I just can’t understand why the Department of Homeland Security is concerned about right-wing terror groups:
Yes, for the record, that’s a Teabagger calling for the execution of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the Senate Majority Leader, and the Secretary of State, in addition to four other Senators and three other Representatives. In what is surely just a coincidence, every member of the House of Representatives on the list is either a woman, gay, black, or some combination thereof.
Your conservative movement, ladies and gentlemen. I just don’t know why they keep losing.
(Via Matthew Yglesias)
The listing does support the conspiracy theory that all this was planned last fall once Obama’s election seemed inevitable — otherwise, why would someone list Clinton as a “traitor in Congress”? (On the other hand, why assume conspiracy when stupidity and ignorance work just as well?)
Much as Palin drove me to wistfulness about the loss of William F. Buckley (“remember when conservatives at least knew where the countries they wanted to invade were?”), the latest round of absurdity is giving me a strange affection for Joe the Plumber’s honesty about himself.
I read that DHS report. Actually, I had no big problem with it. Certain recent events are going to give certain extremists a recruitment opportunity. Seems obvious to me. That doesn’t mean that all returning veterans are going to join the Aryan Resistance (or WTF they’re calling themselves these days), or that everyone stocking up on guns and ammo is doing so with an eye towards shooting minorities or overthrowing the Republic. And I don’t think that the report meant to imply that, although it might have helped if they had been more explicit in saying so.
In what is surely just a coincidence, every member of the House of Representatives on the list is either a woman, gay, black, or some combination thereof.
Thus neatly neglecting the members of that list that were straight white males. I’m sure that was just a coincidence as well.
I’ll grant you the error on Clinton, though.
But the people at the Tea Bag rallies are hardly right-wing extremists. Congratulations on finding one sign at one rally that supports the message you want to promulgate. I’m sure I’d never have found a sign proposing to hang President Bush at a left-wing rally, eh? And if I had, that could fairly be construed to represent the feelings of everyone there, right?
Heh! But in my experience geographic ignorance is hardly limited to one side of the political spectrum. Surveys and studies have shown time and time again that depressingly few among the U.S. populace can find Iran, Iraq or Israel on a map of the middle east, or reliably name any country on a blank map of Africa. Heck, most people can’t fill in 50% of a blank map of the U.S.
RonF,
It’s much more problematic to be ignorant about a place if you want to interfere with it. For example, if you told me that people who support sending U.S. troops to Darfur don’t know where it is (i.e. don’t know it’s in Sudan, don’t know that Sudan is in North Africa), I would be worried. But in general, people on the left who want to interfere with a place know where it is. Being a pacifist (which I’m not, BTW, but I also could mark Afghanistan on a blank world map) really helps in excusing geographic ignorance.
Indeed.
Jeff, much as I admire you, and much as the title of this post made me smile, I really think you need to read this:
http://www.fallacyfiles.org/guiltbya.html
Hey, now it’s two signs:
(Via David’s blog.)
ETA: I agree, you can’t judge the entire conservative movement by sign-holders. But there’s also people like Glenn Back and Rush, not to mention Michele Bachman. (sp?)
ETA:
ETA:
I’m OK with the 2d Amendment one; that’s actually a reasonable constitutional theory (although I’ve never found a 2d Amendment advocate who would agree that when the government is seizing your property and putting you in concentration camps, as with the Japanese internment in WWII, it’s morally right to start shooting law enforcement).
The rest are disturbing, though.
I agree with you, PG, that it’s a reasonable constitutional theory. It’s the implication that it should be applied in the current context — that is, that we’ve reached the point of having to think about shooting the gov’t, because a stimulus bill was passed — that I find disturbing.
(Although maybe I’m reading too much into the context of this being at a tea bag rally, and maybe that person just always brings that sign to all protests, regardless of context, as a general pro-gun statement.)
