By Tom Engelhardt, Tomdispatch.com
As I was heading out into a dark, drippingly wet, appropriately dispiriting New York City day, on my way to the “Fall Out Against the War” march — one of 11 regional antiwar demonstrations held this Saturday — I was thinking: then and now, Vietnam and Iraq. Since the Bush administration had Vietnam on the brain while planning to take down Saddam Hussein’s regime for the home team, it’s hardly surprising that, from the moment its invasion was launched in March 2003, the Vietnam analogy has been on the American brain — and, even domestically, there’s something to be said for it.
…Don’t forget, demonstrating is another kind of civic duty — but perhaps a waning one. I was struck this weekend that, even among people I know, many of whom had demonstrated in the Vietnam era and had turned out again in the early years of this war, next to none were on the streets this Saturday. Most were simply going about their business with other, better things to do.
The fact is: Attending a march like Saturday’s is still, for me, something like an ingrained civic habit, like…. gulp…. voting, which I can’t imagine not doing — even when it has little meaning to me — or keeping informed by reading a newspaper daily in print (something that, it seems, just about no one under 25 does any more). These are the habits of a lifetime and they don’t disappear quickly. But when they’re gone, or if they don’t make it to the next generation intact, it’s hard, if not impossible, to get them back.