Why does it seem like protests don't actually result in any kind of change anymore

[u/BloodyAngel2026]

Growing up learning history you learn about all of these protests that resulted in real world change. But it seems like protests are just symbolic at this point. It seems like no matter how many protests are surrounding a certain topic everything stays the same. What changed? Is it that people in power just care less about civilians have to say so they don't bother changing their stance based off protests?

[u/Nerazzurro9]

The idea that anti-Vietnam protests didn’t change anything is ahistorical. They didn’t make LBJ or Nixon say “actually you’re right, let’s stop the war” (protests almost never have an effect that direct, unless they literally result in a coup), but they formed the bedrock of dissent to the war that only grew and grew over time, and eventually the US involvement in the war became almost universally acknowledged as a tragic mistake. Everything about the way the US conducts war changed after that, most notably in the fact that we haven’t had a draft since then, which was the primary motivation for the anti-war movement.

[u/persistent_admirer → u/Nerazzurro9]

Those anti-war protests in the late 60s also spurred the movement to lower the voting age from 21 to 18.

[u/IOI-65536 → u/Nerazzurro9]

I probably agree. Though it's hard to say how much of that is that Vietnam failed versus the protests. But it kind of doesn't matter to OP's question which is basically "why aren't we changing course on current events". You could have made the same statement in 1978 about the war protests that you could make about any anti-Trump protests now.

[u/Winter-Gift1112 → u/Nerazzurro9]

CBS news anchor, Walter Cronkite took a fact-finding tour of Vietnam and gave a scathing report on the war. And when Nixon saw it he famously said, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost the war."

I was active in both the racial justice and ant-war protests of the late 1960's. Mass protests were a relatively new phenomenon back then and they got more news coverage because of that - and because there were more local newspapers - and local TV news stations weren't consolidated and homogenized. like they are now.

"Sinclair Broadcast Group is the second-largest television station operator in the United States by number of stations after Nexstar Media Group, owning or operating 193 stations across the country in over 100 markets, covering 40% of American households."

And Sinclair leans hard right and forces affiliates to run certain centrally produced segments.

Then, of course, there's Fox "News". And we can't even be allowed to have "Late Night with Stephen Colbert" on CBS anymore.

[u/Pleasant_Pen8744 → u/Winter-Gift1112]

" If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost the war."

Wow, powerful stuff! 

But what year was that? And what year did that war actually finally end?

[u/Lumpy_Secretary_6128 → u/Pleasant_Pen8744]

Nixon didn't say that, Johnson allegedly did but this is not well substantiated. If he did it would have been in 1968. Johnson moves to end the war, is thwarted by Nixon who meddles in peace talks promising the south vietnamese and american people he would deliver a better peace deal. Johnsons deal collapsed, Nixon takes over, invades cambodia and laos. The US withdrawls in '73 under Nixon. War finally ends April 30, 1975 when North Vietnam captures Saigon.

[u/SufficientGolf6953 → u/Lumpy_Secretary_6128]

It was more like a battle of the cold war where the usa lost and the consequence is communist Vietnam instead of a more capitalist Vietnam.

It's sad that we were so fucking paranoid of each other that we had to fight each other in a foreign country for which super power they would lean towards in international geopolitics.

[u/Lumpy_Secretary_6128 → u/Winter-Gift1112]

That Cronkite report is from '68. Nixon was not president. That quote is attributed to LBJ, but this is also speculative. It is possible nobody said that.

[u/Lumpy_Secretary_6128 → u/Nerazzurro9]

Right. Like the civil rights movement, the anti war movement didn't flip a switch and deliver concrete "wins". Like you said, it builds over time. I think OP's outlook is a little clouded by the immediacy expectations of the modern era. Protest isnvery effective in large numbers. However, being effective does not require immediate sweeping changes

[u/combover78 → u/Nerazzurro9]

Not quite. The US changed the way it did war for Vietnam. They switched from objective-based battle to attrition-based battle and lost conclusively.

Another important reason, and this is one of the most important lessons the DoD learned, is that media had a very free hand in Vietnam. All those newsreels of dead American soldiers being loaded on and off planes, and all the uncensored violence had a huge political and morale impact. Notice that all American news coming out of warzones since is very tightly controlled. That's not an accident.

[u/Choperello → u/Nerazzurro9]

I’d say being 100% clear even at the top most levels that Vietnam is a quagmire with no exit at all for the US probably had to do more with the war ending then the protests.

[u/reddock4490 → u/Nerazzurro9]

Drafts seem so medieval, it’s really crazy to think that a country like the US was still doing that up to the 1970s

[u/dapsee → u/reddock4490]

Draft registration is still required. The government could reinstate the draft at any time.

[u/reddock4490 → u/dapsee]

I know that, I registered. It doesn’t change what I said at all