November 7, 2004
What I learned by missing Meet The Press
If it's Sunday, it ain't Meet The Press anymore.
I've been trying to cut back on my political news intake since the election, partly to try to keep my spirits up and partly because there are other things that are important to me that I should be spending more time on. So this morning, instead of plunking down with Tim and his merry band of sycophants and idiots, I went out to Dupont Circle for a walk. Some people (I'm guessing LaRouchies, since they've moved their neighborhood base of operations from the Q Street Metro entrance to the circle itself) had chalked up the sidewalk. I saw it last night and remembered to bring my camera:
There was also all sorts of talk of secession, hippie anti-war screeds and the like. Some group of people took time out of their day to write lefty (if a little nutty) messages in an area frequented nearly entirely by yuppie liberals.
Wednesday night at around 10, another group of nutjobs walked down Q Street chanting the same mindless anti-war slogans that have probably done more harm than good in terms of keeping our troops out of harm's way. What did they accomplish? They distracted me from South Park. That's all.
Most days, a group of two or three ragged looking people set up in front of the liqour store on Connecticut Ave., selling bumper stickers that say "Stop Bitching, Start a Revolution." What could be more antithetical to the stated goal on the stickers than selling bumper stickers?
To widen the scope a bit, take these people. Every year, they get arrested protesting a government-run school in Georgia that trains South American death squads. Now, I'm as anti-death squad as the next urban liberal, but I don't really see what good they're doing by going down there every year. The only people who hear about these protests are the idiots who read Indymedia for their daily fix of feel good protesting and anti-Israel blather. The people who fund the things they protest aren't paying attention, nor do they have to. All those nights in jail spent for the sake of complaining that they arrested you for speaking your mind could have been spent assembling yard signs, phone banking or even running for a small local office to work up the ladder.
The left in America is having its lifeblood sapped from it by wasting its energy on actions designed to make the participants feel good about doing something, not to gain power. Power enables change - they have it, we don't. Chanting in the streets of a 90/10 blue neighborhood won't help.
I doubt Meet The Press would have enlightened me on that.
Posted by rj3 at November 7, 2004 2:57 PM
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