1) I'm not sure of that, but in any case, they'll probably go back to "normal" pretty soon. And 2) So what? Since when do the imperial managers care what the masses think?
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I think this is substantially correct, has been so in the past, and will be so in the future, IF (as seems to be assumed here) the opinions are only passively held, the result of reading, TV coverate, conversation on the job, etc. This was, I believe, the case even during periods of mass upheaval.
BUT in so far as those 'new' opinions, no matter how superficial, find expression in _collective action_, then for many those new perspectives will form part of their continuing cognitive activity and response to the war. (I am sticking here to my suggestion in an earlier post that "consciousness" is not a very useful term for understanding history and historical change.)
The Eleventh Thesis remains the most important epistemological principle. We only understand the world in any very useful sense in so far as we have participated in the act of changing it.
That's why polls, though probably quite accurate measures of passive opinion and of secondary interest are of little importance for left analysis.
Carrol