Another day, another demo.

Give Peace a Chance

by [yawn] Wednesday, Aug. 16, 2006

Well meaning, but unimaginative, efforts by local anti-warriors fail once again to effect foreign policy one iota.

On Saturday, August 12, San Francisco's once vaunted anti-war community engaged in yet another spirited, but completely and totally ineffectual demonstration. Meanwhile, the wars we protest continue unabated. Even the minuscule handful of us who realized we were wasting our time attended anyway, because after all, we too lack the will and the courage it would take to have a real effect on the course of human events. So instead, we protest. We demonstrate our displeasure. We march around in circles. We are ignored by the powers that be. We go home. We pretend we have done our duty. We wait for someone to call for another demo.

Over and over and over we do this, just as if we were really so stupid as to not realize how ineffectual it is. Nobody is that stupid. Our ineffectuality is as plain as day. Deep in our hearts we know it is not stupidity that holds us back. It is cowardice. We are too cowardly to engage in the only activities that could actually put an end to imperialism, strikes, sabotage and open rebellion. That stuff is dangerous. So we play it safe and merely pretend to be in opposition. We make a lot of noise. We delude ourselves into believing we are making a difference. We go home feeling self righteous. Nothing changes. Again.

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
-- Einstein

The signs, the chants, the speeches and the attendees were so depressingly familiar that for a moment I entertained the possibility that I was really at the last demo, or the one before that or the one before that, but had somehow fallen through some sort of time warp. All around me were the same signs, same chants, same people, same obsolete analysis. The only thing different was the date.

There were a couple hundred counter demonstrators, and a couple thousand of us. The cops kept us apart. We let them. How utterly unsurprising. Equally unsurprising was the shamefully low attendance. What happened in Civic Center on Saturday was San Francisco's anti-war rally. What happened in the rest of town was the pro-war rally. All one needs to do to see how "progressive" San Francisco really feels about the wholesale slaughter of Arabs is to count heads at both rallies and do some simple arithmetic.

Even in San Francisco, most Americans only take interest wars in which American blood might be shed. The rest of the world can bleed to death, and we could care less. That's the American way. We are by far and away the most self centered people on earth. We are also short sighted, narrow minded and easily distracted by sport and celebrity. It is only a matter of time before our indifference to self evident realities comes back to haunt us. A case can be made that it already has. The body count fails to belie it. Even the bloody quicksand of Iraq fails to arouse enough home front ardor to force a withdrawal. The Iraqis are going to have to free Iraq from occupation without help from the American anti-war movement. The American anti-war movement is all talk and no action, i.e., totally useless.

We are also deeply (small "c") conservative. Change scares us. Even the left is more afraid of its own imagination than it is of the inevitable consequences of its failure to evolve. I spoke to many people in Civic Center on Saturday. Virtually all of them adhered to the long discredited Chomskyist line that Israeli aggression can be understood entirely in terms of Anglo-American neo-colonialism. Zionists, they believe, are merely puppets, not equally guilty coconspirators. I, myself believed this once. But hey, at onetime, I even believed that Zionism was not an inherently racist ideology, but a righteous expression of national self determination by a beleaguered underdog. A lot of us did. Boy, had we been snowed. Any boomer can remember when Zionism was considered a left wing cause. Some of us snapped out of it, but alas we are few in number.

I also remember when, not all that long ago in the greater scheme of things, people who protested America's imperialist adventure in South East Asia carried Viet Cong flags at anti-war demos. Toward the end of US involvement, at every demo was seen a sea of VC flags. It wasn't necessarily out of sympathy with VC ideology, but out of solidarity with the front line fighters against the very imperialism that we claimed to oppose, but were afraid to actually counter attack in the one place where such a counter attack would have done the most good, right here in the belly of the beast. We were too cowardly to carry arms, but at least we had enough courage to carry the flag of those who did. Those days are over. Anti-imperialism in this country has changed. It has become a cringing shadow of its former self.

On Saturday, I saw no sea of Hizbullah flags. Why not? True, Hizbullah's ideology, tainted as it is with fundamentalism, and worse, nationalism, leaves a lot to be desired, even when we factor in that the main thing they do is neither fighting nor preaching, but totally righteous social work, education and medical care. The VC weren't all angels, either, but the longer the Viet Nam war dragged on, the more VC flags showed up at demos. However we felt about VC ideology, and opinions did span the spectrum, we could not help but respect the courage, skill and tenacity with which they stood up to imperialist aggression.

Whatever else you may say about Hizbullah, you cannot deny that they have proven beyond all doubt that a citizens' militia can stand up to a well armed, well financed, superbly trained and highly motivated modern army that has vast numerical superiority. They didn't just stand up to the Zionist death machine and live to tell the tale. They drove it out of Lebanon. And when it came back, fought it to a bloody standstill. This is a lesson that all who oppose imperialism would do well to learn. And like the VC before them, we need not agree with all of their ideology before we honor them with at least symbolic solidarity. True, we can't send them money, or we'd end up in prison. But there is no law against flying their flag. So where were all the Hizbullah flags? Are we such cowards that we are even afraid to honor the planet's best front line fighters against imperialist aggression? Apparently.

Then there's Hamas. While the world's eyes are on Lebanon, Gaza is fighting for its life, and San Franciscans couldn't care less. I saw one (count 'em, one) Hamas flag. No, it wasn't carried by an Palestinian. It was carried by Sacramento's own Steve Pearcy. What a guy. Steve is among the most forward thinking anti-warriors in California, yet even he restricts himself to symbols.

There were plenty of Lebanese flags. There were plenty of Palestinian flags. So it's not like the consciousness of the anti-war movement has evolved to the point where all flags are rejected. That'll be the day, and I long for it dearly. But it hasn't happened yet. Flags flew in number. But among the scarcest was that of the single most effective anti-imperialist organization on the planet today. Why? I don't know. You tell me. In the meantime, my best guess is that in most cases, it was cowardice.

In my own case, it was something a lot more mundane. I don't know where to buy one. If you do, please let me know. I can be reached at:

sf@indymedia.org

Better still, I also accept donations. If you have a spare Hizbullah or Hamas flag, feel free to drop it off at Bound Together Books. Mark the package "for nessie" so the rest of the crew will know what to do with it. I certainly do. I'm going to fly them in America's face. Should either ever become the flag of a nation state, I'll burn them in public. In the meantime, though, what better way to show solidarity with these brave and resourceful, front line fighters against imperialist aggression than to raise their banners in public? I don't know. You tell me.