> In one biography of Nixon the claim is made that seeing a huge protest
> on TeeVee is what made Nixon change his mind about using Nukes.
Maybe it's just wishful thinking, but I've always believed that seeing large numbers of people in the streets is a sobering experience for our rulers. From our perspective in the streets, it's fun but it looks so futile -- they've got the guns, the choppers, and so on; all we've got is some dumb placards and our vocal cords.
But then I try to envision it from their perspective in the towers. They're used to thinking of us as docile creatures, plodding from mortgaged house to insecure job. Dirt, the anthropologists say, is matter out of place; and when we start showing up out of place in any numbers, perhaps they start thinking that things are falling apart a bit.
There are, after all, so many of us, and so few of them. Perhaps being reminded of that fact makes more of an impression than we readily realize.