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Why Are the Streets Empty?
With war raging in the Middle East, why are there no demonstrations? Forget mass demonstrations, I’m talking about organized pushback against the Trump administration’s war of aggression, along with Israel, against a nation with which the US has no strategic interests.
The first and most obvious reason is that most have no skin in the game, and especially young people who are not subject to conscription. When the military draft ended in 1973, and the US went on a volunteer footing for filling the ranks of the military, then a primary impetus for demonstrating was lost. Those in the power elite know the latter well and the chance of a draft returning to the US is about the same as me being called up and named a four-star general.
The last war in which pushback in the US was obvious was during the Iraq war in 2003, another war of aggression and George W. Bush’s regime change war. Note that Donald Trump has called the Iran war a regime change war. It would be a stretch to call the removal of Venezuela’s president a regime change war since there was hardly a whimper on the streets of that country as its regime was changed. Try to imagine regime change in the neighborhood where you live? You covet someone else’s property, and through force of arms take it over and call it your own. It’s basically the same thing.
College campuses, the usual place where protest takes place, have been silent since the police and college and university administrators shut down the solidarity movement of pro-Palestinian students. Besides violent and vicious, there were more subtle actions like suspending or excluding protesting students from their academic programs. Campuses across the US have generally been transformed into compliant lap dogs when it comes to the issue of genocide and Gaza. Free speech and the right of assembly have been cast off almost like the Constitution was never written. As Kurt Vonnegut said: “And so it goes.”
The left theorist, Yippie, and anti-war protester, the late Abbie Hoffman, said, “The young must be there.” They have the ideals and the energy…
Does the word anti-war even exist as an idea anymore?
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