Block Party

Did anyone attend the war protest in Manhattan this week?  Was it anything like last year?

I don't remember much from my experience from the protest when the Repubs came to NY except that it was a) hot b) crowded and c) deliriously funny at times (especially when protesters performed satires of the administration).

Do protests account for any meaningful change in the United States anymore? Has the country matured from the heady 1776 days? Public demonstrations --- an attack on stability or an expression of public discourse?

The US is not Venezuela or Turkey or even France.  Perhaps we've grown too conservative, too attached to a smug consciousness of our own successes.  Protests, especially large displays of rancor, have marginalized instead of assimilated its followers.  The majority of the country, bunkered in their suburban havens, view protests with consternation, assigning to them vague judgments of illegitimacy.

Here is how most Americans see protests:

• Protesters (no matter how large) do not represent the majority of the American public.  They are fringe groups, of hippies, of radicals, of illogical beliefs.
• They pose a threat to the stability and unification of the nation (especially in the Age of Terrorism)
• They rarely accomplish much, since the US works through a system of law, of legislation... of tremendous bureaucracy designed to check & re-check arguments and positions, whittling them down through compromises and appeals, until the original concept is nothing more than a stillborn idea designed not to 'rock the boat'.

"Responsible citizens don't have time to protest and wave their hands around like crazies.  They have families to feed, jobs to go to.  Look at the protesters. They're all delinquents on the margins of respectable society." - quote from a friend in the 'Nation's Heartland.

America is afraid of mass protests... whether it's about immigration, gay rights, or war.  What has happened to the environment that spawned the Sons of Liberty?