When Passion and Dedication do Nothing to Change the World
May 29, 2007
When I graduated from high school, someone gave me a card emblazoned with the famous Margaret Mead quote, “a small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” It was an acknowledgment of my political activism, of my work for the Gore campaign and my general vehemence about how President Bush was going to be the, “worst. president. ever.” unless dedicated people everywhere did something to stop him.
Seven years later, that prediction has largely borne out. And small groups of dedicated people everywhere have failed to change it. The fact that Cindy Sheehan is leaving the anti-war movement comes as no surprise. She threw everything she had at changing the administration’s Iraq policy and she failed. In her goodbye letter on the liberal blog network Daily Kos, Sheehan wrote:
Good-bye America … you are not the country that I love and I finally realized no matter how much I sacrifice, I can’t make you be that country unless you want it.
I can understand her frustration with America. Last night, as Andy and I watched the late night news, he turned to me and said, “it’s as if every problem we’ve had for the past seven years has been completely ignored.” It’s so depressing. I feel as though I’m living in the fall of the Roman Empire.
Two years from now, a new president will do much to turn the tide. But our real problems go beyond the political. They are cultural and social. Our bellies are full and our minds are empty. Perhaps we will have to fall from our position of world economic dominance for that to change.
Small dedicated groups of people don’t seem to cut it anymore.
I disagree. Small dedicated groups can make a difference.
Sheehan has made a difference in terms of moving people against the war in Iraq. It is now wildly unpopular. As is Bush. Yes, she has not been able to end the war. Yes, the executive branch still supports the war. However, the legislative branch no longer supports the war, and the Democratic Presidential candidates all support a serious change in our approach to Iraq. Any Republican candidate who does not provide a different vision on Iraq from Bush will lose badly in 2008. Small dedicated groups can make a difference, but you have to be realistic and put that difference in perspective.
Sheehan has even made a noticeable difference on President Bush. He may not have changed his policies, but he looks like he has aged about 20 years over the past 2.
Andy I disagree. A poll out today shows Obama and McCain practically tied in their bid for the Presidency. This in spite of the fact that McCain thinks it’s funny to convert a Beach Boys song lyrics to bombing Iran, thinks its safe to go for a walk in Baghdad unprotected unless it happens to be him and of course he is by far the biggest Bush lapdog currently in the race.
This doesn’t sound like a different vision on McCain’s part and yet he is polling as the strongest candidate.
The Democratic candidate is the one that is going to lose badly if the Democratic leaders keep standing up for nothing.
The past 6½ years have been such a loss. Personally I feel like I’ve lost 6½ years of my life. So many soldiers have lost their lives. Millions of people have fallen victim to wars that need not have taken place. Our nation has gone backwards not forwards, and it will take us years, if not decades to undo the damage just to get back to where we were. Not that things were perfect before, but they weren’t where we are now.
Cindy Sheehan didn’t always make the right choices in her activism, such as when she went to visit Hugo Chavez, but she did the hard work activism requires, she sacrificed her life for her plight. We should thank her for that and it is now time others stepped up and did so. We don’t need one person to lead in such an effort, we need all Americans to take on part of that struggle with even a little bit of the commitment and fervor Sheehan put into it.
Daniel:
I feel the same way you do. My most formative years intellectually happened during the dot-com bubble, so I developed a keen sense of hope and limitless possibility. I believed such beautiful things were possible and that we had such amazing potential.
The past 6 years have rather beaten that out of me, leaving behind something I can only characterize as cold, empty, almost ruthlessly indifferent. There’s no hope, and no point to any of it.
Futures depend on being able to change things when they need to be changed, but we have built ourselves a nation that is impervious to change, when the very people who should be the harbingers of the future are instead the very ones maintaining the status quo, even when they know it is destroying everything we love.
Small groups can’t change the world anymore because we’ve made damn good and sure they can’t. It’s not an accident. The ability to change the world is an uncertainty, and we’ve built a whole world around stamping out those kinds of instabilities. We much prefer to know what’s for dinner than to live in a world we’re proud to give to our children.
Bread and circuses brought down Rome; American Idol and fast food will bring us down, too. And we won’t even know it until it’s already happened, we’re that bloody indifferent.
Americans. Pluh. I used to say the word with such pride.
Loved the post, I totally agree with you, except for the last sentence.
But I’d like to correct something that Daniel K. put out, which is that something was wrong with Cindy meeting with Chavez. She was at the World Social Forum to talk about the war and how we the people can end it. Chavez is like this hemisphere’s new FDR, so it makes sense that she would meet with him while she was in his country, especially considering his outspoken views on the war and how we got into it.
Folks need to realize that the vision of world leaders and world politics we get in this country is completely framed by what news outlet we’re viewing it on. If it’s anything other than Democracy Now! or Free Speech Radio News, chances are it skews way over to the right, because the corporations that dominate the newsmedia don’t want America to know what’s really going on. That’s why we don’t hear about all the Palestinians getting murdered by Israelis. That’s why we don’t have a clue what’s going on when wars start up in other countries. Because our newsmedia outlets are essentially controlled by the Washington consensus.
Chavez is not the devil. He may be a little obnoxious, but he’s one of the few leaders willing to take on the President directly. And that, I believe, is why Cindy spoke with him. Whether anything useful came out of it, who knows? But Cindy has done great work trying to stop the spread of American empire, and I love her for it.
Tahoma activist - You are aware that Chavez is no longer allowing free speech in Venezuela and is amping up his army?