Given the amount of unambiguous scary out there, I figured I’d give the 2d Amendment guy the benefit of the doubt: at least his admits of a not-totally-f***ed-up interpretation. I mean, if this guy can come up with a plausible explanation of how the stimulus bill, or housing proposal, or increase of the top marginal rate to Clinton-era levels, or whatever it is fussing this particular sign-holder, actually violates his Constitutional rights, it will be a more significant contribution to the debate on those matters than the rest of ’em put together.
PG, fair enough on giving the 2nd amendment guy the benefit of the doubt.
Just to be clear, I only posted those photos because I thought they were funny, not because I think a few sign-holders say anything about the conservative movement as a whole. What really worries me is the extreme views stated by people with real positions of prominence within the conservative movement.
Amp,
I don’t think “judged by the company you keep” is a total fallacy in political protests. For example, I specifically refuse to attend any protest that is not very careful to be nonviolent, and I generally avoid any political action that’s being joined by anarchists (yes, only a minority of anarchists engage in property destruction etc., but they get all the attention).
If I am supposedly in a grassroots, communal action, I should be able to say to someone, “Hey, the implications of your sign kind of bother me, could we turn it around and write a different message on the back to use instead?” without being afraid that he’ll punch me. If the idea is that he ought to be expressing his unique snowflake point of view regardless of how it is perceived by others, then there’s no point in a group action. A large gathering should demonstrate that all of these people want to send a unified message of support for the Virginia Tech victims, or opposition to the spending bill, or whatever.
Republicans are aware of these PR problems on their side — e.g., when Glenn Reynolds was making fun of Muslims for saying they didn’t want a business on their street to get a liquor licenses, he got emails from readers saying “Uh, dude, that’s what conservative Christians do all the time, why are you making fun of it? These should be our natural allies.” You have to police your allies too.
Wow:
PG, I agree in general, but I’m still hesitant to cast judgments based on photos of signs. For all I know, the folks with the more extreme signs were argued with in a respectful, nonviolent way by their fellow demonstrators, and refused to take their signs down. I don’t think that’s likely, but it’s possible, and I like to give the benefit of the doubt.
Plus, there were 200,000 demonstrators or thereabouts, iirc. The people with really amazingly offensive signs were a tiny minority, and so were the people protesting near those people. The vast majority of protesters were nowhere near any of the signs pictured in this thread.
Above photo via Matt Yglesias.
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The first sign just makes me miss living in traitorious Massachusetts. Kind of along the lines of “If this person disagrees with me, I know I’m doing something right.”
Slightly off-topic, but the WSJ has sniffed out the profit motive in all the ZOMG Obama will ban guns! rhetoric: some people are actually buying AK-47s as an investment, to be able to resell them if, say, the assault weapon ban is reinstated.
What confuses me about this Guns + Liberal President = Profit! plan is the underlying assumption that any new ban — which Democrats in Congress and the White House have said they’re reluctant to reinstate anyway — would be just like the old ban, i.e. a ban on manufacture of new assault weapons, but with an exemption for sales of guns already in circulation. It’s well within Congress’s interstate commerce power to ban the sale of certain kinds of weapons already in circulation, so some of these nutters would have to break the law in order to make a return on their investment.
I also really hope that criminals don’t read the WSJ, as now they know whose house to break into during the day while the owner is at work in order to find a ****-load of weaponry. Just the guys interviewed, with their names, towns and occupations noted, have enough to keep a Mexican drug gang well supplied for shooting cops.
If I am supposedly in a grassroots, communal action, I should be able to say to someone, “Hey, the implications of your sign kind of bother me, could we turn it around and write a different message on the back to use instead?” without being afraid that he’ll punch me.
That’s a rather odd comment. What makes you think that this is a problem you should worry about encountering? Seems to me that the more likely reaction is that either that someone says “F**k off” or just ignores you entirely. Why would you think that people would be afraid of getting punched if you said something about their sign?
