PROTESTERS IN NYC... RALLY AGAINST BUSH

Today I grabbed brunch with some of my friends, Sonny and Sandor, around Union Square in New York City. As we walked towards Blue Water Grill, we encountered the crowd of protesters rallying against Bush and the Republicans that converged in the Big Apple for the week. I felt like I was at a Baskin Robbins for the leftside of the spectrum. At least 31 groups of varying flavors and persuasions were ending their march near Union Square. International socialists, supporters of Nader, anti-war groups, anti-corporate, anti-whatever and so on. From my slanted perspective, I saw so many fringe groups and people I would typically call "whacko."

After brunch, my friend wanted to check out the protesters marching through Union Square. He looked for a few minutes and then said, "There are no hot anarchists. Why is that? They're butch or ugly or something just not attractive about them."

I thought about it and agreed with that generalization as I looked out into the crowd for an anomaly to this recently proclaimed truth.

My friend declared again, "Dude, no hot women here."

One theory thrown out was that beautiful women, whether intelligent or not, do not have much to complain or dissent about since the greater society or establishment generally favors them. Another theory was that since "anarchists" are counter-cultural, they do not care about presenting themselves in an attractive manner. I think I should stop here.

UPDATE FROM JAMES TARANTO:

August 30, 2004
We walked up to Union Square, where perhaps 100 anti-Bush protesters were milling about in the park. Someone had a canvas on both sides of which was painted the slogan NO ? FOR BUSH. Others had scribbled graffiti or hung notes on the canvas, and not all of them were anti-Bush: NO COMMUNISM, NO KERRY read one graffito. We noticed one guy posting a note that said "Bush planned September 11, 2001, Bush is a traitor."

We wandered a few yards away and took notes on our Palm, having neglected to bring a pen or notebook. We must have looked pretty furtive, for we were spotted and approached by three guys, one of whom asked to whom we were "reporting back"--the CIA or the FBI. We decided to play it coy. "Who do you think I'm reporting back to?" we asked. Finally he concluded it must be the Drug Enforcement Administration. (Perhaps it's relevant that we were wearing our black mock turtleneck, which we've been told has "a kind of ex-special forces look which is cool and subtly combative.")

The "Bush is a traitor" guy was among the trio who'd encircled us, and he began explaining his theory as to why Bush must have been behind the attacks. We didn't quite follow his logic, but it had something to do with the "My Pet Goat" incident--i.e., Bush's inaction in the few minutes immediately after he was informed that a plane had hit the World Trade Center.

"Wait a minute," we said. "What about John Kerry?" We were going to make the point that Kerry, like Bush, was stunned by the attacks (indeed, who wasn't?). He told Larry King that "nobody could think" for at least 40 minutes after the attack. (Redstate.org has more.) But the "traitor" guy would have none of it.

"I don't want to talk about John Kerry!" he interrupted. "He is a criminal!"

"What crimes did John Kerry commit?" we asked. But he held fast. He would not discuss John Kerry.

"Wait," we said. "If you're so against Bush, you're going to vote for Kerry, aren't you?"

He replied that he plans not to vote at all, perhaps suggesting a weakness in Kerry's base.

We knew the anti-Bush folks weren't exactly thrilled with Kerry, but still we were incredulous. "You think Bush orchestrated an attack on America, and you're not even going to vote against him?" we said. Whereupon we were interrupted by the third guy, who said he was Canadian, suggesting that "maybe he doesn't have a voting right." But the "traitor" guy neither confirmed nor denied the Canadian's hypothesis.

The Canadian guy was actually pleasant and earnest, and we ended up chatting with him at some length. At one point he theorized that there was a connection between the savings-and-loan scandal of the late 1980s and the Gulf War of 1990-91--i.e., that the first Bush administration had engineered the latter as a distraction from the former.

We thought we had a pretty good counterargument. "There were two events that preceded the Gulf War," we noted: "the S&L scandal and Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. I can see the connection between the invasion and the war, but I can't see the connection between the S&L scandal and the war."

He responded with a long disquisition about Iraq's legitimate grievances against Kuwait--something about "angular drilling" to steal Iraqi oil--his point being that, although he didn't approve of the invasion, it was not wholly unprovoked.

We listened patiently, then asked, "What does that have to do with the S&L scandal?"

"OK, I was reaching," he admitted. "Maybe there wasn't a connection." This certainly restored our faith in the power of civil debate and sweet reason.

We noticed one guy at Union Square wearing a T-shirt that proclaimed "Dissent is patriotic," one of the main anti-GOP rallying cries. We pondered the slogan this morning when we picked up the New York Sun and read about a (presumably unscientific) survey of protesters:

A survey conducted by The New York Sun of 253 protesters who took part in the United for Peace and Justice march found that 76% plan to vote for Senator Kerry in November's presidential election. . . .

Of those marching who were surveyed, 52% said they agreed with the statement that "America is overall a negative force in the world." Moreover, 67% said they agreed with the statement that "Iraqi attacks on American troops occupying Iraq are legitimate resistance."

Is it patriotic to consider your country "a negative force in the world" and to root for the enemy in wartime? We address this question in an essay that appears in today's Wall Street Journal:

By 1972 the countercultural left was firmly established as a part of the Democratic coalition--and it remains so. A significant and vocal minority of the party, that is, believes that America is imperialistic, racist, militaristic, oppressive, etc. These views aren't necessarily unpatriotic; it is possible to love one's country and also be a harsh critic of it. But if dissent can be patriotic, assent is far less complicatedly so.

The Sun survey illustrates these complications--and it leads us to think that perhaps patriotism is beside the point. By way of analogy, people can love their spouses or children while subjecting them to verbal or physical abuse, but the tenderness of their feelings does not mitigate the wrongness of their behavior.