To get the hell out of the country. We have a police state and a people who stand awestruck. They’re shocked by it, but not enough to say.
Really, the activists hyped the risk of arrest and spread that legal illogic to reporters. We faced potential police brutality if we sticked by the IVAW vets? We faced arrest for standing on the grass? We put ourselves in jeopardy of being jailed for turning onto Speer instead of following the Police golf cart leading the way for the “unpermitted” march? Wouldn’t journalist want to ask why? What law are we breaking? Do we have to obey a command to disperse if it’s not lawful? What happened to free speech? We’re just standing here. Can we no longer do that?
To raise your voice against this wall of police would seem to others to ask for trouble. For example, when you start drumming or chanting, a number among the crowd might join you, but the greater part of them will very quickly recede. LIKE THAT MIGHT BE AGAINST THE LAW.
If there were a true unity in the U.S. – there would not be elections. Even the thin guise of Democracy – if such beast exists still implies a representation of diversity – not a mass consensus. Mass consensus always borders near totalitarianism.
So as Eric asking above, WHY oh WHY would others fear people who choose to ask for representation? Is it better to keep silent in the face of injustice and inequity?!?
Or are we afraid because Eric is afraid?
Yes, that’s it. We’re afraid of feeling powerless. Afraid progressive change is impossible. Afraid of higher taxes and diminishing returns. Afraid of joining the hum-drum, and not ever being heard from again.
Afraid of indifference.
Like the poet T.S. Eliot said in “The Hollow Men”, this world always risks ending in whimpers…
Bang on.
The Republican Convention will just be more of the same, though more protesters will be on hand and they will be there to protest the Republicans and not lobby them as has been the case in Denver. The real problem facing America, as it always has been, is how to break people away from their utterly passive backing of the Democratic Party? Until people get fed up with the Democrats equally as they are now fed up with the Republicans, then we are at a total standstill.
So there really is little reason to go off 1,000 miles to St. Paul and back at this time. The work is here at home, and ‘revolutionary tourism’ will not change that basic reality one iota.