where is the movement?

Where is the Movement? What happened to real opposition? Where did everyone go?

I think for the large part the movement has retreated and a lot of people have decided to stick with safe easy paths so they won’t get let down again.

I remember in the heady days of J20 in 2000 when activists were able to shut the WTO meeting in Seattle...it felt like the little people truly had the power to tell the evil capitalist minions to go fuck themselves. It was still felt like we were going to win…and could send the forces of darkness packing, but after the inaguration of King George Bush II, things have become so bad that even my worst nightmares pale by way of comparison. We've seen so much regress these days it makes me dizzy. Things in this country have gotten so much worse in the past 5 years it's just mindboggling.

My own sense of feeling powerless began around September 11th...at the time I was incredibly sad that such an obvious wakeup call was completely misread and used as an excuse to usher in the dark ages of civil liberties. Not only did I think attacking Afghanistan was a lame move (Osama bin Laden after all, was from Saudi Arabia, and that's where all the real action is, not the broke-ass fucked up backwater of Afghanistan), but going after Iraq (which frankly had nothing to do with anything) was an even more surreal proposition. And what both amazed and horrified me then is that seemingly intelligent people could say with straight faces that this was a great idea, and that going to war with Iraq was the answer to all our problems. Had everyone gone mad? Could no one see how terribly flawed all of this was? I knew then, what I still know now, and with a sense of growing horror, felt quite certain that this would be the Vietnam of our era.
And so like any good social activist, I put in a lot of energy into protesting that inexplicably stupid line of reasoning that my so-called betters were exercising. But yet when March of 2003 rolled around, and the war happened anyway, it was so depressing…On that day I knew that any hope I had for this country had utterly died.

But what really did me in was a year and a half later, when I woke up that morning and went to another day of work after the election results were in, and heard that George Bush was still president of the United States, and thus would continue to personally shit on me and all that I stood for, and fuck everyone over (who was not rich and powerful) directly for 4 more years (wars?) and whose long reaching effects would probably defile freedom and democracy for the rest of my adult life...well, I just could stand another minute of it.

I couldn’t bear to hear any more...with that, I withdrew from the outside world for months. That moment, the infamy of Ohio, I think that was the pivotal event that killed off almost all of the momentum of “the moment”. I mean, how could someone Bush be re-elected(?) inspite of being such an obviously inept moron? How could people sleep at night? That bothered me for sooo long and I became really really bitter. The only thing that enabled me to move on was probably the fact I was living way out in the middle of nowhere, and able to remain unaware of what was going on so long as I didn’t open a newspaper or listen to the radio. I was already not watching tv...and I could pretend up in the land of clouds, high on the eastern slopes of the mountains where I spent my days, that everything awful and bad was far far away and couldn’t reach me.
It was what I needed at the time, but of course, you can only delude yourself for so long. Even a hermit cannot shut the world out forever…

On top of all that, though, I think a few more nails in the coffin of the progressive movement are the changes in the composition in the Supreme Court, and the fact that there’s no real opposition to Bush’s moronic agenda at the moment other than the Senate (and that’s a stretch because on a legislative front, it requires Republican senators to vote against the party line to prevent some god-awful things from getting railroaded through). To make things even rosier, every day, whether I try to or not, I hear there’s even more horrible shit coming our way.

Everything I’ve fought against all my life (racism, xenophobia, social justice, environmental desecration) is being assaulted by a man who would find the workings of a third grade classroom vigorously challenging. It’s more than most of us can bear, I think…to live in a world that’s this fucked, and feeling like vast majority of people REALLY DON’T GIVE A SHIT what happens. (But what never ceases to surprise me is that a lot of people really do care, they just feel so powerless, and that’s a vicious cycle.

Have we all quit? Have I quit?

I have a feeling that most people haven’t quit all together, but they’re either licking their wounds somewhere, taking an extended time out (and recharging their batteries), or maybe trying to figure out what direction to go, and what to do next.
It’s not the same as quitting, but unfortunately on the surface, it looks the same.

So far though, I haven’t heard anyone (other than smirking Republicans, may you sink with the Titanic you sail on) suggest we should just all give up, but since no one is wanting to stick out their neck, it appears that everyone has quit fighting and given the fiends license to do whatever damage they will.
Honestly though, I haven’t been able to talk to anyone about this lately, but my guess is that anyone who’s still got some fight left in them is regrouping and preparing for Armageddon (or the last battle)…