Re: academia/draft/antiwar

Kevin Cole (kccole@one.net)
Fri, 22 Aug 1997 13:01:40 -0400

Hi Paula. Thanks for writing back.

PNFPNF wrote:

> Dear Kevin,
> Thanks for your post. My basic point, re your original post to Sixties List,
> is that it wasn't just the end of the draft that diminished the antiwar
> movement. A reasonably large proportion of people, even protestors, believed
> the hype that Nixon really was winding down the war.

This makes sense. The manipulation of perceptions is a large part of
the mission of governmental communications, after all. This is the
primary reason why cultivating the complexity of the truth is of vital
necessity -- we have to avoid getting fooled. The success of
propaganda depends largely upon the willingness of folks to accept
simple, one-sided answers to things. History, and the world right
now, are both full of good examples of this. What it really speaks to
is that a controlling power can almost always control more effectively
when it can polarize its opponents and turn them against one another.

> Besides, the less
> obvious involvement with a puppet government doing the fighting was harder to
> get people to feel they could directly act against. In addition, COINTELPRO
> and other reaction/ary programs were growing much more sophisticated--and I
> think definitely there were de facto pacification monies going into places
> like Berkeley to channel off lots of people.

Part of their sophistication came from their being able to exploit the
fact that all factions had reduced the situation to one of extreme
simplicity. This made the game tractable to an oversimplified
apparent solution that could be spoon-fed to the agitators. This is
why one should always suspect a situation in which this kind of
carry-the-flag-of-honor mutual demonization is going on. It means
both sides are being used by a third side for some wholly other
agenda. In Nixon's case, the agenda was political, and the situation
got out of his control regardless of what he did. But you can see the
same identical thing going on in Ulster, for example, as it has been
going on in Bosnia and India and elsewhere. The pattern is very old
and very common. We keep getting fooled.

> That's just a quick roundup. Remember, people were branching off into other
> movements--women's, gays', even some of the more traditionally politicized
> went into rank and file labor organizing.

.... a lot of which still seems to me to be wholly beside the point.
The sources of real power would always prefer people to wastetheir
energies on issues that are not really central to the exercise of
power.

> Anyhow. I didn't understand your point that "OF COURSE the sailors agreed"
> with our leaflets in 1967. You have some knowledge that few of us had then?

What I meant about the sailors on the Enterprise was this: in '67
there was not yet the extreme polarization among factions that would
later cause each side to see nothing but demonized oversimplifications
of the other side. (Read Ernest Becker on the nature of evil, or Eric
Hoffer on true believers, or Richard Hofsteader (sp?) on the paranoid
style in US politics, or listen to Rush Limbaugh.) There was still in
'67 some room for ambivalence without fear of being tarred and
feathered. Actually among career military families there remained
ambivalence all the way through the conduct of the war. Their
entrenched positions were rarely or never in support of the war, but
were rather in support of the domestic way of life they'd been trained
to think they were defending. This in my view makes it a lot easier
to step back from seeing them as commie-gook-killing-monsters. They
actually have a lot in common with the so-called "other side," and I
have deep sympathy and respect for them and their beleagured position.
(Includes branches of my own family.)

> Lots of people were fed up with college and so on. You were able to decide
> to go where you might get killed.

Of course this would be true even had I decided to go to New York...... ;-)

> Ted Morgan makes a good point re the draft system, I agree.
> Regards,
> Paula

All the best.

--Kevin

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Kevin C Cole
Cincinnati, Ohio
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