Just as Obama said to a minister that deciding whether
life begins at conception is “above my pay grade,” I would not dare
to predict the results of whatever has happened let alone what the
United States should have done in reaction to the so-called
“protests” in the Middle East and Africa right now: it’s above my
pay grade.
But I do know “protest” when I see it and for the most
part, our American media and chattering class is all too willing to
declare just about anything it deems worthy as “protest” and anyone
in the streets as a “protester.”
Now when I was but a teenager growing up in Washington
D.C. in the late sixties and early seventies, our city was the
epicenter of “protests,” mostly for (black) civil rights and
against the Vietnam undeclared war.
From the Moratorium to
End the War in Vietnam in November, 1969 to “May Day,”
in 1971, as a typical teenager at the time, I joined in what were
termed as “protests.” Now the former was a peaceful
protest: peaceful to the point of boredom and any effort by
breakaway “protesters” to incite violence was booed down by the
vast majority of the marchers. The latter was not a
“protest”; it was a call to “civil disobedience” if not outright
violence. The former had very, very few arrests: the latter
resulted in thousands of arrests, some justified, some
not.
My “arrest” at May Day was not: I was among the many
stragglers who found themselves simply walking on the streets of
Washington (I was walking home through Georgetown to my family’s
home in Cleveland Park) who were summarily picked up by U.S. Park
Police and the Metropolitan Washington Police Department’s
notorious “CDU” (Civil Disobedience Unit) and taken near RFK
Stadium. I had only been there to cheer on Sonny Jurgensen and
Billy Kilmer at Redskins games.
Although many of my “comrades” at May Day participated in
violence or civil disobedience (such as attempting to block roads
and bridges), I did nothing illegal except perhaps maybe smoke pot
and listen to the Jefferson Airplane on The Mall. I was doing
absolutely nothing disorderly walking on Wisconsin Avenue in May of
1971 when a paddy wagon pulled up, two U.S. Park Police jumped out,
opened up the doors and threw my longhaired butt in the back with
about a dozen other people. We all swapped stories and they were
all the same: all we had been doing was walking on the streets of
D.C. All of us changed our names to “John Doe”.
Now people get arrested all the time, most often
intentionally, at so-called “protests” in the United States: from
Members of Congress at the South African embassy, to pro-lifers, to
gay members of the U.S. military, some of whom recently chained
themselves to the White House fence. But it is most often reported
if not depicted by the media that those people were arrested for
“protesting” this or that: that is not true.
There are no laws that I know of that make it a crime to
simply protest: there are laws that make it a crime to trespass,
chain yourself to government property, impede traffic, or assemble
in an unlawful manner.
How ironic is it that the media proudly reports that
President Obama — ever the eternal community organizer — is
speaking out on behalf of those in Egypt and elsewhere who are
“protesting,” even if some may not just be protesting but inciting
or participating in violence (much of the televised coverage I have
seen has shown both the police and the “protesters”
engaging in violence), yet the same media depicts the past year of
Tea Party protests as some kind of anarchist, ruthless,
violence-inspiring gathering of uniformed thugs. How much did the
media focus in on one or two people who showed up packing at a Tea
Party rally and, gasp, those horrible, racist signs that depicted
the President in an unflattering manner?
To the best of my knowledge, there were no arrests for
violence nor any actual gunfire at any Tea Party rallies, the areas
where the rallies took place were left spotless versus the piles of
trash and garbage left after Obama’s inauguration and Ed Schultz’s
MSNBC Rules Rally.
The one Tea Party rally I observed in
person (I am neither a Tea Party member nor necessarily a
supporter) was populated by middle-aged folks who for the most part
looked like tourists from Kansas wanting to know where the Vietnam
Memorial or a water fountain were able to be located. Contrast that
with the annual World Bank/IMF “protesters” who show up in
Washington and elsewhere with masks, work gloves, lawyers and
chains, ready to rock and roll with the police.
Whether or not the “protests” that have taken place in
Egypt will satisfy the bloodthirsty American media’s litmus test
for legendary violence and brutality (the now proverbial Tiananmen
Square slaughter) is anybody’s guess: to some, the existing
government’s reaction to the “protests” already has and will far
surpass Commie China’s response. I just know that what is going on
now has far surpassed “protest”: it has become armed rebellion. The
real question is who will be providing the means toward armed
revolution and for what purpose: will it be the Muslim Brotherhood,
Iran’s secret police, or a truly democratic, peace-loving group of
patriots.
Remember: Iran’s Islamic revolution started out with
kidnapping and “protests” and ended up with a tyrannical, Islamic
based government. Will whatever replaces these toppled governments
be much better and will they in turn allow future “protests” the
media will embrace?
