"

The violence of the 60's and 70's protests created a "law and order" backlash that helped Nixon get re-elected and I don't want to see that happen again where Trump could push a case for law and order to get re-elected.

Thankfully, we have a lot more whistleblowers leaking and many more media outlets exposing the lies and corruption and the investigations are proceeding, so I have some hope.

But ironically, Trump's regressive social agenda threatens to be more dangerous than anything Nixon could have imagined, as Nixon wasn't trying to dismantle the social safety net but in fact helped to expand Medicaid and Medicare, SSI and environmental protections rather than tear our social programs down.

[RKP5637]

45. It's a really bad situation all the way around, and what is incredible, many of the people being

destroyed are his fans. A total WTF! Are they seeking punishment!

[RKP5637]

54. That, is an excellent point, it could cause a serious backlash. The ass in WH would likely declare

martial law.

[Auntie Bush]

86. Too bad Nixon was an immoral Crook...could have accomplished many lmore good things.

[karynnj]

35. We rose up ... on every college I know of in the late 60s, early 70s ... We got NIXON elected

Most of the protests ended by the mid 1970s. Not to mention, it was journalists and the fact that we controlled both Houses of Congress and there were actually Republican legislators with enough integrity that Nixon learned he would be both impeached and kicked out.

At this point, we control neither House of Congress and, though I would love to believe that Republicans would vote to impeach and kick out Trump -- I honestly do not see that happening. We need to win back seats - lots of seats - in 2018. That MIGHT make them fear sticking with Trump.

[pnwmom]

37. It took 2 years for Watergate to bring Nixon down. And he wasn't impeached

because of protests in the streets, but because of John Dean and the Watergate prosecutor -- and, as you point out, because the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress.

[RKP5637]

47. If Trump is gone, then we have Pence. I don't know if that's any better. n/t

[yardwork]

49. I'm sure that Pence would be worse. He's not as stupid and obvious.

[pnwmom]

36. I doubt you were around for the 60's. Without the internet, people's info

about DT would be limited to the bits of national news on the 6:00 and 11 pm news, along with the local newspaper, if they had one.

People would not be marching in the streets. They would have little idea what was going on.

[RKP5637]

48. On my campus we certainly did. n/t

[pnwmom]

50. You are forgetting how little information came out about Watergate,

for the whole first year after the break-in.

We knew the break-in had happened well before the election, and that there were ties to the Republicans, but the election just went on.

The only protests were about Vietnam, not about Watergate.

[RKP5637]

52. Oh, yes, definitely, I was thinking more of Vietnam. n/t

[Warren DeMontague]

39. There have been non-stop protests since January, and it's only June.

And well-attended ones, too. People are in the streets.

[adigal]

40. Until Americans can't get on their iphones to play candy crush

Only the smart and aware will even pay attention.

[kerry-is-my-prez]

42. It helped when we had charismatic people like Abbie Hoffman & the hippies/yippees. It was the

"Cool thing," to be a part of that. Then Reagan came along and made it "cool" to be rich and Republican - to be greedy.

[RKP5637]

46. Yep, it switched!!! I recall that so well! n/t

[mhw]

56. Here's some good pics from Vietnam War protests.

http://www.vintag.es/2015/04/30-color-photographs-of-anti-vietnam.html?m=1

[RKP5637]

58. Thanks! We got tear gassed and tear gassed, then the commanders where we were

held back the National Guard who had no sense of duty than to kick and beat up the youth in school. Then the helicopters and all the sh** poured in and the risk of permanent expulsion from school and no degree. We were supposed to just go die in the fucken war for inane political reasons, sending the youth to die.

[mhw]

89. We fought for our lives in those protests. "Old enough to Die in a war but not old enough to vote"

My god what a horrific thing to do to the finest of our nation just as they came of age. For what?

I recall the protest of " Old enough to fight old enough to vote".

We were 18 yrs old.

26th Ammendment. Gave 18 yr olds the right to vote.
Too bad so many were already drafted & lost to a war they couldn't vote against.

Amid increasing support for a Constitutional amendment, Congress passed the 26th Amendment in March 1971; the states promptly ratified it, and President Richard M. Nixon signed it into law that July. ... The 26th Amendment: “Old Enough to Fight, Old Enough to Vote”.



