Reply #98: What was the point of what Ghandi did? [View All]

[tavalon]

If you understand that one, you have the answer to the your first question. Just in case you don't, what he did and what she is doing is about turning the tide of public opinion. The public is swayed, not by throwing out numbers and rational reasons, but by pure, raw emotion. What's important about 2000 dead soldiers? Not much to the average Joe/Jane just trying to get food on the table. What's important about a grieving mother? Every last thing at the emotional level to that same Joe/Jane. It doesn't require explaining. They just get it. It's the ultimate 20 second sound bite that keeps on affecting them.

Lots of people keep getting hung up on why she wants to talk to him. She doesn't actually. Now, I'm not trying to put words in her head. Maybe she really does want to talk to him but I can't see why. She already knows everything she needs to know about his character and his lack of empathy. The people she is trying to get a conversation started with and may I add, is succeeding admirably at, is the public. She has asked for and received an audience with them. If she is arrested on Thursday, that conversation will become longer and all the more heartfelt. She has their hearts and she may well win their minds.

It wasn't really Nixon who ended the war in Vietnam. It was the tide of public opinion that ended it. And so it will be with Iraq.

I've just answered your second two questions. The "President" is irrelevent to this ongoing discussion. The conversation is with the public and the public is listening and feeling deeply.

Hopefully millions of us, yourself included, will be in Washington D.C. on September 24th to place the exclamation point at the end of this discussion. But Cindy Sheehan, with a mothers love and tenacity, is the one who began the conversation.