Do you smell that breeze?

[Warren Stupidity]

Does it smell familiar?
Do you feel that faint wind across your shoulders?
Are you old enough to remember the spring of '68? Of Paris and Prague?
Berlin 1989? Tiananmen Square? Have you forgotten?

It is the winds of change, the spirit of the people rising, the atmosphere has changed.
Its center right now is the islamic world, but we would be wrong to think that they are not us,
that this cannot happen here. We are all one people and that faint cry you hear is the cry for freedom. It is the demand that the Current Order cannot stand. Will you listen? Can you feel it?

[Le Taz Hot]

1. Nostalgia,

rebirth.

[tavalon]

2. This not only can, it must happen here

[dotymed]

5. Please, read this post

and give your comment. It is one possibility, but I agree, "it must happen here."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x587799

[grahamhgreen]

12. As sure as night follows day, it will happen here unless we get real change.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

3. Damn right.

I can smell it too...

And feel it...

Beautiful, poetic post!

Recommended.

[Lifelong Protester]

4. I hope it begins in Madison, Wisconsin next week.

The oppressors must be ousted.

[GliderGuider]

6. I sniffed the air

of both Paris and Prague in that long-ago spring. Even though Paris smelled of "gaz lacrymogène" and Prague smelled of tank diesel, those couldn't cover the smell of yearning. I have been homesick for the peoples' revolution ever since.

Thank you, Egypt. Thank you for your divine desperation and your bodhisattva courage, Mohamed Bouazizi - liberator of a hundred million souls.

[matt819]

7. Sorry to disappoint

But it won't happen here. Oh, sure, Stewart and Colbert got a few people out on a nice fall day. But hundreds of thousands, day after day after day? It ain't going to happen.

[GliderGuider]

8. "Cheer up, he said, things could be worse."

"So I cheered up, and sure enough, things got worse."
Patience, grasshopper. Things may not be that bad here just yet, but there is always hope for tomorrow. :evilgrin:

[SoCalDem]

10. Until,

Employers decide to stop participating in health care plans for employees.

The Golden Goose is being eaten, and once enough of the Boomers are OFF employee-assisted insurance plans, and into Medicare, guess who will all be paying MORE and MORE and MORE?

As pay continues to go down, more and more employees are being reclassified as "contract workers", or part time . i.e. sans benefits. This will only increase as bosses look for ways to opt-out of coverage.

I know that the new law has penalties for employers who do not offer coverage, but for many the penalties will still be cheaper than the actual coverage.

Count on some future republican congress/president/SCOTUS to either forbid business from even participating in health care insurance, or eliminating the penalties for non-participation.

Employers WANT OUT of having to provide benefits of ANY kind.

Once enough what was once considered to be "middle classers" are truly on their own for family medical costs, there might be people in the streets...but not before.

[Warren Stupidity]

14. it is not going to happen here right now -

perhaps we need to lengthen our attention span?

There are fundamental forces at work in the dynamics of human civilization that are going to require profound changes to social structures across the planet. Change is coming. To us all.

[rurallib]

9. I sniffed the air from '66 to the mid '70s

smelling very similar.
the rot of corporate money.

[Warren Stupidity]

15. I've been having this discussion with some of my generation -

what happened between 72-78 that so derailed us? I understand we failed to change the world, and I can live with that. I have a hard time with my generation being the champions of despoiling. How did we go so wrong?

[warren pease]

16. A few possibilities...

I think we all went to sleep in the late '70s, after patting ourselves on the back for a job well done.

The war was winding down and we naively thought our activism was the main cause.

Nixon left office in disgrace, eliminating the most hated bogey man of the time from the political scene.

The Church committee actually went after the CIA and, by extension, the "corporate interests" the agency was propping up all over the world.

Jimmy Carter actually became electable, while Democrats established huge majorities in both houses. In 1976, there were 60 Democrats in the senate and 292 in the House.

This is what the country looked like politically in 1976:



This is what it looks like now (House districts shown):



The Iran hostage situation turned many of us into chest-thumping uber-patriots. It turned Carter into an ineffectual puppet, ruining his ability to set the agenda for the country. And it set the table for renewed American belligerence that persists to this day.

