August 31, 2007
It's Time to Stop Messing Around
Why I Am Not Going to the Protest
By JEFF GIBBS
I am not going to the protest. I am tired of protests: they don't stop wars. Not protests that are mostly about sign waving and hooking up with friends and strangers and feeling the solidarity and then going back to work or school on Monday. They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result.
Sure it FEELS rebellious, these government-permitted, media-ignored, totally predictable rituals-but come on, going to an anti-war protest hasn't been rebellious since Abbie Hoffman coughed up a fur ball at one in 1968. And in the context of the war on our civil liberties envisioned by Clinton/Reno and executed by your nemesis George W. Bush, they are very, very happy to have you protest and take your name and number. Or force you into a field, or a waiting pen to be locked away until they decide to let you out.
Personally I am tired of marching alongside people wearing masks and carrying signs about stupid Bush when we and everyone we know put together have not been smart enough to stop him. And the Bush bashing only makes the whole parade, err, protest look juvenile to the rest of the world.
Here is what I propose: let's stop messing around. No more anti-war. Let's stop the war. No more protest, unless it is part of some huge thing that doesn't involve business as usual the next day. How do you stop the war? Shut 'er down. No more business as usual. The target audience: the Democrats, and the presidential candidates who can't fall over each other fast enough rattling their little Democrat saberettes. ("Bomb Iran? I can top that, let's bomb PAKISTAN! Take THAT, cowboy!")
Being anti-war is a fashion statement, a political position, not a movement.
