Dispatch from the Iraq War Protest
I wasn’t planning on covering the Iraq war protest in Eugene yesterday, but I happened to run into it on my way to the office and decided to play “embedded reporter.”
By the time I had arrived at the EMU, there was already a large crowd gathered, hoisting various signs and such. I unfortunately missed Ty Schwoeffermann’s speech and a rap by Ari Lesser, although I imagine both were spectacular. I did, however, make it in time to hear a speech by U of O sociology professor Gregory McLauchlan. The speaker who introduced him noted that McLauchlan “has been a peace and social activist since Berkley.” (And we all know how well that turned out).
McLauchlan was well spoken and articulate, but I got the feeling I could have done just as well by perusing DailyKos or any other liberal blog. His speech was sprinkled with the usual, tired phrases like “blood war for oil” and “war of occupation.” The only quote I took the time to fully write down was regarding John McCain:
“Another candidate says we may have to spend 100 years in Iraq,” McLauchlan said. “That alone should disqualify someone from seeking higher office!” [Cue cheering and applause].
For harping so much on participatory democracy, leftists seem eager to exclude people they don’t like. The crowd ate it up, of course.
After the speech, everybody gathered to march. And what a crowd it was. You could see the distinct groups and factions – the old-guard hippies, the young Obamaniacs, the nappy-ass radicals. People were costumed and adorned in all manner of attire (or the lack thereof).
As the march started to trudge down 13th street, the obligatory, arrhythmic drumming started, accompanied by obligatory, atonal chanting. I estimated that the protest was about two blocks long at most.
I saw a woman pushing a stroller that said “toddler for peace” on it, and I briefly considered having a child for the sole purpose of putting it in a “toddler for war” stroller. At one point a man pelted me with peas, yelling “Peas be unto you!” Another nappy man in a pair of far too large pants was burning sage in a bowl and waving it all over the crowd.
I tried to get some quotes from people about what they actually hoped to accomplish, but all I could gather was the usual metaphysical effluvia. “We’re here to promote peace, not protest war,” one marcher told me. “We need to gather an energy of positiveness.”
The low point for me was walking back through the crowd and seeing a guy trying (and failing) to sing “Get Up, Stand Up” a capella through a megaphone.
However, my mood was considerably lightened at the corner of 11th and High by the appearance of Samba Ja, a local samba percussion ensemble. The march turned from a dreary protest into a politically themed dance party. Much like a real dance party, I couldn’t bear most of the people, but at least I could enjoy the groove.
The march finally reached its destination at the old federal building in downtown. There was a multitude of booths for left-leaning organizations, such as the Lane County Democrats, the Bus Project and the ACLU. There was also (sigh) another round of speakers. I tried to stay and listen, but my mood was back in the gutter after Samba Ja stopped playing. I briefly heard one of the speakers congratulating everybody for coming out and participating because “that’s what makes democracy work.”
At that point, I thought back to the march; I remembered a man running up to people and yelling “How do you expect to stop this war if you don’t shout it out!?” I realized then what irks me so much about protests. It’s not so much the goals (although it sometimes is); it’s the utter lack of grounding in reality.
The Left in America has been relying on the same, unsuccessful tactics for the past 45 years, and they’ve been getting the same, unsuccessful results. You’d think they would have learned by now that putting plastic fairy wings on their dog and walking down the street with a carboard sign won’t stop the war. One of the post-march speakers remarked that he couldn’t believe he was still protesting this war five years later. I can believe it.
Protests like yesterday’s don’t actually do anything besides providing a momentary catharsis for those involved. Sorry everybody, but no matter how much you chant and sing, we don’t live in a participatory democracy; we live in a representative republic. The war will go on until victory is achieved or it is no longer politically expedient.
It’s okay, though. Just put on your inflatable sumo outfit, grab a sign that says “Bush = Hitler” and pretend you’re saving the world.
I’d read Heilbroner’s “The Worldly Philosophers”. It’s a bit old, but interesting and essential.
Your right, I am losing the plot. Especially with the Friedman reference, that link I mentioned is on Cj’s Zeitgeist post, not this one. Regardless of whether you have fealty to Friedman or not, he is still an incredibly influential economic thinker and worth discussing. Not on this post though.
