…this past Sunday afternoon and Wednesday evening along the usual downtown-Capitol Hill routes for such marches. This is expected activity during a time of hotheaded drumbeating for organized military peurility; particularly for a would-be war in which the U.S. would be the undisguised aggressor.
Two aspects made these marches particularly significant. They were among the best-attended of many such marches held across the country this week. (At least 10,000 attended the Sunday march.) And both were remarkably intelligent, respectful, life-affirming affairs, attended by a wide cross-section of the local populace.
We need a popular uprising against the election-stealers and coup-plotters in DC. And we’ll need everybody we can get to be in it–even your parents, people who look like your parents, and men who don’t have ponytails.
(I’ve been thinking of forming a group for guys who care for progressive politics but don’t care to sport abundant hair. Call it the “Green Shaven.”)
War-aggression propaganda, particularly the type practiced by post-Reagan Republicans, is a campaign by a ruling regime to pressure its own citizens into unthinking passive-aggressive obedience. It tries to turn individuals into a dumbed-down mass. Opponents of war-aggession can best counter this tactic by welcoming and respecting humans of all backgrounds as intelligent individuals.
One lifestyle-left poster in the post-WTO era bore the slogan “Live Without Dead Time;” implying that sanctimonious personal thrills should be a movement’s true main goal. But in any serious work, including work for important social causes, there’s a lot of “dead time,” a lot of time spent on the boring details, a lot of time when it seems all for naught.
The organizers of the Sunday and Wednesday marches spent that time wisely. They ran well-organized, peaceful, on-topic gatherings that gained positive media attention and reinforced an image of antiwar activists as sane and rational–a lot more sane and rational than the war promoters.
Contrary to the image promoted by Michael Moore, the American power elite and the White House war-wanters shouldn’t be caricatured as “Stupid White Men.” They’re not stupid, even if they wish everybody else was. They’re brutishly clever and ambitious, even the ones who aren’t (or like to pretend they aren’t) book-learned. They’re not all white; and they’re certainly not all men. They’re not “The Patriarchy” or “Straight White Male Society” as some of my Olympia friends like to imagine. Their current top leaders (with a few backward exceptions) no longer discriminate (at least not overtly) on such outmoded, inaccurate criteria as race and gender.
No, today’s powermongers (heart symbol) you if you’ve got money, power, and an eagerness to play the game the right-wing way. If you lack these qualifications, they’ll treat you as a potential foot-soldier in their domestic army of dumbed-down discipline. If you decline to get with the program, you’re the enemy.
We should welcome everyone, regardless of subculture or lifestyle, who’s tired of being defamed and insulted by the talk-radio demagogues. Who’s tired of being talked down to, of being endless cajoled into living in fear. Who’s tired of the peurile influence-peddling and naked corruption. Who wants a world of real spirituality, real statesmanship, and real governance. Who’d rather see less Mideast violence rather than more.
Peace. It’s not just for hummus eaters anymore.