If the idea is that he ought to be expressing his unique snowflake point of view regardless of how it is perceived by others, then there’s no point in a group action.
Maybe the point is that most people were there to communicate a particular message while a few were there to communicate their message. This movement is grassroots, but it’s not particularly communal.
In fact, there’s a lot of commentary going on about “What now?” Lots of people have said “We have not up to this point been people who protest much. We need to model our operations along the lines of the left – they do this a lot and have it much better organized.”
A large gathering should demonstrate that all of these people want to send a unified message of support for the Virginia Tech victims, or opposition to the spending bill, or whatever.
But in actual fact the large gathering is made up of individuals, not all of whom are on the same page, and there’s was no structure to change that.
Speaker Pelosi is wrong, you know. This was not Astroturf. This was a genuinely grassroots movement. Sure, there were people that claimed that they had pumped money into this, but the reports I’ve seen show little evidence that this actually happened. Before I’m going to believe that this was something organized and funded by a large right-wing group I’m going to want to see records and evidence, not just claims by people trying to make themselves important and get out in front of the parade. Frankly, Pelosi sounded a lot like the right-wing types claiming that all the left-wing rallies are secretly funded by the Communist party or George Soros.
Republicans are aware of these PR problems on their side — e.g., when Glenn Reynolds was making fun of Muslims for saying they didn’t want a business on their street to get a liquor licenses, he got emails from readers saying “Uh, dude, that’s what conservative Christians do all the time, why are you making fun of it? These should be our natural allies.” You have to police your allies too.
In reading about these rallies on blogs from the other side of the aisle, I’m struck by the large number of people who have the same viewpoint that I’ve voiced more than once here – don’t call me a Republican, and a plague on both their houses. It seems a safe bet to me that the majority of people at those rallies voted for Republican candidates in the recent election, but there’s a lot of people out there who did that on the basis of thinking that those were the lesser of evils, not out of any positive allegiance to the Republican party or it’s actions.
“Obama’s plan = White Slavery”. Dumbass. All that does is give someone an excuse to claim this is about racism.
Not that we’re ever going to be completely free of it. There’s a comment circulating that goes like this: why is President Obama going to make aspirin illegal? Because it’s white and it works.
Just the guys interviewed, with their names, towns and occupations noted, have enough to keep a Mexican drug gang well supplied for shooting cops.
The claims that 90% of the guns in Mexico used in crimes come from the U.S. seems to be a gross exaggeration, BTW. A more accurate figure is 17%. Still not good, but far from what’s being used as rhetoric. The 90% figure comes from the number of guns given to the U.S. to trace that have actually been traced to the U.S. Here’s a citation, with specific people from the ICE and ATF commenting on the matter. And none of that is machine guns, rocket grenades, etc.
Why would you think that people would be afraid of getting punched if you said something about their sign?
Because some people do not respond well to constructive criticism and instead get angry, and some angry people use violence. Do you seriously think that criticism never is met with violence?
And do you think if I had shown up with a “Yes We Can” sign and backpack of Obama stickers, there wouldn’t have been an attempt to cut me out of the protest group? We’ve already seen how speakers who pointed out that Bush had run up the deficit got booed down. Clearly some messages will be accepted at the protest, and others won’t.
The biggest piece of evidence that I’ve seen against the idea that the tea party movement is truly grassroots is that it ended up overwhelming the real grassroots movement that started in Seattle and was directed at specifically protesting “pork,” i.e. wasteful spending. Keli Carender organized a protest on her own sweat because she was upset about pork barrel politics. But the “pork” concern (which I think is reasonable) got superseded when a CNBC talking head said he wanted to start a tea party. I mean, seriously, you’re going to argue for the grassroots authenticity of an idea that sprang from cable news, from a guy reporting from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange?
