Dennis Perrin wrote:
>
> Doug:
>
> "It may well be that the country just isn't as
> conservative as it was 20 years ago, and is getting less so all the
> time."
>
> Man, I wish that were true. Depends on how you define "conservative," I
> suppose.
>
The problem does not lie with the "country" be more or less conservative but with the passivity of the non-conservative part of the population. But that in turn is an effect more than a cause. That passivity has its point pf departure in the exhaustion of the 1955-70 movement which had by the early '70s reached its limits. So the first serious question would be the analysis of those limits, what they were and what their grounds were.
But the reaons for the continued passivity of the large bulk of (for lack of a better termj) progressives has to be found in the present, not merely in its origins. In the past during such periods (e.g., after 1905 in Russia, after 1947 or thereabouts in the U.S.) activists 'just kept plugging along." And that's what we did in the U.S. also after 1975 -- but the period of stasis went on too long, and by the late '80s that residual energy was pretty dead. Hence my bewailing of the lack of local leaders at the present time. After 9/11 I had hoped that the anti-war effort might eneregize such lcoal leadership, and to a limited extent it has, but only to a limited extent.
This is not an analysis but expresses a need for an analysis we don't have.
But it does partly account for the bewitching of so many who should know better by the Obama campaign: sheer fatigue from so many years of frustration generates weird hopes in a savior.
To Formianus'Young Lady Friend All hail! young lady with a nose
by no means too small, With a foot unbeuatiful,
and with eyes that are not black, With fingers that are not long, and with mouth undry, And with a tongue by no means too elegant, You are the friend of Formianus, the vendor of cosmetics, And they call you beautiful in the province, And you are even compared to Lesbia.*
O most unfortunate age!
[*I believe some are even comparing Obama to MLK.]
or
Arides The bashful Arides Has married an ugly wife, He was bored with his manner of life, Indifferent and discouraged he thought he might as Well do this as anything else.
Saying within his heart, "I am no use to myself, "Let her, if she wants me, take me." He went to his doom.
or
Papyrus Spring . . . Too long . . . Gongula . . .
----
I once heard Fred Hampton speak. I won' be content with a Mirage from the DP.
Carrol