hippie4ever:hello.  I’m slightly too old to have been a hippie.  I am a woman.  Like many women, I am for single-payer.  Like many men, I am for single-payer.

Many women are very “out front” - going back to the
60s, at least (which is when I was learning activism and getting involved in my small, “it takes a lot of
potatoes to make a stew” as my spouse puts it). The
women’s movement had a lot to do with women going into all kinds of areas of activism and professions.  It was so effective, many younger folks just think that’s the way it’s been.

Women have not gotten good press and often dropped off the history pages (see Susan Faludi’s book “Backlash”). But, despite all the magazine propaganda about women should hurry and have kids before they get too old, kind of thing…women will remain active in the fight for single-payer and other human rights issues.  I don’t think much of the public option, and vague as it is.  See http://www.blackagendareport.com for Bruce A.Dixon’s articles on Obama’s health plan - critical analyses.
And David Swanson’s piece(s) there and on his own website: http://www.afterdowningstreet.org

Finally, I like your comment elsewhere, on the “big history” article, about Zinn’s “People’s History of the US” and your comment about knowing the past.
If I may add to that: Zinn said in a speech played on
Dem.Now on Jan. 3,2009 or so (given right after the 2008 election) that “if you don’t know history, it’s like you were born yesterday, and the government can tell you anything.”.  http://www.democracynow.org

“The only power greater than organized money is organized people.”

NYCartist, I think that defines the struggle we are fighting for regarding the “public option” perfectly. We will see who is the stronger, and I’m especially wondering how women are going to influence this outcome. They’ve always been the power behind the scenes, away from view; but I believe they especially want not just reform, but a new way to deliver health care. Less like McDonalds, more like what Congress enjoys.

I often am cheered by Zinn and Chomsky.  Believe it or not.  We (folks and the GI’s who refused to fight)
ended the war on Vietnam earlier than if no protest.
Nixon was frightened off using nuclear by protesters
(he feared using, as cited in some phone transcripts
or book)(true?).
An apt comment by Glen Ford of http://www.blackagendareport.com in a video on http://www.wbixradio.org of a joint meeting of Harlem Tenants Council and TakeBackWBAI (see ON-DEMAND section of
http://www.wbixradio.org): “The only power greater than
organized money is organized people.”.

Psmith, I think you are being a bit unfair. There’s a difference between being anti-progressive and just making fun of faux-progressivism and the non-activism of today which is what I think Fish is trying to draw attention to.

REACTIONARY FISH

Whenever I see yet another reactionary cartoon from Fish I wonder WTF it is doing on a supposedly progressive web site like Truthdig. And I wonder just how progressive Truthdig really is.

OPERATION MOCKINGBIRD
I am reminded that Operation Mockingbird meant complete control over nearly all the US media by the CIA. And the fact that Robert Scheer was a journalist with Ramparts Magazine in the sixties, which he informs us made a profit selling anti-war t shirts, such that it could send him to report from Vietnam.

What are the odds that such a magazine was free and independent? And what are the odds that it was infiltrated, suborned, co-opted, targeted, blackmailed, neutralized and/or bought off, and/or those working for it ditto?

Why it almost as if Operation Chaos never existed - where Woodward (of Woodward and Bernstein, the Watergate break-in and the resignation of Nixon) ‘disappeared’ in California and never speaks of his ‘work’ there, while with the Office of Naval Intelligence. Work against the anti-war movement? ONI the same crowd that Lee Harvey Oswald shared a building with in New Orleans. Coincidence? HA!

“In Woodward’s case, first he was in the Navy serving somewhere in California for four years. At the end of his term he was in California, before that he was on a ship I believe. He’s never said what he was doing in California. He just won’t talk about it. But you remember that this was the time of the height of the anti-war movement and there was a domestic counter-intelligence operation going on called Operation Chaos, which was coordinating Army, Navy and FBI and CIA intelligence on the anti-war movement, spying on leaders and so on, trying to find foreign influence. And I believe that this is what Woodward was involved in at that time.”

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKwoodward.htm

Operation Mockingbird - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird

UK Spartacus - Operation Mockingbird - http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKmockingbird.htm

Operation Chaos - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_CHAOS

Try Googling ‘Spartacus ITEM’ where ITEM is JFK, Lee Harvey Oswarld, ONI etc for hours of fun. But recall that Chomsky and Zinn denounce time spent on 911 truth as time wasted while much greater crimes of state are ignored. What crimes? How about the deaths of 2.8 m Iraqis in twenty years, 3m plus Afghans in thirty years, nuclear armageddon with an attack on Iran, etc etc.

OPERATION MOCKINGBIRD Mk 2.
Why is this relevant? Does anybody doubt that Cheney implemented an Operation Mockingbird Mk2 as he did a Cointelpro Mk 2? Also with ten or a hundred times the budget of the first. Given that Homeland (In)Security has a budget of $200B (B as in Billion).

CHOMSKY / ZINN

Both Chomsky and Zinn have pointed out that the US is _much_ more liberal today as a result of the 1960s anti-war protests, the women’s movement—which grew out of those protests, partially from the misogynism of the anti-war protesters ... but, hey, we’ll take any advances we can get, for any reason—the third world solidarity movement, the anti-globalization movement, on and on, etc, etc.

As usual Fish continues on his anti-progressive reactionary path, denigrating any progressive improvement.

He fails to note that the timescale for these changes are in multi-decades, not in weeks.

Not terribly relevant, but anything from Chomsky is educational - Chomsky - After the Election - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_o6UZTPKoY

Yes, we need to stop the profit motive in war. However, we also need to start focusing on educating people to focus on the community rather than simply the individual. Without a change of mindset, war will never be stopped. http://www.dimequecrees.com

The only way we can end America’s serial wars is to take the profit out of it. I have no idea how that can be done. A central reality of the US, contrary to all our lovely philosophies, is that money is the power that drives this country, and that fuels everything that America is about.

All the votes of all the people have no power, and change never has/never will come from the top. The public chooses presidents from among a (pre-selected)handful of rich people who are financed by rich people who require that the agenda of the rich is carried through. The ONLY way that change happens in America is when ordinary people finally stand up and MAKE it change. 

We do have to wonder why today’s Progressives can’t even seem to organize a tea party, but that’s a separate topic.