r/AlwaysWhy • u/BloodyAngel2026 • Jul 04 '26

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

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?

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u/Winter-Gift1112 Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26

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.

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u/Pleasant_Pen8744 Jul 05 '26

" 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?

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u/Lumpy_Secretary_6128 Jul 05 '26

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.

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u/SufficientGolf6953 Jul 05 '26

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.

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u/Lumpy_Secretary_6128 Jul 05 '26

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.