For the fault of our capitalist system, I’ll refer you to the Economic Policy Institute. There you can find information about the pressures that exist such as decline of real wages, rising health care costs, and increased economic insecurity. That whole bit about the family in relation to these pressures is that in dealing with them, parents must give up time that they would otherwise choose to spend with their children being parents. Your father made the time, you were lucky that he chose to do so. But not all parents are able to make that choice as they are busy working overtime in order to make ends meet.
As for what government could do to support of us and our families, well maybe it wouldn’t have changed things for you. Maybe it wouldn’t have changed things for me either, but those are only particular cases. What counts is the effect on all families in general. Personal experience and judgement warrants further criticism, but not outright dismissal. I’m not sure if that was your intent or not, that’s why I’m bringing it up.
And as for paying for college, that takes money. Money is something that most families find increasingly hard to come by. A glance at the latest statistics on college graduate debt should be sufficient evidence that families are having an increasingly difficult time of providing for their children’s education.
But all of that is really just a fraction of the reasons I believe capitalism is responsible for the general ignorance and laziness of the masses. That has to do with the psychological and sociological effects of the division of labor and the distortion of our social norms by consumer culture. Division of labor is good. It is far more productive than the pre-capitalist craft industries. But it comes at a price of weakened social bonds.
Since this is a blog comment and not my economics thesis, again I’ll just refer you to other sources. Just pick up some intro text books on psychology and read up emotional development, cognitive dissonance, and rationalization. The more psych the better, but those are the ones I believe are most pertinent to how the human mind handles the stresses of life. Do the same for sociology, check out how and why people interact with each other and how that has changed due to our economic system over the years.
But that’s a lot of work. Instead I would recommend reading just one book that they promote at the business school, The Paradox of Choice. That paradox being that our economy seems fail our subjective needs in proportion to its ability to provide for our objective needs. To put that another way, the more choices (and freedom to choose) that we have, the less happy we become.
They like it at the business school because it gives a perspective that makes people better managers and marketers in particular, and just better communicators and team members in general. For you it will help explain where I’m coming from, though I’ll doubt it will convince you.
It’s spring break, so I have some time to read. If you have a book to recommend that you believe will impart to me some understanding that you think I might be lacking, I’ll consider reading it. No pop economics please. I’ve read The World is Flat, Naked Economics and Freakanomics. I don’t think I can handle another one. I’d prefer something with more substance and credibility, and hopefully something that can be read in a week.
Fuck it, let them do what they want if it makes them happy, as long as they’re not hurting anyone else. Well, they may hurt my head (or maybe it’s just the patchouli smell), but I don’t think that quite counts.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to watch some Penn & Teller.
You’re pretty lucky that your dad found the time. My point is that finding the time is made difficult by the financial pressures faced by the majority of families in our country. These financial pressures have significantly increased over the last 10 years due to the policies that define our economic system.
A few of these pressures which I’m referring to are wages that hardly keep up with inflation, rising healthcare and housing, and rising tuition. Even those that have not had increased difficulty in making ends meet face greater insecurity. All of this eats up people’s time because they have to spend more time working in order to make up the difference. In short, spending that quality time with the family ends up getting sacrificed in the interest of providing for the family financially. Without that quality time, children are less likely to develop into mature and capable adults.
My father didn’t have time for me. Would government encouragement have caused him to be any different? I can’t say, but he would have had the opportunity to be different.
Now the question isn’t about our childhoods in particular. It is which childhood is more representative of the majority of families and what policies can address the concerns that face those families.
As for the choice I mentioned, I think the average debt carried by college graduates tells us that parents aren’t able to provide as much as is needed for their children’s education.
On the topic of community I think I see what I held as self evident that wasn’t obvious: the benefits to the individual from being a part of a community. These benefits are not limited to protection, in fact, that is the least of it. The primary benefits derived from the community are happiness and identity. The most significant source of satisfaction in life is derived from our interactions with other people and through those same interactions that we define ourselves. There are always exceptions, of course, but there always are.
You might want to reserve judgement on that and ask for more support. I won’t be able to give it well, however, since I’m not as studied up on psychology or sociology as I am on economics. Can it suffice to say that it is these interactions that determine our social norms and those norms inform our behavior?
So our ignorant protesters and their unproductive shenanigans I bet are that way in part because of our economic model. Being raised on more Seasame Street and Nintendo instead of committed parents have left them equipped with weak norms. So they invent their own. They invent and pursue their specialized form of protest aesthetic. Most of the protesters don’t have a real concept of what is happening in Iraq (this doesn’t include veterans or people with family or friends in the military). The reason I quit protesting is that what I saw was more about having a good time beating drums and using narcotics than any meaningful concern for the war.
