No really, fuck you.

[Doktor Howl]

That doesn't match with the evidence I have to hand.

There is a consistent pattern of US public opinion being ignored in cases where it goes against what government wants to do, and government getting its own way.

Oh, no argument there.  It's just that - only a couple of hundred years ago - we had a method of dealing with that.  Obviously, though, this isn't the same population that went haring off after Sam Adams and Thomas Paine.

The current population of the United States isn't actually capable of that sort of business, so I have to conclude that the situation is basically hopeless.

[Cain]

The population at large had significant advantages, back then.

For one, the disparity in power between a military and a militia was alot smaller, closer to nil, in fact.  So long as you had access to fairly modern weaponry, an irregular unit could hold its own against a professional military force.  Nowadays, you have idiots like the Hutaree (sp?) who think their light infantry training, Kalashnikovs and camo outfits will let them take down Washington D.C.

They also didn't have an entire economy devoted to spying on people back then, a system whereby most malcontents are either fucked with continually or thrown in prison from the moment they fail to adjust to societal standards.

I also suspect the disparity in wealth was not quite as wide, which is a depressing thought in and of itself.  Modern wars are decided by economics as much as they are by military skill and weapons, and you cannot fight a war with an army who is mostly in debt or with under $1000 in savings (ie most of the US population).

The systems of propaganda were also less developed.  I suspect most Americans were well aware the British were their enemies, the bodies of people killed by them being a significant tip-off.  Nowadays, the population is so large and dispersed, people have to rely on the media for their information.  And the media, as I mentioned before, incline to power unless they can sense real weakness.  They're also increasingly recruited from the ranks of the plutonomy, or those with plutonomic aspirations (reporters back in the 60s and 70s mostly came from working or lower middle class backgrounds.  Now, they have Harvard and Princeton degrees.  They are also more trusting of government and more dismissive of those outside of their social class.  This is not a coincidence).

Agarian societies have actually a lot to recommend to themselves, when it comes to representative democracy and decision making, in comparison with modern industrial society. 

[P3nT4gR4m]

I maintain that the only way to beat them is at their own game. Accumulate as much power and wealth as you can then field a bigger, better equipped, better trained military force and blow the bastards to kingdom come. To do that you'd have to become them. Fuck that shit! Aside from the fact that you don't stand a chance in hell, even if you did manage to pull it off, all you'd ever accomplish is to create the exact same situation, via a fuckton of death and destruction. Much easier to just stay out the way and let the death and destruction take care of itself. I'd rather spend my life having the kind of fun that'd cause most people irreparable psychological damage and waving my middle fingers in their disapproving faces. It might not be the most noble goal but then I tend to leave nobility to the wankers with the funny hats.

[Kai]

Kai:

Do you honestly think marching on Washington or setting yourself on fire would have achieved those goals, though? As I recall, there was a massive march on Washington, and it was almost uniformly ignored by the press, these being the days before they had decided The War Is Bad.  And I'm fairly sure I remember an antiwar protestor a couple of years back setting himself on fire.  It didn't even make national press, I found it via links to local newspapers.

Lets not forget: the people who decided on the Iraq War have specific names.  Dick Cheney, for example, or Doug Feith.  Once a President is in, they have massive leverage over everyone else.  The press naturally inclines towards power, and only attacks when they sense profitable weakness that they can work into a narrative.  Anonymous leaks can really ramp up the atmosphere of uncertainty and fear.  Congress was compliant, backed by an ugly nationalistic fervour whipped up by the same press too weak to challenge a popular President with a vindictive and experienced cabinet to back him up. 

The only way the Iraq War wouldn't have happened would've been if Al Gore had won the election.  The Afghanistan conflict was a foregone conclusion, from the very start of the Al-Qaeda operation, but it might've been more focused and more successful without the Iraq distraction (large amounts of blood can be very distracting).  Apart from that, the only way to have stopped the war would've been to put a bullet in the head of every politician who was convinced it was a good idea, and every ideological hack willing to shill for it. 

So, unless you have a sniper rifle and some mad skillz, or 10,000 votes for Al Gore in Florida hidden in some University basement, unfortunately any action you could've undertaken wouldn't have made much of a difference.  The culpability lies with those who chose to make the decision, with a good dose of culpability by association for those who shilled for it (I'm thinking not just of the conservative propagandists here, but the liberal blogger types who also decided to shill for the war because it helped their employment prospects within the US political media).  Everyone else gets a pass.

Okay. I yield that I, as part of the public interest group, have little power compared to the many other, often plutocratic interests out there, and that the public interest group don't have enough influence to sway government policy. I do not yield to the former rant, as I still feel guilty, and still want the shitstains to fuck off and die with their moralizing and rationalizing.