Charles: Changing Americans' minds on the war is the main aim of the peace movement.
Carrol: Not exactly. It's the condition of the war and the blatant nonsense put out by the war's defenders that is changing minds. The peace movement doesn't need to do that and in fact can't do that. People change their minds in response to conditions in their lives, which includes the 'big' events that happen to catch their attention.
^^^^ Charles: I don't think I agree with this. We could say that "the condition of the war and the blatant nonsense put out by the war's defenders" is also what shifts passive opinion to active opposition. It "the condition of the war, etc." AND rhetoric from opponents of the war that will change minds. For one thing, it is the peace movement that makes people aware of the "condition of the war" and " the blatant nonsense".
^^^^^
What the Peace Movement has to do is (a) convert that passive opinion to _active_ opposition, and (b) (for the future) persuade as many of those activists as possible that they need to attend to the overall context of the war -- i.e. shift them from seeing the war as an aberration or mistake or bit of stupidity on Bush's part to seeing it as part of a larger pattern. _How_ much larger a pattern varies greatly from case to case & is determined in local contexts.
Lacking the kind of context which, in the case of the 60s, I have characterized as a "general uproar" (and in the '60s was triggered mostly by the civil-rights movement and the urban insurrections), it will be extremely difficult to achieve either of these tasks. It will be not just difficult but impossible if we think we have to persuade people to change their minds, for then we will be ignoring the '60% +/- who are already passively on our side and focusing instead on a 40% +/- who are against us and will stay against us no matter what we do.
Carrol