You know, we used to protest, even under a democratic president.

[deminks]

LBJ did an enourmous amount of good. War on Poverty. Voting rights. Many of the things the rethuglicans now want to destroy. But the war, that was a deal breaker. There was a draft then, granted. And the media actually reported the war news. Instead of getting out, he quit. And then we got Nixon. And many of the same people are running the war and money machines today.

War and civil rights. We could do two things at once. I was young then. It's not just a single issue now, either. Jobs, war, corruption, poverty, voting rights, a hundred things we could take to the streets. I think as progressives, we don't want Obama to quit. We want him to listen, to live up to his promises, to fight when necessary, to acknowledge those that got him there. If he quits, we will get Bachmann.

IMHO, firebagger that I am.

Hey, Hey, LBJ...

[Donnachaidh]

1. October 6th, 2011. Washington. n/t

[Rosa Luxemburg]

2. The unions could help this

show solidarity! the time has come as they say.

[Ozymanithrax]

3. We used to understand that a Democratic President did not always...

share our interests or our needs.

[woo me with science]

5. We still do.

Pay no attention to the planted Third Way faux Democrats trying to spread these lies, that the US is conservative and that good Democrats don't complain.

[Ozymanithrax]

8. The Democratic Party is, at this time, a centrist or Center Right Party...

The population of the U.S. is somewhere left of center.

I am a Liberal Democrat and I am complaining.

[Octafish]

4. Face Recognition Software combined with universal eavesdropping make it hard to protest securely...

Everyone fears being identified, busted, smeared and destroyed.
Without the ability to organize an opposition to the government, we are forced to accept things as they are.
So, this isn't really a free society any more.

Frank Church warned us in 1975 what would happen to our nation if the NSA turned its spyware on the American people:

EXCERPT...

“That capability at any time could be turned around on the American people and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide. If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back, because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology.

I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capability that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.”

[deminks]

6. Even then, there were FBI files, and everything was filmed and

captured in pictures. There were paid physical informants everywere. Nothing has really changed in that regard. Though I don't doubt the technology is faster. And, it has been used already, by at least one so called democratic governor who later apologized.

http://www.aolnews.com/2010/09/16/pa-gov-appalled-at-states-tracking-of-peaceful-activists/

[Octafish]

11. Excellent points. But the technology has helped the Man more than the People since '68.

We've had 40-years of PsyOp television shaping people's minds, from worldview to the stuff they think is important to the kind of person they want to marry. Then there's Big Pharma and Big Insurance working their magic to create a nation where half the adults I know are taking some kind of doctor prescribed "mood-altering" substance every day just to keep going. A lot of the other half self-medicate with whatever thay can get their hands on. Of course, the newspapers would put this on their front page to help draw the community's attention to the problems we face, if only they could.

Maybe one day we'll have a communication machine that allows people to join together and to exchange ideas anonymously. The way things now stand, Admiral Poindexter and his TIA crew have ID'd all of us on DU long ago.

Sorry, deminks. None of that directly answers your original question about people not getting up and out to protest. It's not that most people are unaware something stinks. They know things are messed up. They know something needs to be done and have a pretty good idea of what is needed to solve the problems. With government siding with Big Money and War Inc, the People may feel they don't have a chance.

Personally, my message to those who think, "Why bother?" is what Plato said:

"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors."

Not much of a bumper sticker, but it'd be something to teach in civics class.

[Name removed]

7. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[CBHagman]

9. Erm, Nixon followed LBJ.

Wiretapping. "Peace with honor." That sort of thing.

Not a time for which I'm nostalgic.

[AndyTiedye]

12. And Who Would Follow Obama?

[Schema Thing]

15. Romney or Huntsman

[scheming daemons]

10. And that brought about the Nixon administration.... are you really this short-sighted?

.geez.

[saras]

13. We DO protest. You know, we used to have media that reported those things

although even in the sixties, the media consistently underreported liberal/progressive demonstrations and overreported conservative ones.

[fasttense]

14. Prolonged occupation of Washington DC is the only answer.

http://october2011.org/welcome