>> The power elite is scared shitless of the popular movements.
> Like you, I disagree with people who say that the anti-war movement
> doesn't exist at all or has had no impact on the thinking of
> Americans. Opposition to the Iraq war is far more widely spread -- in
> terms of both passive sentiment and active involvement -- than at a
> comparable point in any earlier war, and that reflects invisible
> grassroots work. But I doubt that the power elite are "scared
> shitless." If they were, wouldn't they yield at least on _some_ issue
> -- tax cuts, social program cuts, workers' pension protection, civil
> liberties, immigration, _something, anything_?
Right. People simply underestimate the depth and breadth of the anti-war movement and that's just one of many social movements out there. Chomsky keeps talking about the fact that a huge movement against the Iraq war broke out BEFORE the war, when opposition to the invasion of Vietnam took years to develop.
I think that the power elites--at least the smarter ones in that small bunch--are scared of popular movements. They can see what lies just off the radar. They are lucky right now that the right wing backlash movement (see WMK by Frank) controls the political sphere and keeps a lid on dissent. Their problem is that the Democrats have always served as an outlet for dissent, but people who supported the Democrats are pissed at them and the right wing has gone overboard with the "war against liberalism."
The U.S. empire is bogged down now in Iraq, fighting a war that it can't win. The U.S. doesn't have the resources in the U.S. to contain a widespread revolt or rebellion--see New Orleans for how incompetent the government is right now.
Yes, they've passed programs that benefit themselves, but look at what they have to do to distract people!
> John Roberts may be like Sandra Day O'Connor, but Samuel Alito may be
> more like Clarence Thomas than like Antonin Scalia or William Rehnquist
> on the question of presidential power. If movements were actually
> powerful, even Bush would have come up with a more moderate nominee
> than Alito, but he thinks that he can get away with Alito, and he will.
I really don't care who is a member of the Supreme Court. That stupid institution should have been abolished long ago. But taking your argument at face value, I think that Bush picked Alito because he is living in a bubble. I'll bet Alito and other powers in the GOP understand that they can't just overturn Roe V. Wade without suffering huge losses at the polls. The conventional wisdom has it that women would be pissed off if Roe v. Wade was overturned, but men will be upset, as will everybody under the age of 40 who are currently busy playing Halo and MMPORGs and Myspace.
Does the GOP really understand that their base is older, reactionary white people? Shit, aren't most of O'Reilly's viewers over the age of 50? What is the GOP going to do in 15 years when their base starts dying out and their whack social policies offend the younger generations?
Chuck0 http://chuck.mahost.org/weblog/