@Npars01 I came here to note the nuclear freeze protests and their influence on INF directly and START indirectly. SALT 1 & 2 preceded the freeze movement.
I know you only asked about presidents, but our court system is currently paralyzed due to the threat of not just protest but violent right wing power grab.
So who participates in also matters.
Putting thousands of people in the streets is the most powerful statement a movement can make. If they do not obey, or leave when asked it's worse. It forces the state to choose to use violence to put it down or to listen.
@futurebird@BlackAzizAnansi
I want to say I support this assumption ... but I lived through the Bushes.
I joined hundreds of thousands in what were then the largest public gatherings the US had ever seen. Maybe you did, too.They were in every large City. They were huge, loud, and confrontational.
The result?
Nothing at all.
President George W. Bush and his administration carried right on into invading Iraq.
This crushed my notions of what public assembly can accomplish in the US.
The US has meddled in the affairs of other nations for a century. In those protests we were essentially asking for that to stop. It's a big ask. The protests now are a part of the same project. I'm amazed that withholding military aid is even being discussed by "serious people" Changing the role that the US likes to play means prying power from many powerful people. It's a generational project.
Can we educate the public enough to simply not accept it anymore?
@futurebird@BlackAzizAnansi
I can't tell you how much I appreciate your long view.
I wonder, now, how to carry the wisdom in this thread into the situation that we may be in starting next January. How to not run away.
US support of Israel is unpopular. But not all for pure humanitarian reasons. Some of it is just a general isolationist strain that also makes people say we shouldn't help Ukraine.
Some of it is anti-semitism. (Although in even pointing this out I risk starting an annoying circular argument I don't have the energy for.)
But the protests seems mostly about recognizing colonialism and the simple fact that Palestinians have a right to live.
@futurebird@BlackAzizAnansi
Before anyone starts yelling about antisemitism, keep in mind that actual Nazis Will argue both sides of this issue.
They will decry the brutalization of Palestinians not because they care about Palestinians, but to normalize criticism of Israel.
They Will then vigorously support Israel in order to normalize what Israel is doing to Palestinians. Privately, they will admit that they want to do the same to Jews in their own country.
@futurebird@BlackAzizAnansi of course Palestinians have a right to live and must have an independent country but the whole “colonialism” is absolute meaningless bs, just antisemitism by other means unless Arabs want to evacuate North Africa, Americans North America, Arabs and Iranians Kurdistan, Russians almost all of Asia and eastern Europe…Iranians and Pakistanis Baluchistan…
@futurebird@JeanPDeliet@BlackAzizAnansi Never mind that indisputable fact that the original Zionists IN THEIR OWN WORDS were “colonize“ this and “colonial“ that. Maybe read some original sources before publicly embarrassing yourself with such historically illiterate ignorance.
@futurebird@BlackAzizAnansi the (very narrow) point is rather that all humans living everywhere are colonialists in the absurd sense the word is being used [Scandinavians (Vikings) settled in France (Normandy) ethnic Germans were all expelled from E Prussia Lithuania/poland) & can’t go back to “their land”] which is different than 19th cent European colonization (Belgians in Congo) now, what Netanyahu/allies have been doing in the West Bank is much more egregious like that
No president would ever say "well I'm doing this because of the protests" but the NEXT president shapes their decisions in an effort to avoid them. No one likes to have mass protests condemning them.
We don't have a draft anymore in part because it was so publicly unpopular.
Sadly building a mass movement from typical American sensibilities can be hard.
@futurebird@BlackAzizAnansi the legal infrastructure for a draft still exists through the Selective Service, but like you said, it would not be popular if used
@BlackAzizAnansi I keep wondering this. (And about online petitions.) When's the last time mass protest in the US resulted in change at the national level?