The only way to win your revolution is to take it into cyberspace.
Back in the 1960s we thrust our fists in the air and shouted: "We can change the world! We can change the world!" And we did. The ways are detailed in the first post in this series, Should President Obama Have Gone the Way of LBJ?
Back then those with little political consciousness burned down sections of cities in blind rage over the injustices of centuries. College students burned draft cards rather than fight a war in Vietnam that was as un-winnable as the war America is waging now in Afghanistan.
Our provocations were greater. Just think of what would happen if today's college students faced being drafted to fight the "Oil Wars" in the Middle East. Instead the nation hired people to fight these wars. The things we attacked were out in the open, like racists brutality and ingrained attitudes that women were the "property" of men.
Abuses against the environment were more obvious then than now. Rivers flowed through cities that were so polluted that anyone accidentally falling in was rushed to a hospital or risk sickness unto death. In sections of other cities breathing was a health hazard. In some places smoke and fog blocked out the sun.
Children as young as eight worked in coal mines. Hacks performed abortions in basement apartments using coat hangers. Colonialists and neo-colonial suppression was a brutal day-to-day reality for most of the world's population. The grandparents of youngsters doing well in college today were often treated as chattel (a movable article of personal property) before the 1960s.
In our rather static world most Americans made lives for themselves, presided over by one of our most peaceful Presidents ever, Former General Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower. The slogan was "I like Ike." In the pre-60s period radio comedies like "Father Knows Best," "Amos 'Andy," "Life With Luigi," and "The Goldbergs" captured the spirit of the times. They made powerlessness seem amusing.
We African-Americans created a world populated by us and the spirits of us. In the spirit we had our joy, faith, hope and passion. The expression of the spirit was in the music and it began "crossing over" in mass at about the same time that computer technology was being developed.
African American students at North Carolina A &T were "growing restive," is how historians put it. They decided to use the joy, faith, hope and passion to racially desegregated lunch counters in Greensboro, North Carolina. With these "sit-ins" and other very limited actions, our revolution started.
In American history there had been bolder acts of defiance and more violent acts of suppression than that directed against the "sit ins." But this time it was different. There was something in the air. You could feel it, which is what then Senator Obama said when he began running for President in 2007, which was to my mind the beginning of your revolution, nut the campaign, but the something I the air.
During our revolution the wealthy were not thrown out of control but the means of control shifted from a mixture of physical and psychological to one that became, over time, largely psychological. Read a manual on Psy Ops (psychological warfare --a military operations usually aimed at influencing a population's state of mind through non-combative means like distribution of leaflets (newspapers can be considered such) and broadcasting (Fox News). Much of journalism, in your era, has become Psy Ops.
If you listen to the Republican Presidential debates, you'll hear buzz words that a psychological warfare operative could not be happier with -- job creators, right-thinking Americans, American values, 9-9-9, free-enterprise system, Christian, small government, and, on the other hand, socialism, Marxist, un-American, food stamps, the anti-Christ..
"They" control the industries that create, distribute and endorse most leaflets and broadcasts. It seems to me that the only way you can win your revolution is in cyberspace and I am happy to see you doing that. There are some strong indications that in some ways you are winning. That's why "they" will tax the Internet if you let them.
The previous posts in this series are:
Should President Obama Have Gone the Way of LBJ?
Will the 60s Revolution Be Undone?
The new post, "Are These the Last Days of the Reaganites?", is coming in January.
George Davis is creator of the series of world-sourced, interactive books, Barack Obama, America and the World. This series contains the background reporting, drawn from across the nation and around the world that gives deeper meaning to the ideas in this post.
