[Mb-civic] Howard Zinn: Harness That Anger

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

Published on Thursday, December 2, 2004 by The Progressive  
Harness That Anger  
by Howard Zinn 
  
 In the days after the election, it seemed that all my friends were 
either depressed or angry, frustrated or indignant, or simply 
disgusted. Neighbors who had never said more than hi to me 
stopped me on the street and delivered passionate little speeches 
that made me think they had just listened to a re-broadcast of H. G. 
Wells's The War of the Worlds, in which powerful creatures arrive 
on Earth to take it over. 

But then I reconsidered: They had not been listening to H. G. Wells. 
There really were strange and powerful creatures that had just 
occupied the United States and now wanted to take over the rest of 
the world. Yes, Bush was reelected President, and whether there 
was fraud in the voting process or not, John Kerry, quickly threw in 
the towel. The minnow called for reconciliation with the crocodile. 

The reelected Bush triumphantly announced that he had the 
approval of the nation to carry out his agenda. There came no sign 
of opposition from what was supposed to be the opposition party. In 
short, the members of the club, after a brief skirmish on the 
campaign trail (costing a total of a billion dollars or so) were back 
having drinks at the same bar. When, in mid-November, the 
Presidential library of Bill Clinton opened, former Presidents, 
Democratic and Republican, along with the current President, sat 
side by side and declared their fervent desire for unity. 

But someone was left out of the celebration, this insistence that we 
were all one happy family, accepting the President for another four 
years. The American people were not quite in agreement. 

Consider this: Bush won 51 percent of a voting population that was 
just 60 percent of the eligible voters. That means Bush won the 
approval of 31 percent of the eligible voters. Kerry won 28 percent 
of the eligible voters. 

The 40 percent who did not cast a ballot seemed to be saying there 
was no candidate they could approve of. I suspect that a large 
percentage of those who voted had the same feeling, but voted 
anyway. Is this a decisive victory? Has the will of the people been 
followed? (If we were truly democratic, then maybe the 40 percent 
nonvoters who were the plurality might have their wish: No 
President at all.) 

The President may insist he has "a mandate," but it is up to the rest 
of us to declare firmly that he doesn't. Sure, he had more votes than 
his Democratic opponent, but to most of the electorate, that 
candidate did not represent a real choice. More than half the public, 
in opinion polls over the past six months, had declared their 
opposition to the war. Neither major party candidate represented 
their view, so they were effectively disenfranchised. 

What to do now? Harness those fierce emotions reacting to the 
election. In that anger, disappointment, grieving frustration there is 
enormous combustible energy, which, if mobilized, could 
reinvigorate an anti-war movement that had been slowed by the all-
consuming election campaign. 

It is in the nature of election campaigns to siphon off the vitality of 
people imbued with a heartfelt cause, dilute that cause, and pour it 
into the dubious endeavor to propel one somewhat better candidate 
into office. But with the election over, there is no more need to hold 
back, to do as too many well-meaning people did, which was to 
follow uncritically in the footsteps of a candidate who dodged and 
squirmed on almost every major issue. 

Freed from the sordid confines of our undemocratic political 
process, we can now turn all our energies to do what is discouraged 
by the voting system--to speak boldly and clearly about what must 
be done to turn our country around. 

And let's not worry about offending that 22 percent of the country 
(we don't know the exact number but it is certainly a minority) who 
are religious and political fundamentalists, who invoke God in the 
service of mass murder and imperial conquest, who ignore the 
Biblical injunctions to love one's neighbor, to beat swords into 
plowshares, to care for the poor and downtrodden. 

Most Americans do not want war. 

Most want the wealth of this country to be used for human needs-
health, work, schools, children, decent housing, a clean 
environment--rather than for billion dollar nuclear submarines and 
four billion dollar aircraft carriers. 

They can be deflected from their most human beliefs by a barrage 
of government propaganda, dutifully repeated by television and talk 
radio and the major newspapers. But this is a temporary 
phenomenon, and as people begin to sense what is happening, 
their natural instinct for empathy with other human beings emerges. 

