Ahhh....what to complain about?

Well, how 'bout this big anti-war demo that's happening in your town on February 15th? Slightly more relevant than anything else I might find to whine on about, anyway.

Okay, so I am of course against the war, largely because I don't, unlike the President, feel the need to go out and kill little brown people just because it'll, if all goes well, win me the election. However, I remain of two minds about the value of demonstrations, and I actually think that in many ways demonstrations do more harm than they do good.

Maybe I'm just buying a little too far into the thinking of the man, here, but my feeling is that demonstrations, at least in this instance, have one big advantage, one big disadvantage, and a whole host of smaller problems. To wit: registering your opinion makes you feel good and demos allow you to do so, in company with other like thinkers (advantage); however, in this case, your opinion only matters if you are a registered American voter, as it is quite clear that the Smiler is only going to go to war because he thinks it will win him the election (disadvantage). Additionally, since many, if not most demos a) are done by people who look like they were the residue at the bottom of a hippie's sleeping bag, and b) other, irrelevant causes always get brought in to the mix, they tend to be ignored by anyone looking for the actual will of the people, which, in the current scenario, is precisely no one.

To take the points in order. I am all for registering your opinion. I believe that there is absolutely no reason that you should not have an opinion, or that you should not (assuming it respects all current laws regarding messages written in the intestines of innocents) be allowed to register said opinion. I do have a problem with believing that demos are an effective way of doing so, because, particularly in this instance, the goal is irrelevant. This brings me to point two.

I do understand that the purpose of international, synchronous demos is to tell your government that you are against the war and that your government will then tell the United States that they are against the war, in large part because they are respecting the wishes of their population.* However, this will not happen, because of the smaller problems I mentioned.

Why is it that at every demo I've ever been at the point seems to be "What's the crappiest/strangest/most unconventional outfit I can find?" If I were in power, I sure as hell wouldn't bother listening to the opinions of a bunch of people dressed up like fucking turtles or mujaheddin or wearing papier-mache masks of me. Why? Because these people do not present themselves as voters. They present themselves as attention-seeking juvenile delinquents. At the same time that the demo is marching down Fifth Avenue or wherever the fuck, there are literally millions of respectable voters, who apparently agree with the plans I have for war, because they are not in the demo. They are wearing suits, sitting in offices, and making large sums of money, which I want to get in taxes. And even if these people agree with the demo, why in the name of fuck would they want to go out and join the great unwashed? (Literally.) They have spent years becoming respectable in a lifestyle that I don't agree with, but that I have to at least respect until I've got enough money to tell the whole fucking Combine to piss off. If I don't respect them, I don't get their attention. If I don't get their attention, then what the fuck am I doing in a demo? I might as well stay home, mightn't I?

The final point is the very-obvious one of confusing the purpose of the demo. If you're going to be demoing against a war in Iraq, well, at least freedom for Palestine is an issue found in the same geographical region. However, you're alienating two groups of people (or possible three). The first is the respectable people. They're the ones described above. They're the ones the governments listen to. They're not the ones like Anarcho-lad at my undergrad who stood around and talked about how he didn't vote because it wasn't a fair system and we had to smash the state. Fair enough, but there's a lot more of us who vote than who're planning on taking over the state and destroying the system. These (end digression) respectable people are not likely to be thinking too much about Palestine, and the simplistic solutions that I've seen at the demos I've been at are not likely to either be a solution (pet peeve) or to get them to think about it beyond the fact that the Middle East is a fucked up place where no one should have a gun.

Second group is the sympathizers. These are the people who will not participate in a demo, even one they in theory agree with, because they don't support the other causes that have gotten sucked into the black hole of the demo. You lose far more than I think you gain by including other causes in demos, simply because not everyone who feels the same way about Iraq or the WTO or whatever necessarily and by definition feels the same way about a whole host of other, important, but vaguely-related at best causes.

The third group is the government, but it should be bloody obvious by now that if the government wanted to solve the Palestinian problem, or end the WTO, it would have been done (at least if this term refers to the American government for you.)

And hence, by a tortured and circuitous route, we come to opinion polls, stated some sentences above as the purpose of this entire fucking thing.

My opinion (like how I slipped that in?) is that the government will pay attention to nothing except opinion polls, particularly ones where the respondents are voters. The government (by which I mean Bush and his gang of fuckwit terrorists) is only interested in remaining in power, since it is quite obvious that none of them are capable of holding a more prestigious job than shoeshine boy in the private sector.

So, if the topic is largely re-election (as well as oil and corporations, I am aware of that) then the only people who matter are...voters. They are the ones who will determine the outcome of the whole fucking thing, by being voters, and by saying that they won't stand for this happening in their names...meaning that they'll vote for a different candidate in two (long) years.

That is the sort of tactic that Bush will listen to. For that matter, the oil companies, corporations, and Carlyle Group will have to listen to it as well, since if Bush is not re-elected, none of the fat wads of cash they gave him to overcome basic campaign deficiencies, like not having a brain, will be wasted. The problem is that the President isn't shrewd enough to think that way, so we're gonna have to hope that some bright PR flack figures it out. The only thing this man understands is the loss of his job. That's it, time's up, over, whoah.

Which brings us full circle back to demos and why I don't agree with them. They are meaningless exercises in emotional masterbation. They make us feel good that we are on the side of right, not might, but they will ultimately change nothing. Right now, in my opinion the only things keeping Bush back are that the polls are currently showing that 30-odd percent of Americans would support a war, while 60-odd percent would support one with UN support, and that the longer he delays, the better it'll look (assuming it works out well, no Americans die, and the UN supports it) for the campaign that starts next year.

Demonstrations don't figure into the equation at all. Not at all. Demonstrations look like a collection of half-bright idiots who don't know what they're about. They do not (at least in the eyes of the government) represent the voters. And that is who is going to make a difference. Those are the people who will stop Bush

Final Thought: "Wasn't he great, wearin' his important uniform an' makin' his big speech? Just cryin' out for his place in history...People like that are dangerous, Proinsias. They get yeh killed....I keep me eyes open. It's good advice, Proinsias, an' if yeh want some more-- yeh know I was talkin' about fellas like Pearse, who go on about blood sacrifices an' glory an' beauty in fightin'...? Well, they're the ones yeh fuckin' shoot first."

Preacher 25: Cry Blood, Cry Erin

I name you Beast,

Channon

*If you find such a place, let me know.