My actual take...

This is part of a comment to a friend's LiveJournal, but I felt like posting this part of it to my own.

I am against this war, but I'm not protesting it, because protesting is futile. A protest is nothing more than an action designed to give people the illusion that they can do anything to change the society in which they live. It makes about as much difference as prayer does. Greater White Magick at it's finest. I have come to terms with the fact that political bodies are going to do anything they want to with little regard to public action short of armed insurrection. Doesn't mean you have to like it. I just take care of my own shit. I like to think that things might change for the better, but I have no illusions about how long it will take or the means to do it. My problem with the war has more to do with blatant dishonesty about it directed towards the people at home and the lack of foresight to see the eventual outcome of this action. I don't give a damn about Saddam, and while I don't really think he poses any kind of threat to the US, I could care less about the invasion of Iraq for ITSELF. What pisses me off is that the only logical result of this little adventure is the rise of hatred directed towards the US, the rise of more terrorist activities on American soil, and the continued limiting of civil liberties at home in the name of "the war on terrorism." Bush is a moron, so I could understand HIM not seeing that outcome, but the people around him aren't stupid. The only logical conclusion is that they are knowingly seeking that kind of result in order to achieve what they really want, which is a fascist state in America.

Hmmm...

From _The Ordeal of Change_, by Eric Hoffer:
"Individual resentment, however intense and widespread, is not likely to lead to any sort of active resistance so long as the disaffected cannot associate themselves in thought with some collective body or movement. It has been proved again and again in recent decades that the individual who stands wholly alone does not pit himself against a totalitarian tyranny, no matter how poignant his grievances and how confident he is of his own worth. His only source of strength is in not being himself but part of something mighty and eternal. The faith, pride, and desperate courage required to defy an implacable totalitarian machine are generated by such an identification. And since the secret police and mutual mistrust which pervades the population preclude the existence of a dissident body or movement inside a Communist regime, it follows that the emergence of active opposition will depend on the possibility of an identification with something impressive beyond the reach of the regime -- something either in the outside world or in the glorious past."

I had a great insight regarding this last night when I read it, but then I fell asleep and forgot it. I'll come back to this when I remember.