The pork theme has a relationship to what’s happening in the real world: yes, there’s a lot of new spending going on, and the budget has earmarks, and there’s a real question of whether public money is going to serve private interests. The tea party theme, on the other hand, makes no sense whatsoever and is easily mocked: these people can’t tell the difference between “taxation without representation” and “taxation with representation that I don’t like because my guy lost a free and fair election.”
Did any non-Republican elected officials (past or present) speak at one of these events? Perry made his now-infamous secession suggestion while speaking at a tea party. It’s hard to get more GOP establishment than Gov. Goodhair.
ETA: It’s easy to say “a plague on both their houses” — I’m probably more mainstream liberal than most of the posters and commenters here, who are further to the left, and even I don’t like certain aspects of the Democratic Party, e.g. their failure to put same-sex marriage in the party platform. However, inasmuch as we have two major political parties and most people who vote, vote for one of them, it’s rather silly to say of people who regularly vote for Republicans that they mustn’t be called Republicans, even if they’ve freaking registered as Republicans.
The Fox News article seems a bit confused: first it says that in 2007-08, “29,000 guns were recovered at crime scenes,” and then “Mexico seized 29,000 weapons in all of 2007 and 2008.” Weapon seizures and weapons recovered at crime scenes are not synonymous. For example, seizures at the home of a drug lord aren’t “recovered at a crime scene,” and a gun left behind with a murder victim isn’t being “seized.”
Hear hear.
I refuse to participate in that charade.
—Myca
I have to admit, I feel some sympathy for that charade, since my politics are much more aligned with the socialist or green party platforms than with the Democrats, even though I regularly vote for Democrats.
Sure, but you are often very critical of the Democrats, you make an affirmative case for Green Party political positions, and when you vote Democratic, you usually explain that it’s a tactical move.
What I have an issue with is folks who are registered Republican, vote Republican, make an affirmative case for Republican political positions, and rarely criticize Republicans saying, “Golly no! Don’t call me a Republican!”
I mean, if someone’s Libertarian and they make a case for Libertarian positions, sure. But when they’re a member of the Republican Party and do not actively make the case for another, different party? Gimmie a break.
—Myca
RonF,
Funny, I thought your standard (from the thread discussing the birther conspiracy theory) was that accusations had to be conclusively disproven (to the satisfaction of someone who couldn’t be bothered to figure out who runs factcheck.org, or remember hearing it cited as a fair judge by Dick Cheney in the 2004 vice-presidential debates, or seeing it used as the source (on major news sites) for fact checking political ads in any of the last 3 presidential elections).
Is your standard simply that whatever you find it convenient to believe needs to be conclusively disproven, whether it is an accusation or the defense against an accusation?
Because some people do not respond well to constructive criticism and instead get angry, and some angry people use violence.
The context made me think that you believed that this was an issue specific to these rallies. Do you? Or would you expect that this might happen at a left-oriented rally as well?
Talk about privilege – I’m 6′ 2″ and about 275 lbs. I usually don’t worry about someone who looks reasonably calm that I direct a calm remark to getting pissed off and taking a swing at me. In fact, I have had numerous occasions where someone pissed off that I direct a comment to turns around with an angry look on their face, double clutches, and adopts a much more controlled and polite aspect. Call it “size privilege”.
True. But there’s a difference between someone communicating a message that you don’t agree with but that you don’t see as on-topic vs. someone communicating a message that’s in direct opposition to your main message
Sure. Why not? Just because his comment, having been made in a very public forum in a very emotional manner got seized upon and inspired people doesn’t mean that he or his news organization or any other particular group was behind what those people then did.
As far as the applicability of the tea-based protest to what’s actually going on – sure, there’s some confusion as to the particulars of American history here. Blame it on how well American history is being taught and learned. If you had asked people what the cause of the Boston Tea Party was before all this came about I’ll bet that most people would have called it a protest against taxation. This isn’t the first time that people have invoked the Boston Tea Party for modern-day tax protests. It’s just the first one that came about with cable TV and the Internet being common.
