The Ethic of Total Opposition (William Pitt)

[shraby]

I was sitting at the bar the other day with Hannah, talking politics over a mug. I commented that morale among those in the progressive movement had cratered since the Presidential election, that the energy and hopefulness which had marked the long slog towards the vote had been replaced by a dimming of expectations, a hunch-shouldered feeling of despair. Hannah wasn't surprised. "I'm a cynic these days," she said. "I don't count on people much anymore."

The feeling is understandable. We've seen hundreds of thousands of people take to the streets in the Ukraine to force a showdown over a questionable election. Yet here in America, after a national election with some 30,000 reported cases of irregularities, there is this odd silence. When a former satellite of the Soviet Union shames the greatest democracy in the history of the world on something as elemental as the right to vote, things are badly out of joint.

We've seen 137 American soldiers die in the month of November during the ongoing occupation of Iraq, the deadliest month to date for American forces in this war, combined with God only knows how many civilians killed. Some 200,000 people were forced to flee Fallujah after Bush decided to celebrate the November election by razing much of that city to the ground in a military assault that accomplished exactly nothing. Again, we are greeted with this odd silence.

(more)
<http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/120304W.shtml>

Great editorial Will Pitt

[Leilani]

1. Difference between us & the Ukraine?

They have a leader, we're on our own.

Their leader, who was poisoned, is still leading.

[Name removed]

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