Then came the '80s and Reagan. Americans chose to follow a nitwit who preached the evils of big gummint. Thirty-one years later, wingnuts are still wailing about the pernicious influence of big gummint; how it's the enemy of the people. Then they get elected and prove their own point.

Meanwhile, underfunding of public education, incredibly effective mass media propaganda, the 24/7 yowling of talk radio wingnuts... critical thinking is on life support. Why bother, when you can digest prepackaged feel-good drivel?

So, trained to consume rather than participate... Rather than hit the streets in outrage at what's being done to them by both parties, Americans behave like a conquered, pacified population. The entire country -- one that used to scorn gullible rubes and laugh at suckers and marks -- is now so scared to show any hint of individuality or independent thought that we've become the suckers and marks corporate hegemony needs to conduct business as usual.

The abuse has been going on for decades, but this time the velvet gloves are finally wearing out and the iron fists are showing through the seams.

wp

[GliderGuider]

18. 1. The Powell Memo 2. Cocaine

1. The Powell Memo was the single factor that set in motion the final coalition of business and right-wing politics in America. It presented both the wakeup call to the business community and the framework for the monolithic corporate assault on communitarian principles that we’ve seen ever since. It prompted many rich businessmen to see that their activities were “essentially political”, and that they had the money to make it happen if they stayed out of the overt political arena. It was the genesis of the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation and hundreds of other conservative think tanks, Fox News, the Koch brothers’ activities, and on and on and on and on...

2. IMO, LSD terrified TPTB because of the consciousness-raising, anti-authoritarian independence it fostered in the 60s generation. While they were trying to stamp it out, some bright soul came up with the idea of displacing it with another drug. They needed a drug that would make its users competitive, would NOT alter their perceptions of power structures, would leave them able to work even though they were addicted, cost so much that they had to have a job to afford it, and could be surreptitiously introduced through the same channels that were moving acid and pot, in order to directly target the users of those drugs. Cocaine was perfect...

Those two factors all by themselves were enough to derail the 60s completely.

[rurallib]

19. bingo on the Powell memo

plus I think many thought they were beaten when Nixon resigned in disgrace - game, set, match.

[Warren Stupidity]

20. Yes on 1. 2 is another topic I find quite disturbing.

Re drugs, it is a fact that the CIA or whatever was deeply involved with all sorts of drug experiments in the 50's and 60's including most infamously the 'study' that may have sparked Ted Kaczynski over the edge. It cannot be ruled out that the psychedelic era was itself a lab experiment.

[Le Taz Hot]

22. What do you mean we failed to change the world?

We achieved Civil Rights Legislation. You see any Jim Crow laws around? Women can now get safe, legal abortions. Women can now get credit in their own names without a man co-signing for them. Employers can't ask if you're married, if you have any children of if you plan on having in any children. We have social safety nets that didn't exist before the boomers came along. We got out of Viet Nam. Our music moved the world's music forward by many decades. I don't know where you get this "how did we go so wrong" scenario. Man, this thread was going so good and you throw this in there. Too bad, you had a good thing going. You sound like the "what-have-you-done-for-me-lately" generation.

[jwirr]

11. Unfortunately in this country "freedom" means different thing to

different people. Some what freedom from all laws, some want no taxes, some want an all white world. And then there is us. Let us hope that this change will be blowing our way.

[Warren Stupidity]

13. as it does in egypt

with change there is always risk.

[EFerrari]

17. I've been thinking about 1968 for two weeks now.

Algeria and Yemen are standing up now.

[lunatica]

21. Yes. Change comes slowly but history makes it look sudden and fast

I always want to tell people that it didn't take a day to get the Civil Rights Act passed. That it didn't take a day to bring war criminals to trial or justice to happen. Sometimes it takes decades.

[Odin2005]

23. The People are ANGRY!

We are sick of Corporatist LIES! We are sick of CONSUMERIST BS! We are sick of TORTURE! We are sick of IMPERIALISM! We are sick of Corporate-Capitalist-Dominated Government!

[glinda]

24. The Tea Party has made me get nauseous at the word "Freedon".