Now that this shambling atrocity exhibition of a convention is over, your Curmudgeon heartily encourages all those who came to the area for the event to pack your crap up and go the hell home. To the GOP especially- take the delegates, lackeys, media minions, and whatever ghouls and other sundry malevolent things in your fell entourage, and don't return.
If the above sounds a bit like a louder and grumpier version of "Damn Kids! Stay off my lawn!", then so be it; this Curmudgeon doesn't particularly care. The twin cities area may not be the enlightened wonderland as some Minnesotans see it, but it requires no stretch of the imagination to know when things are not being left for the better.
Okay, now that the above has been said- and it did need to be said- there some thoughts I have in the wake of the RNC.
If You Build It, They Will Come: There was a certain amount of self-fulfilling prophecy going on with both law enforcement and the protesters. This worked to the detriment of everyone: whether connected directly, indirectly or tenuously tangentially.
The Ramsey County and St Paul area got a $50 million fund to handle the security for the convention. A closed circuit security camera and microphone network for the area was installed, which gave the opportunity for a central command response. Detention facilities were enhanced, as was riot squad equipment and training for the massive amounts of extra law enforcement bodies. Apparently, some of this money went to a covert infiltration unit, as was shown in the pre-emptive raids on private residences days prior to the actual convention. In short, law enforcement took the cue to run with this as though they'd be facing a war front situation.
It should be no surprise, then, that with all this hammer-intensive training the law enforcement saw most problems as massive, throbbing nails.
Now to be sure, the protester side of the equation also marched right into a parallel trap. There is a difference between getting arrested as an act of civil disobedience over a specific issue and just getting arrested because you pissed off a cop, and this may have been a lesson lost on some of the left. If the goal was just to get attention (let's face a brutal fact here- there was to be no 'raising a conversation' to be had here), then attention could have been gained sans the arrest-scene.
Had there been a different approach on either- or hell, perhaps even both sides- the whole thing could have been better for all involved. Instead of laying in the Big Brother theme surveillance and the goon squad tactics, what would have happened if law enforcement had opened an active and open liaison with the main protest groups? The whole siege mentality that evolved over the year beforehand could have been avoided.
What if the left had really worked to have a unified message and approach, rather than the 'life's rich pageant'/pastiche/all-inclusive tactic, which left the doors wide open to having any actual message being hijacked?
The final bill for this event, when the last of the lawsuits gets settled some years hence, practically guarantees that the convention will be a net loser for the area and the state's taxpayers who will foot the overage bill for any excesses by law enforcement as well as the bill of any criminals housed in the corrections system. This doesn't even take into account the loss of goodwill the St Paul PD and Ramsey County Sheriff's Department will suffer for the more egregious events during the protests- which will arguably be considerable, and will make their jobs even more daunting.
What do you call an anarchist group whose strength seems to be the FREAKING PR DEPARTMENT? Apparently, the RNC Welcoming Committee... There's something just not right here. I've known anarchists of most any stripe, and nary a one amongst them saw any particular use for prior attention-seeking behaviour. Nor, for that matter, the necessity of a PR Department, to be honest. Flying in the face of all that is this group, the RNC Welcoming Committee, who kicked off their attention seeking ways a year ago. (Public planning of future events a year in advance is another really rare trait in anarchists, just so you know.)
This wasn't just the sort of thing that sought attention if and only if it got noticed, this was loud and conspicuous. Enough so that it captured the attention of a dim bulb like Turkey Flaps Katherine Kersten. Enough so that the group got targeted for infiltration, and (again, very unusual for actual anarchists) infiltrated.
And now, we find out that several of the RNC Welcoming Committee (at this point, one must wonder if they were given cards to carry) are facing with terrorism charges. This tale will no doubt get more strange- up until this development, everything about this group screamed 'false flag operation'.
Note to future actual anarchists: Cops know about Twitter.
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