Fighting fascism ain't happening in our techno-crazed society.

[shance]

and that has got to change......

"1968. It was the height of the Vietnam War, the year of My Lai and the Tet offensive. Student riots in Paris nearly brought down the French government. Soviet tanks put a premature end to Czechoslovakia's Prague Spring.

In the United States, the streets were teeming with antiwar protesters and civil rights demonstrators. Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated within two months of each other. The Democratic convention in Chicago dissolved into chaos. And by the summer, America's cities were in flames.

The world was seething, and for good reason. There was a lot to be angry about. It was a lousy year, 1968.

I was in high school then. I quit the baseball team because, frankly, sports seemed frivolous. In 1968, there were more important things to worry about than perfecting a curveball.

But as bad as things were then, they seem infinitely worse now.

So why aren't the streets clogged with angry Americans demanding to know why their president lied and deceived them so he could attack a country that had absolutely nothing to do with his so-called war on terror? To an extent, we got suckered into Vietnam. We can't make that claim about Iraq. Iraq was the premeditated, willful invasion of a sovereign nation that was threatening nobody. "Saddam Hussein is a prick who treats the Kurds miserably" is no justification. By the principles established by the Nuremberg Tribunal and international law, our president is a war criminal.

Why aren't we marching to demand an end to the illegal surveillance of American citizens by their own government, again under the pretext of waging war on terror? Why do we so blithely surrender our civil liberties -- the very thing that supposedly separates us from other societies -- to the illusion of security? All the high-tech snooping in the world won't stop a determined terrorist from striking. If it could, Israel would be the safest country on earth.

Why aren't irate Americans camping out in the lobby of every newspaper and TV station from coast to coast, demanding that the press reassert the right to perform its single most important function, that of government watchdog? The ghost of Richard Nixon, and a very corporeal Bill Clinton, must be cursing their rotten luck.

Why aren't we storming the battlements of every filthy oil company in America, demanding that their executives be tossed into fetid dungeons for cynically manipulating gas prices while raking in obscene profits?

In short, where the hell is everybody?

I'll tell you where they are. They're at home, tuning in to root for the next "American idol." They're plugged into their iPods, utterly self-involved and disconnected from what lies just outside their doors. They're spending 25 hours a week playing video games in virtual worlds instead of fighting to save the only world that really matters. They're surfing porn. They're text messaging and e-mailing and scheming to close that next big deal. They're flogging their useless crap on eBay.

(snip)

The real voices of dissent and engagement are found on the internet these days, but the internet is simply too diffuse to effectively galvanize a revolution.

And we desperately need a revolution.

- - -
Tony Long is copy chief at Wired News.>>

www.wired.com/news/column...980-0.html

[AX10]

1. That along with so called "reality tv".

[misternormal]

2. Because * is figuratively playing a banjo...

... and saying everything's great!!! (Insert your favorite banjo lick here)

Soon the Goodyear blimp will be flying around with a huge applause sign on it.

[Old and In the Way]

3. "So why aren't the streets clogged....."

I read that and thought...I know - I-Pods. Then I read the rest and saw you refer to that, too. Interesting..

One thing we had back then that they don't today is a draft. That made a lot of young adult males get politically motivated. It's obvious that this administration won't make that mistake because they know that'd wake the slumbering masses.

[shance]

4. I hear that often from friends of mine who were active in the sixties.

I think the key is to have more block/neighborhood coalitions. It boils down to neighbor to neighbor now.

We have to drain the power back into our cities and send no more money time and precious energy to Washington, which has done everything to strip us of our power and our Constitutional rights.

[Crandor]

5. if Tony hates technology so much...

maybe he would rather live like humans did a million years ago as hunter-gatherers, when due to the scarcity of food and complete lack of modern medicine the average lifespan was about 25 or so? And of course, you can't forget about the constant wars between tribes over land and resources.

Or, more likely, he's just yet another neo-luddite whining about the "good old days" with absolutely no clue how much technology has improved the human condition.

[shance]

6. No worries Crandor. Our "technological advances" are going to kick

all of our asses back to the Stone Age.

It already has returned Afghanistan and Iraq to rubble. Of course Bush and Cheney still haven't been able to find time for a funeral in their busy schedules, and have now outlawed protests at funerals, but I digress.

I would wager that technology has been as harmful, (if not moreso), than helpful.

People are now more isolated from each other than connected because of technology. Technology has done some great things, certainly in the realm of convenience, but Im not so sure thats been such a great thing for us. It also could end this world as we know it all too soon and all too easily.

[Crandor]

7. Certainly it can be abused

But just because something can be abused doesn't mean it's a bad thing in general. Pretty much any wild animal will be crawling with parasites and disease. Is that how you want to live? It's how humans did before technology made civilization possible.

The accusation that technology is isolating people is wholly unfounded. On the contrary, the recent invention of the Internet has made it possible for people hundreds of miles away to converse... you know, on message boards and such :)

Finally I would like to point out that were all technology and knowledge thereof to magically disappear one day, the result would be a die-off of more than 99% of the human population. Unless you are strong enough to be able to kill the thousands of other humans fighting over land and anything edible, you would be among those perishing in the greatest genocide ever.

[shance]

8. True enough, however with the fact that we are talking via technology

fails to consider the loss of necessary one on one discussions. We have become more isolated from neighbors and those close by due to the fact we are talking to others from a distance. Its a double edged sword.

In terms of leaving us vulnerable with an extremist Administration I would say that technology stands to prevent more effective mobilization that we must employ if we are going to take our power back as a nation of citizens.