A New Kind Of Protest

Buffalo Springfield--"For What It's Worth" (mp3)

I had a vision the other night of protest for the 21st Century. It was like nothing I had ever seen. People were milling about, holding signs, expressing opinions, but there was no conflict, no drive-by comments from people in cars, no hurling of insults, no counter-hurling of insights. No, it was all very friendly.

Here were some of the signs:

I Support Gay Marriage. I Think. Unless You Convince Me Otherwise.

Make Government Smaller Or Larger, Depending.

It Sure Is Sunny Out Today, That's Why I Felt Like Carrying This Sign.

I Really Don't Know What I'm For This Week.

Tell Me About My President Or I'll Have To Make Something Up.

Yes, the protestors were out and about, but there was no common theme among them. They were protesting everything. And nothing. From both sides. It was all very happy.

They were citizens like you and me, people who don't know their ass from their elbow, or at least don't know too much about the differences between the two.

They were citizens who had easy access to all of the information that has ever been known. But it was boring and overwhelming and way too much work to try to sort through all of it. There had to be a shortcut. So they had been on the Internet earlier that day, had found one good thing that they were pretty sure they could hang their hats on. Some of them didn't wear hats. Some of them were anti-hat. They had heard, with good justification, that that was a good position to take.

They were pretty sure that they couldn't really do anything about anything. It didn't matter whether it was a local issue, a national issue, or something that (like an increasing number of issues) affected the entire planet.

They were pretty sure that they were angry about something. Maybe they had just heard of other people who were mad at the government, so they decided to be the same thing. But some of their neighbors were for the government, and they didn't want to hurt any feelings, so they waved when they saw signs that they didn't agree with. They hoped that if they didn't agree with the front of the sign, they might still agree with the back.

Or maybe it was really just a sporting event. I don't remember. Maybe they were all good sports and shook hands and went home, secure in the knowledge that both sides had fought hard and that the game had gone either way. Maybe even though the other team had just bought their best player, they could understand that. If you had a lot of money to spend, you might as well spend it.

Or maybe there was a war going on and because they had all been for it (or against it) at one time, they really didn't feel like it would be fair to take the opposite position. Someone had worked really hard to start that war, a bunch of people had worked even harder to maintain that war, and it would be rude and not very American not to celebrate their efforts.

Anyway, it was all just kind of a dream, and I don't put much stock in dreams. Like everything else these days, they're pretty easy to explain. You just have to know where to look. And in the dream, I was holding a sign, too. And I was walking among all of the other people holding their signs. And my sign read............