We saw this in the Vietnam years, when at first two-thirds of the 
nation, trusting the government and given no reason for skepticism 
by a subservient press, supported the war. A few years later, when 
the reality of what we were doing in Vietnam began to show itself--
when the body bags piled up here, and the images of napalmed 
children in Vietnam appeared on TV screens, and the horror of the 
My Lai massacre, at first ignored, finally surfaced--the nation turned 
against the war. 

The reality of what is going on Iraq is more and more coming 
through the smoke of government propaganda and media timidity. It 
cannot help but touch the hearts of the people of this country, as 
they see our soldiers going innocently into Iraq, but becoming 
brutalized by the war, practicing torture on helpless prisoners, 
shooting the wounded, bombing houses and mosques, turning cities 
into rubble, and driving families out of their homes into the 
countryside. 

As I write this, the city of Fallujah has been turned into rubble by a 
ferocious bombing campaign. Photos are beginning to appear 
(though not yet in the major media, so cowardly are they) of children 
with limbs gone, an infant lying on a cot, one leg missing. It is the 
classic story of a military power possessing the latest, most deadly 
of weapons, trying to subdue the hostile population of a small, weak 
country by sheer cruelty, which only increases the resistance. The 
war in Fallujah cannot be won. It should not be won. 

The movement here against the war must confront the horror of the 
situation by a variety of bold actions. 

We will take up the classic instruments of citizens in the history of 
social movements: demonstrations (there will be a big one in 
Washington on Inauguration Day), vigils, picket lines, parades, 
occupations, acts of civil disobedience. 

We will be appealing to the good conscience of the American 
people. 

We will be asking questions: What kind of country do we want to live 
in? 

Do we want to be reviled by the rest of the world? 

Do we have a right to invade and bomb other countries, pretending 
we are saving them from tyranny and in the process killing them in 
huge numbers? (What is the death toll so far in Iraq? 30,000? 
100,000?) 

Do we have a right to occupy a country when the people of that 
country obviously do not want us there? 

Election results deceive us by registering the half-hearted, diluted 
beliefs of a population forced to reduce its true desires to the narrow 
dimensions of a voting booth. But we are not alone, not in this 
country, certainly not in the world (Let's not forget that 96 percent of 
the Earth's population resides outside our borders). 

We do not have to do the job alone. Social movements have always 
had a powerful ally: the inexorable reality that operates in the world 
impervious to the aims of those who rule their countries. That reality 
is operating now. The "war on terror" is turning into a nightmare. 
Whistleblowers from the Administration itself are beginning to reveal 
secrets. (A high CIA official writes of "imperial hubris" and then 
leaves the agency.) Soldiers are questioning their mission. The 
corruption attending the war--the billion dollar contracts to 
Halliburton and Bechtel--is coming into the open. 

The Bush administration, riding high and arrogant, adhering to the 
rule of the fanatic, which is to double your speed when you are 
going in the wrong direction, will find itself going over a cliff, too late 
to stop. 

If the leaders of the Democratic Party do not understand this reality, 
do not squarely address the desires of people in every part of the 
country (forget the red, the blue, the nonsensical generalizations 
that ignore the complexities of human thought), they will find 
themselves tailgating the Bush vehicle as it heads for disaster. 

Will the Democratic Party, so craven and unreliable, face a revolt 
from below which will transform it? 

Or will it give way (four years from now? eight years from now?) to a 
new political movement that honestly declares its adherence to 
peace and justice? 

Sooner or later, profound change will come to this nation tired of 
war, tired of seeing its wealth squandered, while the basic needs of 
families are not met. These needs are not hard to describe. Some 
are very practical, some are requirements of the soul: health care, 
work, living wages, a sense of dignity, a feeling of being at one with 
our fellow human beings on this Earth. 

The people of this country have their own mandate.

Howard Zinn, the author of "A People's History of the United 
States," is a columnist for The Progressive. 
© 2004 The Progressive

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Action is the antidote to despair.  ----Joan Baez
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