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Yearly Kos, The Anti-War Movement and Cooptation of The Netroots | 21 comments (21 topical)

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Chicago! (none / 0) (#21)
by Scarabus on Sun Aug 05, 2007 at 07:58:04 PM EST
I'm old enough to have seen what happened in 1968 (at least on live television). Anti-war protesters in Chicago probably made the difference between the election of progressive Hubert Humphrey and "If the president does it, then it's legal" Nixon. Humphrey almost overcame the damage they caused, but, alas, not quite.

To force an agenda, without self-reflection or adjusting strategy to accommodate changing conditions, is naively counter-productive. To cower in fear of attack is worse than counter-productive. The rational, constructive approach lies somewhere between.

Easy to say. The hard part is negotiating the ground between uncompromisingly going down in flames of self-righteousness on the one hand, and elevating one's snoot in uncompromising ideological triumph on the other. Either extreme is both morally easy (for the unreflective extremist, right or left), and socially irresponsible (for anyone).

Democracy is about negotiating our differences, seeking win-win accommodation in the interest of the commonweal. At a more sophisticated level, it means developing sufficient trust to grant advantage to others in confidence that in future  others will allow us the advantage. That's moral, social, political maturity.

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Yearly Kos, The Anti-War Movement and Cooptation of The Netroots | 21 comments (21 topical)

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