| Saturday, January 18, 2003 |
02:51 - What a Day
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So I spent the day today out with friends-- hiking and taking photos, seeking out interesting restaurants, and hanging around with the guys while they drew comics and let me write sarcastic commentary in the panel boundaries. The evening's auditory accompaniment was mostly hours of insane laughter.
But it started out not too auspiciously; a peek at one friend's blog (which I won't link here) showed me his ultra-clever juxtaposition of Bush's head with a compost heap ("the only post Bush is fit for"). So I was morose and tight-lipped for a good half an hour, until I managed to put it out of my mind with an effort of will, as well as the thought that in San Francisco and DC and Europe and Iraq and the West Bank and Syria and everywhere, every last gunport of the knee-jerk anti-war, anti-Bush activism machine would today be flung wide open. And yet I somehow knew that it would turn out to be so incoherent, vapid, morally shallow, and generally based on nothing more than inane slogans ("Bush iz st00pid!!!11!``") as to be unlikely to really put forth any real unified platform that meant anything. (Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that I was up in San Francisco last night, discovering afresh the hell-for-any-kind-of-motor-vehicle-that-isn't-a-bus that is Market Street, trapped at each no-left-turn-here arrow while trying desperately to find a way to get left, with nothing to do but look at the signs exhorting participants to the coming rally that would convene there in the morning, and to listen to NPR's coverage of the Freedom Riders heading up to DC from Mississippi. They passed the phone around the bus, from a guy who thinks Bush is a shrieking monkey who obviously can't tie his own shoelaces, to a girl who opposes war because violence is bad and stuff, and plus she has a husband in the army, to a 60-year-old lady who is convinced that there are better ways to solve our problems than fisticuffs. The interviewer tried to pose some interesting questions, like why the hell they're riding a bus to the nation's capital to wave signs demanding love and respect for Saddam Hussein and the deposition of our own President, when we know exactly what kind of hell we'd be condeming the Iraqi people to if we did nothing; but their best response was that those kinds of things were best dealt with at the political level, not by blowing up innocent civilians. And then they hung up.)
So I had the feeling that the world would have its little day of insanity, but then it would end, and everything would go back to normal. And I was able to relax and have fun for the remainder of the day.
So it turns out that the protests turned out pretty much as I expected; a bunch of sloganeers out for a good ol' protestin' day like they heard their parents had back in the Sixties, with such oh-so-clever sentiments as GOD BLESS IRAQ and NO BLOOD FOR OIL. The best that can be said for them, apparently, is that some of them pledged to be open to the idea of war if proof of Iraq's threat were produced. That's the most coherent facet of the whole movement, and the whole movement's credibility will hinge on how that facet gleams when it's turned toward the light. Put up or shut up, in other words.
Meanwhile, France appears to have found a new way to surrender-- devoting tons of government money towards subsidies of mosques, trading the separation of church and state for a little bit of appeasement. Oh, how that warms the cockles of my heart.
All this-- the protests everywhere, the slogans, the vitriol, Saddam's speech thanking his friends on Market Street and the Mall, and so on are contingent upon the US being wrong about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction and a secret nuclear program. We must be wrong, after all. We in the US have such a terrible track record when it comes to choosing sides on big, world-altering issues. We were wrong about rule by royalty, choosing the losing side of democracy. We were wrong about crushing the Confederacy and ending slavery. We were wrong about fascism, it would seem. We were wrong about communism. We continue to be wrong about global markets, socialism, gun freedom, and all those other little things we continue to be so misguided about, while the rest of the world-- who has country-by country made so many right choices over the years when it came to things like Hitler and Stalinism-- gets to lecture us sternly on our inexperienced, presumptuous ways. We can't possibly know what we're doing. Just because the world has eventually come to agree on our values and decisions in just about every major area doesn't mean a thing, you see; America is still wrong, and the rest of the world is right. Because they said so, that's why.
And they say Iraq is peachy-keen. Saddam doesn't have any weapons of mass destruction, they say; and besides, even if he did, which they're not saying he does, he deserves them! Hey, someone's got to give those Yanks the come-uppance they've been cruising for all these many years? Someone's got to take the wind out of their sails! Who do they think they are, traipsing in here and showing the world how a nation goes about being successful and prosperous without ever having to undergo a violent revolution or reversal of any of the basic principles upon which it was founded, ever since the first President took office? Just because it's unique among nations in being the same sort of country today as it was in 1776, does that mean it's doing anything right? Shyeah. As if.
Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction, Cowboy Buddy. Trust us.
Well, we say: No.
I tell ya. If only the world were in more capable hands than ours, huh?
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