Another shining example of politicians running like hell up from the rear to get in the front of a parade they discovered passing them by. Besides which, why would you expect a Democratic politician to speak at a rally opposing ideas from a Democratic President supported by a Democratic Congress?
I’ve just hunted through 10 pages of a Google news search on “perry texas secession”. While I found numerous commentators decrying that Perry suggested that Texas secede, the only direct reference I found to what he actually said was this:
Perry told reporters following his speech that Texans might get so frustrated with the government they would want to secede from the union.
“There’s absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that.”
That sounds to me like Perry was saying “People are getting pretty pissed off and some might start talking about secession, although I think it’s a bad idea.” And not while he was speaking to the rally audience but afterwards. Do you have a more direct reference that shows that he himself actually suggested that secession would be a good idea or be feasible? Why are commentators saying things like “Gov. Rick Perry suggested Wednesday that his state could secede from the United States.”?
Heck, in the last primary election I took a Democratic ballot, because that’s where the competitive races are. I’ve done that a number of times; in Cook County the Democratic party is where the action is. And I’ve never voted a straight ballot; this year I voted for a Democrat for my Congressman, Dan Lipinski. I didn’t see his Republican opponent as serious and Rep. Lipinski does as good a job as I can expect. I voted for then-State Sen. Obama over Alan Keyes for Senator because I thought Alan Keyes was a nutball and an interloper.
And I don’t make cases for parties at all, whether they are Democrats, Republican, Libertarians, Greens, Communists, Constitution, or whatever. God knows the Republicans have certainly done their share to increase the intrusiveness of government and the deficit and have tried to do things like supporting making illegal aliens citizens in the name of immigation “reform”.
Anti-illegal Iraq Invasion Protests: More than 10 Million people nationwide, clear message, not promoted extensively in the weeks beforehand by any MSM. Successful in terms of turn out, mostly grassroots, derided by opponents as foolish and meaningless and fringe.
Tea Party Anti-Something, Anything Protests: Possibly as many as 250 thousand people nationwide, ambiguous message, promoted extensively for weeks beforehand by Faux News. Failure in terms of turnout as measured against recent nationwide protest actions, clearly driven by a media outlet, applauded by proponents, who dismissed anti-Iraq War protests, as a tremendous success.
I’m a bit skeptical of supporters of Teabagging (the political “movement”).
How on earth did the context make you think I believe it’s an issue specific to tea party rallies? I specifically talked about how I avoid leftist rallies, even ones purported for a position with which I disagree, if there will be people there taking actions with which I very strongly disagree. I suppose I could try to stand in front of the anarchists as they throw stuff at cops and Starbucks windows, but I don’t think the fear of hurting me is going to stop them. And I’m decidedly lacking in size privilege — I’m a foot shorter than you and less than half your weight. Most people, especially men, think they can take me.
So you’re acknowledging that criticism of Bush’s spending would be in direct opposition to the tea parties’ main message? How much more partisan can we get?
It’s not just that most people shared your former confusion that the Boston Tea Party was a protest against taxation of the colonists. It’s that even under that understanding, the protest makes no sense, because any tax bill passed by Congress is taxation WITH representation. That’s what’s disturbing to some of us about the protests; the protesters don’t seem to get the concept of democracy, in which the folks who win a free and fair election are constrained in what they can do only by constitutional rights. There’s no constitutional right to a top marginal tax rate of 35%. Leftists who protested Bush might claim that his election wasn’t free and fair, or that he was violating various constitutional rights of due process or habeas corpus or privacy, but so far as I know none of them claimed that they weren’t represented in Congress. (Except at the protests in D.C. where the people who actually ARE dealing with “taxation without representation” got up to gripe.)
Except it’s not a parade, it’s a microphone that has to get passed to the politician by someone in charge of it. The Republicans were invited, scheduled speakers, not folks who just ran up and grabbed a bullhorn.
