American Patrol

In watching the coverage of this summer's town meeting protests by the Fox 'n' Rush inspired and lobbyist bankrolled Tea Bag set, I have been bothered by an overwhelming sense of deja vu. While this in itself is something already seen, an entirely understandable consequence of living in a country whose political culture devolved into cyclical repetition of the same damn things over and over again early in my lifetime, I could not shake the feeling that I was missing something specific.

It finally came to me sometime last week-- same vu, different perspectif, specifically one from the other side of the aisle. The tactics I was seeing in the town hall meetings were the selfsame tactics used by the earnest youngsters (and the aging leftover hangers on who mentored them)of what passed for the campus left back at my dear old alma mater in the Golden Age of PC. In the late '80s and early 90's, speakers representing conservative viewpoints were often treated to disruptions, shout-downs (chant with me now-- "Sexist, racist, anti-gay, (fill in the blank), go away..."), Godwinist rhetoric (complete with little magic marker moustaches), and crowd packing all too reminiscent of meeting places in Democratic constituencies circa August 2009.

Differences abound, of course, apart from the facile "we were right, they are wrong." For one thing, as usual, today's right has it all over yesterday's left in terms of money and organization-- funny what those representing the haves tend to get. And, of course, the scale is entirely different-- media was smaller back in the day, and tended to be limited to local print and short segments on the local (broadcast) tv news, and the internet was still pretty much a collection of bbs and newsgroups. Still, the impetus behind the action-- shutting down a dialogue instead of having one, stifling an argument instead of winning it-- is pretty much the same.

I tend to get into trouble when I write about protest politics, but reams of feedback from the activistas telling me they'll be out on the barricades saving the world while I sit on my bourgeois backside typing hasn't really changed my mind one bit about it's basic nature, which I consider this-- reductive (chants and placard slogans do not an argument make), inefficient(the larger the protest, the more diffuse the message, and the more likely the messengers are to be simple attention seekers-- cf Seattle and Quebec City), and often ineffectual, a tactic of last resort that is too often pushed to the fore because it's kinetic, flashy, and fun and provides an immediate outlet.

Dismayed as I have been by the lack of leftist response during the "town hells," as this summer's political silly season draws to a close I have become more convinced that, in the final analysis, the protests of the right have done more to discredit their views and reputations than busloads of counterprotestors could have done. Give 'em enough rope, hell, they brought in lumber and tools and built their own scaffolds. That said, I anxiously await the pro-reform march on Washington coming up-- I'll be sitting here on my bourgeois backside hoping no one blows it.