Methinks Thou Doth Protest Too Much
For those of you who may have missed it, I received a particularly pointed response to my Politics of Protest piece from Monday. Since I happen to know the commenter personally, I feel honor-bound to offer some public defense to his arguments.
David writes:
Your assessment of “Left controlled” political rallies is elitist and arrogant. You seem to wear the fact that you were at protests while in college as a badge of honor that now excludes you from sullying your hands further by mixing with those who do not happen to be as eloquent and well-spoken as you, as if any movement has ever been exclusively comprised of astute observers of the political system without any special interests. You choose to pillory anyone who is not sharply focused on the same narrow agenda as yourself. While there may have been a multiplicity of agendas at “The Protest,” it was, most assuredly, an anti-war protest: a show of force which forces a complaisant media to make a grudging head count.
Actually, I’m not pillorying anyone; I’m simply giving reasons why I chose not to participate considering that I’m in overall sympathy with the stated goals of the march. Perhaps the anti-war cause in and of itself is a “narrow agenda,” but the issue itself is sufficiently broad to warrant consideration separate from the litany of familiar hard-left complaints. Taken on its own, opposition to the war is a mainstream issue on which large numbers of average, un-eloquent and not necessarily astute Americans who disagree with the left on almost everything else can nonetheless support. I personally find it both offensive and counterproductive to alienate a huge number of potential allies by conflating opposition to the war with a number of far less important and less popular issues. Yeah, the march was big, but it would have been a whole lot bigger without all the sideshow stuff.
David continues:
Political protests are, first and foremost, a show of force, making a vast coalition necessary. While you do acknowledge this, your assessment that the Left has not, “the faintest echo of a political agenda” is particularly offensive. They actually have a wide array of agendas and, more often than not, a very competent spokesperson for each one. Sure there is a problem in bringing them together. However, this problem is, as you parenthetically acknowledge, prevalent throughout the political spectrum. Lest we scratch our heads and reconcile abortion rights activists and capital punishment.
Precisely my point. Coalition politics is often a recipe for absurdity. What’s called for here is clarity and focus. A number of leftist causes are spectacularly unpopular, regardless of the competence of their spokespeople (or in some cases, because of it). When they participate in wider demonstrations, they inevitably trail with them the unpopularity of their cause. This doesn’t matter when all the causes represented at a demonstration are equally unpopular. But in this case, the benefits of coalition politics – more feet on the street – are offset by the number of people put off by the presence of “difficult” partners.
There is, contrary to your derisive denial, a vast array of writings clearly stating the leftist positions on a variety of issues. Arundhati Roy has gone to jail over government dam projects in India. Others have clearly linked globalization with an attempt at privatization of water and other natural resources (funny how you can rage against commercial interests controlling baseball but choose to draw the line when it comes to a mere resource like water)… [remainder snipped]
Now David, you know I do my best to keep up on this stuff. I’m not necessarily opposed to the other issues – especially stuff like water privatization. I just feel that the presence of these advocates, however passionate and articulate they might be, distracts from the more critical anti-war message and gives knee-jerk opponents something easy to aim at. If this were a march that represented a greater slice of the political spectrum besides enviro-left and anti-global left, it would be more difficult to ignore.
Ironically, all your arguments can just as well be used against the flag-waving right. Why ever fly a flag or admit to any sort of patriotism? After all, the flag has been appropriated by a thin-lipped liar to further his own malevolent agenda. One can’t fly the flag without a disclaimer (perhaps one can be fashioned with the stars as asterisks). No matter what a person’s subjective views on liberty the flag could possibly evoke, flying the Stars and Stripes endorses the war; it endorses the marginal and ineloquent “folk” that control the U.S. government. If lousy agendas and the sound byte mentality are considered tactics of the hoi polloi, both attending political rallies and voicing support of the government are activities to be avoided. This leaves the discerning few in a helpless position. Well, given the choice, I’d rather walk down the street with an animal rights activist who happens to be against the war than wave a flag with someone who is going to get a defense contract for gas masks. Call me juvenile if you must.
Besides a few colorful turns of phrase, I’m not really sure what you’re getting at here. You’re entitled to your opinion about the flag, but it’s just plain wrong to suggest that everyone who flies it is doing so out of support for the war. You call me an elitist, but it seems like the real elitists are the holier-than-thou lefties who like to paint everyone who disagrees with them as somehow ignorant or ill-informed, or no different from the Pat Robertson crowd. Any successful politics in this country requires pragmatic accommodation, not self-righteousness, and the hard left has become every bit as self-righteous as the worst Bible thumper. That’s why as long as that crowd controls the anti-war movement, it’s a non-starter.
An addendum: Having been asked to attend several show of force rallies for the ILWU, I have often been appalled at the rhetoric, baiting and ill-defined slogans. However, in my heart, I feel that their position is correct. The PMA is trying to break a union with the complicity of the president. This considered, I keep my objections of the ILWU to a private forum.
Union activities, as I indicated, are a different matter entirely. The ILWU is concerned with getting what they can for their members, just like the PMA. It’s a power-struggle, not a moral crusade, and should be treated that way by both sides. I have written sympathetically about the ILWU in this space, and one more good thing I can say about them is that they certainly know better than to allow their movement to be sidetracked by a bunch of well-meaning crazies.
This new generation of Left-bashing ex-liberals is sickening and irrational. While the majority of those at the protest may have their pet causes and quixotic aspirations, their hearts are in the right place. And perhaps, it is the middle-road folk who rail against the inconvenience of the traffic who are truly without voice.
I’m bashing the Left because it needs bashing. It hasn’t won a goddamned thing in my adult lifetime and has painted itself into a smaller and smaller corner by adopting bizarro positions on all kinds of issues and then calling anyone who doesn’t agree an “ex-liberal” (or worse). Sure, nothing can stop Ralph Nader from getting his 2% of the vote from the quixotic pet-cause people, but that’s just not enough right now. This isn’t about Mumia, it’s not about Palestine, it’s not about farmed fish or dams in India. As fulfilling as it may be for advocates of those positions to piggyback onto the broader anti-war movement, if they really want to make a difference, they need to shut up for a minute and look at the bigger picture. This war is bad news. Those of us who are against it need to reach out toward the center, not just scratch each other’s backs at the same clubby protest marches. All that’s happening now is that the Left-run anti-war movement is dragging a mainstream cause into the margins.
6:00:54 PM 
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