I have no idea how your Google search failed to turn up the AP news article, which gave a rather fuller quote of Perry’s remarks than your comment does:
Perry, of course, has had his recollection of Texas history destroyed by the chemicals seeping into his brain from all his hair gel. There is no such provision in the annexation agreement for Texas to secede. Texas seceded with the South during the Civil War and had no more right to do so than any other state.
Jake, liberal protests don’t count because everyone knows they’re attended only by young students and their radical Marxist professors. Even though Code Pink was specifically founded by a bunch of mothers and held its protests on Saturdays so working people like me could attend.
PG, in re-reading that article it seems to me most likely that they are conflating “seized” and “recovered at crime scenes”. Perhaps not the highest standard of editing, but that’ s no news. The main concept – that the statistic “90% of guns in Mexico used in crimes come from the U.S.” that people pushing for gun control are quoting is false – seems well established if the citations in that article hold true.
So you’re acknowledging that criticism of Bush’s spending would be in direct opposition to the tea parties’ main message?
Not at all. Where did that come from? Your example from the previous post was “And do you think if I had shown up with a ‘Yes We Can’ sign and backpack of Obama stickers,”. You didn’t say anything about delivering a message about the Bush administration’s spending. Depending on what spending you were talking about you might well get an approving hearing.
Where’s the confusion? Are the ralliers saying that Obama and the Congress can’t legally do what they’re proposing, or that they don’t want them to do what they’re proposing? It seems the latter to me. Remember, dissent is the highest form of patriotism.
I’d be curious to know how much of that was the rally organizers saying “Hey, let’s invite Representative Jones” and how much of that was Representative Jones’ staff reading about the rally and saying “Hey, let’s call these people up and get Rep. Jones on the speakers’ platform.”?
And Rep. Jones showing up and speaking does not make it a partisan event. If Rep. Jones’ staff organized it and their boss was the main speaker, fine; or if other speakers invoked the Republican party in their remarks, also fine. That would be partisan. But if an outside group organized it and Rep. Jones was one of a number of speakers, none of whom invoked support for a political party, I would not call it partisan.
Thanks for the cite on Perry. I don’t know how I missed it either. I looked at a couple of the AP stories but either I didn’t read it far enough or they’d been edited. Or whatever. But if the Governor of Texas doesn’t know Texas history that’s pretty sad.
I’m forwarding this information to U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald to make sure that he’s prepared for ex-Gov. Blagojevich’s defense attorneys to try to use this as an affirmative defense.
Right, but then which do they mean? Or does the figure actually include both? If both, 17% as the figure for the percentage of U.S.-trafficked guns used in Mexican crimes will be too small, because the denominator (all guns used in crimes) is too big.
My example of what actually occurred at a tea party, as opposed to a hypothetical, and which you quoted, was “We’ve already seen how speakers who pointed out that Bush had run up the deficit got booed down.” In other words, it’s not OK to criticize Bush for doing what they’re supposedly angry at Obama for doing. Maybe just a little bit IOKYAR here? I mean, “partisan” certainly is a more charitable interpretation than “It’s OK if you’re a Bush” or “It’s OK if you’re white.”
Sure, but then why the tea party stuff? It makes no sense as a theme to harken back to an example where the taxation was wrongful because it was done undemocratically, if your actual problem is that the taxation is wrongful because it violates your deeply held belief that the top marginal federal income tax rate mustn’t be higher than 35%.* That was the point of my saying that the pork theme was logical, whereas this one isn’t.
LOL. I would have cut Gov. Perry a break if he’d been like George Allen in VA, i.e. a carpetbagger, but Perry grew up in Texas and presumably had to take Texas history like the rest of us. His bio doesn’t mention his skipping any grades (my little sister skipped 7th grade and thus is ignorant of Texas history), so I guess he’s just one of those folks for whom the myth blotted out recollections of the real information.
