'Instead of constantly seeking validation from others as Obama does. If we could turn him into Jackson (Andrew not Michael) - He'd be able to make a decision, without worrying what his critics might say about it".

but I just thought I finally should tell adnoto and heru that I admire their hero too: -

"Jackson's equal political policy became known as Jacksonian Democracy, subsequent to ending what he termed a "monopoly" of government. The Jacksonian era saw a great increase of respect and power for the common man"!

Do or do not

That's the most perfectly absurd statement, but one that completely encapsulates your "trying" to do things here. I say this with all sincerity to you and all of those who spend most of their time denigrating people like GG; please "do" something.

Adnoto, I'm quite willing and even eager to believe that there is a way to unify your various pop-culture interpretations of the civil rights era into the kind of cohesive movement that's never existed outside of Hollywood drama. Show me the way!

The civil rights movement lasted five years, from 1960 to 1965. There are reasons why it was so effective, where one hundred years of political action by various individuals and groups had failed to accomplish much.

One reason is that World War 2 had caused a mass urbanization of the black population in America--they were centralized and easily organized.

Two, funnily enough, the black population was "hopeful" many men had seen non-segregated societies during the war--and even more after Truman desegrated the military and recognized that there was nothing inherent about segregation and recognized that it was an American invention. The bus boycotts of the late fifties gave them even more hope, hope which fed them through the painful and arduous years to come.

Three, all of the community organizations and religious institutions that had been built in the century following slavery had been carefully built up and made to endure. They had done so through HOPE. Imagine, telling five generations of children that one day things would be different! Ha, what a bunch of simps. When the "quickening" time came in 1960 with the Greensboro sit-in, it happened with the power of one hundred years of institution building and small incremental steps of direct-action, like the A Philip Randolph's first March on Washington and the bus boycotts of Baton Rouge and Montgomery. The fact is that no one can explain how a sit in by two people in a small southern town, erupted into a national movement in 12 hours. But when that moment happened, one hundred years of alignment

If you are serious Adnoto, in using the model of American direct action, as it was pioneered by African American movements of the nineteen sixties, you should take a broad view. History moves in long plodding steps, until certain moments create momentum and everything begins changing at once. The trick that King and others recognized is that groups need to be ready, they need to have organized before-hand to take advantage of the opportunities brought by history.

You will also recognize that your perception of that time, as you've laid it out here is incomplete. Where is your restive centralized population? Where is your unifying goal, something that no one needs to have explained to them? African Americans had segregation [and some would say that was not enough, because they never focused on economic segregation]. Do we as Americans today have something that stirs us ALL every waking moment of the day? Something that affects us from the moment we drink coffee every morning to the moment they ride the train home at night. What do people who oppose the war [and what else? Do you oppose the economic system that drives war? Are you a supporter of neo-liberal economic policies, so called imperialism without war?]have?

Trust me, I'm ready to follow anyone who can come up with a cohesive way of emulating the successes of the civil rights movement. But I've been involved in direct action and activism since 1992, and my experience tells me we're not there anymore.

Pretty sure I'm wasting my time here by taking you seriously. Its my experience that people who only criticize what others are doing, rarely have anything in mind to do themselves. I'm sure you [or one of your stooges] will completely mischaracterize this as a plea to take things slow, or to be cautious. In fact, its all the opposite. Be bold, go out there and build your movement, all the while keep your eyes open to recognize the lessons of history and when its time to strike!

If you're as serious as you claim to be, you'll live up to your claims of contempt for the ninnies here and go out and do bold action to show them up and show them the way. Or you'll continue to have as your only political acts, annoying diatribes here against someone who is actually making an effort at building an institution.

Glenn, can you detect any discernable policy differences between the Holder and Gonzales Justice Departments?

Every time Holder has made the slightest peep about investigating Bush administration abuses we have Republicans, most notably flannel-shirted quadrennial GOP presidential candidate Sen. Lamar Alexander, threatening to expand investigations to include the renditions of the Clinton era, when Holder was a Deputy Attorney General.

Shamefully, this explicit intimidation tactic appears to have worked.

Holder’s Justice Department has been virtually indistinguishable -- at least as far as I can tell -- from that marked by Alberto Gonzales’ tenure as Attorney General. He hasn’t even fired some of the wacko Bush political holdovers who refused to resign at the conclusion of Bush's term.

To date, Holder has been the biggest disappointment of the Obama administration.

You mean you went in ONE post from 'not being a pessimist' to a 'there is no hope'-person?!. -- pieceofcake

You are one of two things. Either you are unfamiliar with Yoda and thus a sad human being or you are a person of the lie.

I am going with the latter unless someone can convince me otherwise.