With stronger norms I argue that they would show more concern with the reality of the war and figuring out something constructive to do about it.
My comments are way too long. I should just get my own blog to spout of my semi-formed opinions, huh?
Let
I’m suffering from a lack of time as well. Ah finals week, the time to catch up on all that studying that one meant to do but didn’t.
Thanks for helping to clarify my point and saving me from appearing like I am calling back to the halcyon days of yore. Pre-capitalist societies were ugly, low life expectancies and heavy labor. That’s exactly what I am lamenting. When children did go out into the fields to toil it helped them develop the character traits of a responsible member of the community. Something that Super Mario Brothers does not do.
We shouldn’t try to go backwards and send kids out to bring in the harvest with mom and dad. But we should try to create a situation in which people not only want to spend more time with their children, but can. Let’s say that we wanted to be ideal fathers and read to our kids at night, take them out to baseball games, and join the PTA board. How can we realistically do that and hold down a job that will enable us to send little suzy and little joey off to college when the time comes? We can’t unless we are extremely lucky, our unfree capitalist system is at fault for creating the financial pressures that force us to make that choice.
As far as the compulsion to self-centeredness you are exactly right, it has always existed. Communities have historically been the counter balance to this by creating and enforcing norms of behavior that are conducive to maintaining a societal framework for us to live and thrive in.
Our consumer culture that has resulted from our particular capitalist model leaves our children saving Princess Toadstool or attacking ogres with +3 vorpal swords. That is fine as far as it goes, but it just does not create or enforce the norms needed to maintain our societal frame work. In the absence of meaningful child-rearing, our nintendos, 20 sided dice, and other toys encourage laziness and ignorance of the world around. This is where we get our supply idealistic protesters living in a fantasy world where “thinking peace” or singing Bob Marly songs is thought to be all it takes for something significant to happen.
This might be a bit semantic, but remember that Adam Smith advocated self-interest, not self-centeredness. One may pursue his or her personal best interests while still respecting the right and ability for others to do the same. Our capitalist system requires us to not be self-centered (personal good regardless of everyone else) when we seek our needs/interests.
By the way, did you get a chance to watch the Naomi Klein video that I linked to earlier? Friedman just trips me out. He can say something intelligent like “Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.” And then he advocates “economic shock therapy.” Or how about another of his popular quotes “I am favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it’s possible.”
One last thing too. Child labor like you described is still a part of our system. Head on down to the Mexican/US border and you’ll see plenty of it.
Sorry if I didn
We obviously have some differences of opinion on how markets should function, but in regards to topic of protesters we agree fairly well.
Sorry if I didn’t pull off the sarcasm well on my “NeoCons = Nazis.” Go back and read it again keeping in mind that I’m attempting to portray myself as an ignorant fool in order to criticize ignorant fool protesters.
Unrestrained Capitalism… a phrase that definitely should be qualified if it is to be useful for any discussion. I won’t attempt to go further than saying that we do not have a “free system,” but one that is heavily influenced by the corporate lobby. I would like to address the link between capitalism and ignorant laziness.
Capitalism focuses on the individual to the detriment of the community. The invisible hand and Pareto efficiency encourages people to separate into small, loosely knit social units. Before capitalism took off, we had the village and the extended family. These strong and plentiful social bonds were whittled down to the nuclear family of the fifties. Dad brought home the bacon and Mom kept house raising fine, upstanding children to grow up and pursue the American dream.
This has further deteriorated now that the average family depends on two full time wage earners. The kids are shunted off to under-funded public schools, daycare, and television, not raised by people interested in them and their development into adults, but by workers making a paycheck or TV show with ads selling them Tickle-me Elmos.
So the link that I am awkwardly trying to get at is the compulsion capitalism creates for people to do things other than raise their children to be critical and responsible citizens. There are quite a few exceptions of course, but many children are left to develop as they will with little meaningful direction.
Capitalism has brought many benefits and I do not advocate getting rid of it. But it must be acknowledged that it has had adverse sociological and behavioral effects of selfcenteredness and hedonistic consumerism. Policy should address this by by finding ways to support and develop strong communities, especially while we are increasing economic efficiency through technology and outsourcing.