* One of my economics profs in college — conservative enough, even in a conservative department at a relatively conservative school, that when I emailed him asking for a law school recommendation, he wrote back, “Notwithstanding our political differences…” — was genuinely puzzled by Bush Jr.’s earliest tax proposals. He said, “It’s like the president read some part of the Bible that said ‘Thou shalt not take more than 1/3 of the sweat of a man’s brow.'”
I have a question here. It’s a little bit off-topic, but this thread seems to have meandered a fair amount, so …
I was out of the country from 2002-2004, so I missed pretty much the entire lead-up to and beginning of the Iraq War. Something I hear frequently is that protests weren’t “focused” enough or weren’t “on message.” The gist of the criticism was that if people had left their Free Mumia signs and puppets representing global capitalism at home, the protests would have been less easily ridiculed/more successful.
True? Not true? Kind of true?
Chingona,
As with any other demonstration that has thousands, or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of attendees, the anti-war demonstrations of that time had their share of protestors who were protesting their own thing. However, there was no mistake what the protests were about. Even when anarchists or “anarchists” would bust windows or fight the cops, there was no question what the protests were about. Unlike the Teabaggers, who seem uncertain whether they’re protesting Bush’s taxes, Obama’s budget, not having a white man for president, pro-choice, etc., the anti-war protests leading up to the invasion of Iraq had a clear agenda, intent and message.
For example, the day of massive protests in February 2003, the media coverage had no problem identifying the message of the multitude of protests. Nobody could have thought that global warming or Mumia or anything else is what people turned out to the streets for. The vast majority of signs said things like, “Peace,” or, “No Blood For Oil.” Every speaker (in Portland & that I heard in news coverage) was speaking against the coming invasion.
Sure, there were Jesus Freaks and Anarchists and faux anarchists and Socialists and Environmentalists and those questioning the legitimacy of Bush’s election, etc. But they did not distract from the clear message of “Don’t Invade Iraq.”
Thanks, Jake. I wasn’t trying to be a hater. I mostly hear this from people on the left, for whatever that’s worth, but maybe it’s just that circular firing squad tendency we can have. “If only we had …”
It’s a weird thing to have missed out on, a weird gap to have. I mean, it’s not like I didn’t follow it. We had a short-wave for BBC and Voice of America, caught cable news and American magazines when we went to the capital, but the experience of that time was really different, I think, for those of us who weren’t here.
I didn’t think that you were, I was trying to answer what I thought was a clear question with an obvious reason behind it – you were out of the country.
Well, they certainly weren’t effective in terms of changing either government policy or public opinion. Even though we were right in almost all facets of our opposition, public opinion didn’t turn until years of failure had passed.
But, as far as being focused or on message, every protest I took part in was focused on a single message & the giant day of international protests certainly was.
I actually was on vacation in Buenos Aires on that big international day of protest. It was pretty amazing. Argentines are very protest-y in general. I think there was a manifestación for something or other every day we were there, but most of them were somewhat localized. That day almost the entire city shut down for the event.
One of the weirdest things for me was talking to college friends, people who always had been liberal, who didn’t think Bush was even the legitimate president, who somehow had gotten sucked in by this “We have to do something” mentality. I know there are a lot of people who got it from the beginning, but that people like my friends bought in to it was indicative of the extent to which an entire culture was created around the necessity of the war. If you weren’t subject to that media, it was plain as day what was going on. Not just plain as day to people who were predisposed to be skeptical, but plain as day to everyone.
But then … I remember going to the capital during the early weeks of the war and sitting in the hotel room switching back and forth between English and Spanish CNN. It was, quite literally, two different wars. In English, it was our brave heroic troops liberating Iraq. In Spanish, it was little kids with their limbs blown off. Same corporate ownership. Different audience. Different product.
RonF writes:
In law enforcement circles, it is routine to speak of “seizing” evidence, because US law in general often speaks of any government taking of property or liberty as a seizure.
Grace