Another demonstration under the "tea bag" banner, ten days after the tax day events. This one in Woodbury, CT, a small town at the zone where suburban development merges into rural countryside. A 'red' town in a 'blue' state. This protest was more formal than the demonstration in New Milford ten days ago, with scheduled speakers, an audio van, and a singer/songwriter who did a contemporary protest song. The town is an antiques center and Saturday is a big tourist/shopping day with a large flea market that draws a lot of traffic. About half of the two hour event was devoted to standing at the edge of Main Street, holding signs up for the passing cars, with some honking of horns and pumping of fists out windows in response. There was no sign of counter-demonstration at all, other than one passing driver who chanted "O-BA-MA, O-BA-MA" as he passed.
I arrived ahead of the scheduled start, though a few dozen people were already there. An older gentleman approached and asked, "are you with us?" I told him I was there as an independent citizen. "Not with the CIA?"—"If I were CIA, you wouldn't know I was here." He laughed, then got to the PA system and announced "There's a fellow here taking pictures. He says he's here as an ordinary citizen, not FBI or CIA." Several times over the next hour someone would ostentatiously pull out a P&S or cell phone camera and point it at me. So I pointed my camera back. I overheard someone in the crowd tell a companion, "they are taking all our pictures and sending them straight down to Washington, DC, over the internet." Other people complained that no crews from the regional TV stations had shown up. There were a couple photographers carrying hefty shooting outfits (who for some reason didn't get an announcement over the PA system) but I didn't recognize any shooters from the nearby cities' daily papers.
6 comments:
I suppose all these people were for the Patriot Act. I'm afraid we've entered the age of demagoguery and paranoia.
Anon,
What I saw was a group of people who were angry, fearful, and at base terribly misinformed. A very dangerous combination.
A fat set of papers about the horrors of socialized medicine, (all incorrect nonsense) was handed out (of course I took one). It is so filled with errors and outright lies that I grew tired trying to parse it later. As I was leaving, a tiny child, perhaps 5 or 6 years old, kept trying to push another copy of this in my hand. I told her I already had one, but she was programmed to not take no for an answer. I found it quite disturbing.
The only sign that had any cleverness was "I'll take my freedom, you keep the change," and that's still unthinking. I've been reading about the world economies in the 20's and 30's, which certainly proved that economic uncertainty easily leads to political instability.
scott
Scott,
It happens to be the 100th anniversary this year of The Progressive magazine and they've put out a special issue that is all excerpts from the archives. It is fascinating to read articles from the 1920s warning of the danger to come from the vast power of financial elites and the terrible inequality between the pay of workers and "industrialists." Then you see the pie chart, and the discrepancy is smaller than in recent years.
People at the rally were yelling and carrying signs about "the proposed 50% tax rate" (fiction, of course) but I doubt there was anyone present whose federal taxes would be raised by the actual proposed tax plan (they'd have to be clearing over $250,000 a year). State and local taxes will be going through the roof because of the governor's plans (all regressive taxation and fees that place the highest burden on the poorest citizens) but the anger was all directed toward Washington.
Astonishing (and a bit frightening) to see actions like this even after the election. But teabagging seems to be popular, the lack of good reason no obstacle.
But a certain discrepancy in recognition of the reasons for the current crisis and modifications in personal political preferences you find here in Europe as well... Learning from the past is still as unpopular as it ever was, probably because it mainly has to do with listening or reading, sitting and thinking, which is per se not really popular. Better give us simple or simplistic solutions, slogans even better...
Marcus, I'm afraid you are right that learning from the past isn't popular, and it also isn't easy when large and popular "news sources" engage in distortion and outright fabrications.
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