Went Down to the Demonstration, Again

In my never ending search for my fair share of abuse, I actually went to two demonstrations in the last two days which were juxtaposed by some Intrigueing Factors. The first was the Second Annual Missoula May Day celebration where a ragged band of Wobblies, anarchists, punkers and assorted Leftists gave a small but dedicated crowd some revolutionary hip hop, a biting Forum Theatre piece (with myself as the tyrannical university president), followed by the commandeering of one lane of Higgins Ave. in an un-permitted march (with song) to the County Courthouse where the IWW flag was proudly planted after an almost seventy year hiatus. When we yelled "happy May Day!" to the startled pedestrians, they would often sprout a smile as they recognized the symbolic import of our little island of Red and give a wave back. An older gentlemen approached me and asked whether I was the Marxist who" gave the speech last year". I reflexively ducked, but he simply shook my hand and told me how much he had appreciated my interjecting a radical, historical perspective. I invited him to take part in a broader discussion.

Contrast this with yesterdays "demonstration" where a hundred well-meaning liberal-progressive-peace activist types gathered by the road to protest Bush's veto. Cars honked and flashed the peace sign in solidarity as young childrens legs were blown off in Baghdad. We politely waved our signs and the local reporter showed up to document the dissent but in the end we got back in our cars and "stayed the course". I do wonder at the folks who gave us the finger. (perhaps beakerkin can enlighten me) Do they revile us? Their neighbors and fellow citizens?

Gary Younge agrees with my Don Imus-Duke Rape case analysis in his Nation essay. We have finally located the "nappy headed ho" and Rupert Murdochs New York Post plastered a "huge photograph of Crystal Gail Magnum" with the headline ,"Now America Can See Her Face". By the way, the New York Sun is to publishing what Fox news is to television journalism. Except it loses a million dollars a month, selling 13,000 hard copies a day (the Post sells 700,000) which it's four right -wing zionist investors ( Steinhardt, Tisch, a board member of the Manhattan Institute, Kovner, Chair of the American Enterprise Institute, Hertog,chairman of the Manhattan Institute) feel is worth it in order to get their propoganda out to beakerkin. Money talks, as they say.

Bush said leaving Iraq precipitously would create a situation similar to the one created in Cambodia when the US left Vietnam. This is the ever popular mass-slaughter argument for staying. Surprising though, that they would be anxious to use Vietnam analogies, unless they assume their re-write of history has been absorbed sufficiently by Joe Sixpack, who never really knew who or why we were fighting there in the first place. Bush didn't read the report by Ben Kienan and Taylor Owen of the Yale Cambodian Genocide Project which said "civilian casualties from US bombing drove an enraged populous into the arms of the Khmer Rouge insurgency." Who we aided through proxy groups (many allied to Communist China) so Pol Pot could get back to work in the killing fields. So it goes.