Wednesday, January 04, 2017

[Fill In The Blank], Arise! --If You Have Free Time

     You can say this about change-of-party elections: they get people involved in the political process.  Adherents of the party in power* tend to become complacent, and to stay that way even as it fades, while fans of the party on the outs are more motivated, more likely to show up.  The cyclic nature of recent elections reflects this, at least in part.

     So this time 'round, it's Mr. Trump and the supposed existential threat he poses to a lot of the traditional Democrat constituencies; minorities (as defined) are to Dems what gun-owners are to the GOP: taken for granted and often fobbed off with cheap promises.  Mr. Trump is at least a good a scarecrow in that garden as Mr. Obama was to the NRA, and the undetermined nature of whatever actual threat a Trump Administration might pose to specific groups is all the better for the purpose of rabble-rousing.

     The rabble du jour (or is is de jure?  There does seem to be rather a lot of rushing to judgement going around) is the Women's March On Washington.  Formerly the "Million Woman March," except A) it had already been done B) by African-American women, leaving the paler organizers of the present March all Culturally Appropriative and thus in a renaming frame of mind, and C) there ain't exactly a million women going to be there; the hopes are for a hundred thousand, an (engineering!) order of magnitude less.  But whatever, 100K wimmenfolk, even 10K, that'd show up on the ol' D. C. radar, right?  --Except they'll be doing this at Mr. Trump's Inauguration, where the signal-to-other-signal ratio may be just a little bit...unfavorable.  In fact, between celebrators and protesters, they are likely to be less than ten percent of the crowd† -- and nowhere near the TV cameras.

     Still, even if they're crowded off screens by the Chief Justice's ceremonial reading of predictions in the entrails of a slaughtered duck,‡ they are involved; they're doin' the American thing of making noise, waving signs, dressing up funny and dumping tea in the harbor, attempting to levitate the Pentagon, Corresponding in Committee, living free and Bohemian in their parents basement -- and wearing hats.

     Remarkably unfortunate hats, pink hats that kind of have "cat ears" and look like a knit version of an old military side cap or garrison cap (yes, with that nickname) worn sideways.  Worn, as well, entirely without irony.

     I keep telling myself, "politics is rarely pretty."  More like rarely sensible; but hey, they're out there doing their thing and not at home posting goofy, bitter Internet memes, and that's something.  --But, still--

     Hooray, dissent is suddenly patriotic again!  It's going to be an interesting four years.
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* I question the extent to which officeholders of the two are all that distinguishable other than their posturing on a small number of key issues; what they actually do in office is more alike than different: work for re-election or an even higher office, while spending money the country doesn't have.

† For comparison, Mr. Obama's first inauguration had a live audience of some 1.8 million and his second is said to have gathered "at least a million." That puts the Marchers 20 dB down at best. 

‡ Oh, I know what an "augury" is, and I can well picture the metonymy involved in referring to the outgoing President as a "lame duck."  They're not fooling me a bit!  I'm surprised, though -- you'd think they'd just use one of the turkeys ritually granted a Presidential pardon each November.

8 comments:

  1. Wow!
    Great ride!
    I had to just get in, sit down, shut up, and hang on.
    Awesome post.

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  2. Yep, funny how 'dissident' is now back in all of a sudden... And it's not racist, homophobic, nazi or any other connotation...

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  3. Meanwhile, I wonder how many people will be involved in the annual March for Life less than a week later? I bet there will be more participants, who will be better behaved, and who will receive less than 10% of the media coverage the "women's" march will get.

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  4. So, "Gripping Hand," did you read what I wrote, or just scan it for key words? Perhaps you skipped the footnote about the likelihood of visibility on the part of persons attempting to preempt a Presidential Inauguration?

    Overly-focused verbiage-based signaling is proving to be the death of discourse. Fscking semiotics!

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  5. I know this idea is kind of like Chris discovering that Monte Python had already flung a cow with a trebuchet,
    but have you considered doing a road trip to the Las Vegas SHOT with Tam and doing a write-up ala Hunter S. Thompson sans chemical enhancements?
    I could envision much merriment and entertaining tales forthcoming.

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  6. Same plot, different actors, slightly modified dialog.

    And AKA Flight Caps for the Zoomies among us. And while they shared many aspects of a Beret (hot in the summer, cold in the winter, no protection from sun or rain) without the "coolness" factor, at least they tucked into a flight suit pocket or under a belt easily when coming indoors or entering the flight line.

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  7. Waepnedmann, that would be great fun indeed! Alas, I can't get the time off from work, and the cats would need looking after. Rannie Wu is old enough that we probably should not board her; she's never reacted well to change. When Tam moved up here, we drove a box-truck moving van straight through from Knoxville with the cats in carriers on the seat between us, and Rannie spent the trip making mournful calls. On arrival at my house, she scouted out a defensible position (under the television stand, a space 7" tall and open on in a narrow gap at the wall) and proceeded to spend most of the next several weeks there, growling quietly.

    ReplyDelete

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