Oh, and that policy shouldn’t be anything like a command economy, I’m using the word community not communist. I’m thinking more like Flexicurity, something that enables people to cope with market forces. That would be better than some ill-considered, meaningless law that will just give liberal politicians a chance to build leftist cred by denouncing conservative, small government types.
I’ve never quite understood the supposed connection between ignorant fools and “unrestrained capitalism.” It’s simply “understood” that there is in fact such a link, but it’s not a link that’s particularly obvious. After all, in a free, capitalist system such as our own, any person who wishes to educate themself about any given subject need only to visit the local library, book store, or even take a class on the subject at the local university.
This is in stark contrast to un-free systems, where people are not even afforded the opportunity to educate themselves beyond what the government allows to be published and distributed. In any case, one need only look to the land of “restrained” capitalism, Europe, to see millions of people who’re just as “ignorantly opinionated” and lazy as any American.
To put it succinctly, if someone can’t be bothered to educate themselves past the slogans, mantras, and superficial aspects of their supposed ideology, the blame can be laid only at their own feet, not at the doorstep of big, bad capitalism which, if truth be told, is more than willing to sell them books by Noam Chomsky as well as William Buckley for a side-by-side comparison.
You mention neocons, for instance. How many people who casually throw around the phrase “neocon” have actually bothered to learn what neo-conservatism actually is? We both know the answer to that question is “a diminishingly small number of people.” That isn’t of course, because “capitalism” has connived to make sure that books explaining the tenets of neoconservatism are nowhere to be found… it has everything to do with individuals being unwilling to educate themselves.
In a sense, that’s why people loathe capitalism so much: it puts the blame (or responsibility, if you please) for the results of their own actions on their own shoulders. Sometimes, that’s an uncomfortable place to be.
Combine this sort of willful ignorance with a community that prizes “dissent” and “protest” above all else, and you’ve got a recipe for a “protest movement” that exists only to provide an outlet for its members to vent emotionally, which goes some way toward explaining why people fetishize “peace” as an abstract concept, without having much idea about what it means. It’s a sad kind of alchemy, albeit one that’s far too in love with itself and its self-proclaimed moral superiority to ever attempt to tackle the world as it stands. Instead, the “peace” movement continues to scream and shout in vain, demanding that the world conform to the fantasy.
You got one there in the lack of grounding in reality. Well almost. The protesters in the sixties were facing drafts, national guardsmen, police dogs, firehouses and other assorted physical threats. That kept them in reality. It was after they lost the sympathetic causes to protest for that they lost the solidarity in their activism.
The thing that gets me is the protester aesthetic. It’s not a protest if you don’t play Bob Marley and do some silly stunts to freak out the squares, after all. Who has time to actually study up on the issues and develop a viable solution? I used “Bush = Hitler” in the last three marches man, I gotta come up with something new or I’ll lose my hip activist cred! Maybe “NeoCons = Nazis.”
Why is this so? I blame unrestrained capitalism. It has subverted our societies standards of integrity, responsibility to the community, and meaningful action. As a result we are shallow, ignorantly opinionated, and lazy, thus making our protests into pale (and often insulting) imitations of demonstrations from the past or other parts of the world.
What tends to bug me the most is the apparent lack of understanding about what “peace” actually entails. How does pulling troops out of Iraq really promote the cause of “peace”? Did leaving Vietnam bring “peace”? What folks really seem to mean in most of these cases isn’t so much “peace” as “isolationism.”
In any case, such protests are much more about inflating the sense of moral superiority for those involved than they are about achieving any actual goals. It’s fashionable to some people to pretend that they’re fighting some twilight struggle against a repressive government, but as recent events in Tibet highlight nicely, it’s nothing more than posing and posturing. Hell, there were signs at the LTD bus stops days in advance warning riders that the stops would be closed due to a “scheduled parade”.
If the stakes were high — hell, if there were any stakes at all — the people involved in these marches would stay at home. Risking something to bring about real change isn’t what the marches are all about — and anyone who thinks they’re on the level of the Civil Rights marches in the 60’s or even the “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine clearly thinks a little too much of themselves.
No, these marches are about getting out on a weekend and make-believing like you’re important with a bunch of other like-minded people in a carnivalesque atmosphere. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
But it’s basically an act of narcissism rather than one of any political significance.
Good article. I especially like the “Bush = Hitler” piece. Absolutely true!