Shame on this country.

[vlyons]

57. Many people HAVE risen against him

Where have you been? Did you not see the women's march, the protests against his anti-Muslim immigration ban, the march for science, the town halls?

[RKP5637]

59. We'll see what happens after the hearings. Thanks! n/t

[MichMary]

60. I barely remember the 60's, but

--you do know that Johnson and the protests brought us--Richard Nixon.

[RKP5637]

63. Yeah, it's always a catch 22 it seems, never knowing for sure which way the chips will fall. n/t

[AntiFascist]

61. My fear is that too many right-wing Republicans also benefit from Russian interference...

and the extreme (alt-right) supporters will continue to appear stronger than they should in a true democracy. This is why he continues to play to his base. Once people wake up to the fact that they are losing their healthcare and that the swamp in Washington DC is turning into a lake threatening its very foundation, and that isolationism is only making the threat of terrorism worse, that base should shrink.

[RKP5637]

65. That's what I think too, although I'm surprised at how stable it seems to be. n/t

[Boomerproud]

64. K&R

No, you are not way off base at all. The people in power are so scared that they are trying to enact laws to make peaceful protesting illegal.

[RKP5637]

66. I'm surprised Stephen Miller hasn't written/issued/presented a mandate yet for Trump, creepy

little guy he is.

[alarimer]

67. I think dissent generally has gotten more dangerous.

First Bush and Co. started with the "Free Speech" zones, basically isolating protesters from the people they were protesting. With the internet, it's also gotten easier for bad actors to target people they don't like and harass them or even get them fired.

For a while after 9-11, it was also deemed "unpatriotic" to dissent from the war-mongering. I think that has changed somewhat.

[RKP5637]

71. Yes, I agree, tactics today need to be different. n/t

[KingCharlemagne]

73. What does "rise up" mean? - nt

[RKP5637]

79. Please see 5, 6, 10. Thx! n/t

[Demsrule86]

74. The draft lasted until 1973 ...so it certainly took years.

[moondust]

77. Chomsky.

June 2, 2017

~

As a result of the activism of the ’60s and the militancy of labor, there was a falling rate of profit. That’s not acceptable. So we have to reverse the falling rate of profit, we have to undermine democratic participation, what comes? Neoliberalism, which has exactly those effects.

 Noam Chomsky: Neoliberalism Is Destroying Our Democracy

[RKP5637]

80. Thanks! n/t

[customerserviceguy]

78. And many people did rise up against Nixon

and Johnson and the Vietnam War before that. And many of those people were women, who did not face the threat of the draft.

Non-violent protest takes a long time to produce results, while violent protests often do not accomplish anything. You think of the Sixties as peace, love, dope, etc. but there were violent protests in the urban areas, and that was AFTER the Voting Rights Act and associated legislation was passed. Nixon reframed the 1968 election as being about restoring order, and even with George Wallace bleeding off the electoral votes of five states, and a sizable amount of the electorate everywhere else, he won. Twice.

The best thing we can do is take back Congress next year, at least the House. But in any case, don't expect any substantial legislation to be enacted until at least 2021, when hopefully we'll have a Democratic president, with sizable majorities in both houses of Congress.

But, being as redistricting from the 2020 Census will not be in effect by the election of that year, I have to say, I'm not terrifically hopeful.

[RKP5637]

81. 2018 will be the deciding point, won't it. Pretty much the weather vane. n/t

[customerserviceguy]

82. Yep

We'll know what we're in for then. A president's party usually loses a lot of seats in the midterms, we'll see if that holds true here or not.

If not, then brace yourself for another really bumpy six years, I'm afraid.

[RKP5637]

84. I haven't heard from you for awhile, I was happy to see your post!

[customerserviceguy]

90. Yes, I've been working on a big project

I was adopted, and just over two years ago, I decided to use DNA to find my heritage. It's laborious, it involves contacting hundreds of people, asking for their family trees, and seeing where matching segments of DNA lead me to common ancestors. It's like a 1000-piece puzzle, you start at the edges first, and work your way on in to the middle.

Oh, and there's no picture on the box. Or, for a twist, I am the picture on the box, but I can't see it until I build it.

I've learned a lot along the way, and I may well write a book telling others how to do this, step-by-step.

Thanks for the support!