Reminder: Dissent is a marathon — not a sprint
A look back at something I wrote about the 2004 Republican Convention
(You can read this post below or listen above — or both!)
The pugilist/convicted rapist Iron Mike Tyson once mused: “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.”
And get hit, everyone will.
When pondering the Anybody-But-Bush protesters who took to the streets of the Big Apple during the Republican National Convention in August 2004, I don’t just mean blows suffered at the hands of an over-zealous policeman. I’m talking about the slings and arrows of “activism” as a life choice.
At the time, I wrote an article that questioned the strategy of only protesting the Republicans when the Democrats are barely distinguishable. I asked: “Where was the planned-for-months-in-advance outrage at the Democratic Convention in Boston last month? The Hitler mustaches? The warnings about fascism? The cataloging of candidate crimes?”
I also pondered the efficacy of “anti-authority types submitting to New York City’s demands for polite opposition restricted to a pre-determined venue.” Yes, the NYPD uses barricades to set up what they un-ironically call “free speech zones.”
With Occupy Wall Street, we sardonically labeled those areas “freedom cages.”
Summing up in my 2004 article, I declared I might skip town during the convention. The result of my stance was a predictable mix of misinterpretation by design, overreaction, and personal attacks (still plenty of that going around today).
Most interesting was the righteousness. Individuals much younger than I essentially branded me a traitor and scoffed at my absence. My commitment and activist “credentials” were being seriously questioned . . . as it were.
Fine. I’ve heard much worse and my skin is NYC-thick.
Yet, although I’m aware of how sincere some of the demonstrators were, I kept hearing a line from The Clash over and over in my head: “I believe in this and it’s been tested by research: He who fucks nuns will later join the church.”
Even in the face of urgent issues, dissent is a marathon — not a sprint. Activism (not virtue signaling) is not about hating one politician or one party. It is holistic.
A handful of those twenty-somethings making clever Dick and Bush jokes may have eventually cultivated a more nuanced understanding of the “system” but, sadly, most lost faith and focus. Most embraced compromise and denial. They are surely wearing masks and declaring their pronouns today.
Besides, what did my youthful critics know of my own choices and sacrifices as they judged my words? Sure, I’m not digging ditches in Myanmar and I have no desire to overstate my meager hardships, but how many of those who paraded through Manhattan for a few hours on a Sunday in 2004 stayed the course, evolved, and maintained an open mind over the next few decades when, as Tyson warned, they got hit — over and over?
How many stuck to the plan?
Reality: Carrying a sign when you’re 20 rarely if ever translates to remaining steadfast into your 40s and beyond.
One of the issues I have had with the idea of protest is related to something Kropotkin said about the failure of most revolutions, in The Conquest of Bread, that the revolutionaries don't plan for feeding the people. The revolution happens, everything shuts down, the people starve, and before too long they no longer support the revolution.
We Americans seem to take this further. We protest without bothering to generate support for any revolution.
A lot, maybe all, of the Pronoun People missed something very important growing up.
By the time I was nine, a series of disappointments with yo-yos convinced me that advertising was mostly bullshit and the people who regurgitated the advertising were chumps, at best. The following years added many institutions and practices to the bullshit list. It's difficult to go wrong rejecting them. You can mess up the rejection process, of course, or not go far enough, but it's still a better path. Unfortunately, not many people are willing to take that very simple, self-protective step. They have what looks like a masochistic need to be chumped. Maybe it's the only way they can have social contacts. How sad. And how evil, too, now that that's being exploited at a rate and to an extent that is massively dangerous.