1) Very angry, especially over the cavalier (in fact, frequently gloating) dismissals of the suffering caused by this course of action.
2) Much less isolated than I've felt in years. The constant media drumbeat of how likeable and popular and competent the current administration eventually gets to me (like, why do I see things so differently?). In my city (Raleigh, NC), the February 15 protest drew 7,000 peace activists. The counter so-called "Support our troops" rally drew about 45. The local newspaper and TV stations, of course, showed that they were fair and balanced by giving the two rallies equal time and weight. It provided emotional validation for the validity of my perceptions.
3) Spending a lot of time trying to figure out how to mobilize people for a better world. I think the mass protests did have an important effect in causing the administration to scrap plans for "Shock and Awe" much to the cable news networks' apparent disappointment. That's an extremely important victory (I guess you should add "pumped up" to how I feel, whenever I remember that. But I recognize that when the administration realized that the anti-war moral argument was playing better than the pro-war WMD and terrorist argument, the administration suddenly discovered that the main pro-war argument was really moral -- freedom and democracy).
A lot of the time thinking about the anti-war protests and their results goes to historical precedents and what they tell us -- like Doug's question, is this worse than McCarthyism? Some arguments for "yes" -- the increased concentration of power, including the wealth that effectively buys government and control of the media; the redefinition of freedom as consumerism; the destruction/collapse of countervailing associations such as labor unions, non-fundamentalist churches, and political parties as anything other than money-raising structures; the decreased disposable time and energy from the lengthened work week, sprawling development, and the like; increased tribalism in American politics. Some arguments for "no" -- it's the same suppression of serious dissent and offsetting some of the increased disadvantages, we now have alternative sources of information widely available through the Internet, and the availability of the Internet for organizing; we can call on higher levels of scepticism towards authority; the force of worldwide public opinion appears to be increasing.
--Gail
__________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo http://search.yahoo.com