Whopping 6%! (was Re: more from Katha)

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Wed Nov 8 16:19:52 PST 2000


From Chuck0 to Wojtek:


> > Ok that may bring us to the whopping 6% of the population. Bush received
>> almost 50%. You do not seriously believe that they were disillusioned
>> radicals among those 50%, do you?
>
>Bush received support of 25% of the voting age population.

Suppose Chuck0 is right that the proportion of leftists in the American population is about 6%. Wojtek says that 6% is a risible proportion. I don't think so. With 6% of the population, _if_ they are committed to a cause or a program, you can raise a good deal of hell, changing the country's political landscape. 6% ain't shabby. More than Lenin could boast of at the beginning of his political career; the CP at the beginning of industrial union organizing; civil rights activists at the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement; Betty Friedan at the beginning of second-wave feminism; anti-war activists at the beginning of the anti-Vietnam War movement; etc.

Social revolutions always start with a minority of committed organizers & spread from there. There will never be a time when the majority of people, en masse & at once, change their minds (much less through voting).

Yoshie



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