"I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars."
--Barack Obama, 2002, and may he never forget it
On January 18, 2003, some friends and I marched with approximately 200,000 other people in Washington DC (and some millions, worldwide) to protest the Bush administration's impending invasion of Iraq. There was creativity and energy and even hope. While Bush shifted his invasion rationales on a weekly basis, we believed we could Stop The War. There was a sense that the world's collected outrage might indeed prevent an invasion we all knew to be a foolish ploy presented cynically in the guise of patriotism, democracy, and self-defense. Yes, everyone was scared, but even scared people need to be reasonable. But instead, we got the pointless time limits for weapons inspectors, the yellow cake of Niger, Colin Powell's blurry photos at the U.N., the tawdry vilification of Hans Blix and Scott Ritter (among others), the razzle-dazzle wording of Rummy and Condi Rice. Basic arithmetic summed up a snow job, not a credible justification, and it was all out there if people just took the time to read.
The folly of our invasion is now obvious, but even before the war began we protesters were certain it was unjustified, and would be costly and devastating for both sides. I wasn't convinced that invading Iraq was a mistake because of my leftist orientation, I was convinced because I was reading constantly all the news I could find, and the lies of the Bush people were plain. They used fictional evidence to pursue a nonsensical, but brutal, goal. Reporters disproved each assertion in turn but nobody listened. I marched in that protest because the idea of going to war with Iraq was, fundamentally, stupid.
There were many other protests to follow, including the largest global protest in world history one month later. I'd wager that every human body marching in the streets throughout the world represented another ten who, for one reason or another, could not.
Somewhere there was an even larger contingent of the supportive and the apathetic, but they weren't out in the streets asking the president to lead us to another war. They simply believed everything they were told, no matter how farcical, if it came from the government. The rest of us could argue facts amongst ourselves, often ignorantly as well, but together we agreed that Iraq was a mistake. Of that, we were right.
We walked in the cold, down the Mall, past the Capitol, down to somewhere near Union Station. There were young anti-globalization kids in hoodies and grizzled Vietnam vets in fatigues, old women with floral hats and twenty-somethings in three-piece suits. Picket signs and costumes. The mood was somber, and it was cold out (my paranoid side told me Bush had chosen the winter so as to stifle dissent). Somewhere I found a button: "NO TO WAR / NO TO RACISM"-- I think I picked it up off the street-- and I pinned it on my jacket. When we reached the end of the route, and the crowds dispersed for warmer places, we shrugged. A friend of mine said, "Okay, I think we did it. We've stopped the war."
That was sarcasm, of course. We knew we hadn't accomplished squat. There was nary a word from the White House to acknowledge our existence. Scarcely a twitch from a window drape in the Capitol. Here's what our protests evidently accomplished: nothing. That is, unless you count self-righteous pride as an accomplishment (and I don't).
We were ignored. And "ignore" is the operative word here, because I'd wager Bush didn't even read the papers the next day. Ignorance was always Bush's strategy. The underlying theory of his administration was this: contradictory reality could simply be wished into nonexistence. It was a self-reinforcing theory. As things got worse, the new situations could be wished away, too. Up could be down, war could be peace, chaos could be mission accomplished... Ignorance could be strength. All political signs suggested this theory was correct. Voters confirmed it, and congressmen surfed on a wave of oblivion.
America's ongoing civil war pits the ignorant against the educated. Bush was the champion of every conceivable wrong-headed idea. There was no hope until the elections of 2004. Protests were ignored, documentaries dismissed. Presented with an enormous Achilles' heel running the country, somehow the best we could find was John Kerry, who had credibility and intellect and wisdom and all the charisma of a moldy sponge. The people of America asked for more Bush. 2004, more than anything, killed all hope. America had reached the point of no return. We'd never have a government for the people again, just a long series of publicity stunts produced by Fox News. The majority would cheer for this idiocracy and the rest of us would wither away inside (or move to Canada).
I hope I never forget the depths of my outrage. Nothing could be done and nobody asked questions. Where the fuck were the heroes? Why didn't somebody stop these barbarians ruining our country? Why did I have no voice? Why did I have no power? Was there anything I could do?
Short of impersonating Lee Harvey Oswald, the answer was no. For eight years.
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"When it became obvious what a dumb and cruel and spiritually and financially and militarily ruinous mistake our war in Vietnam was, every artist worth a damn in this country, every serious writer, painter, stand-up comedian, musician, actor and actress, you name it, came out against the thing. We formed what might be described as a laser beam of protest, with everybody aimed in the same direction, focused and intense. This weapon proved to have the power of a banana-cream pie three feet in diameter when dropped from a stepladder five-feet high." --Kurt Vonnegut
...I don't think the January, 2003 protest accomplished even that, to say nothing of the larger anti-war movement.
So, six years after that protest, almost to the day, I found myself wandering the Mall again. By random chance I'd found that old NO TO WAR button in some secret compartment of my car where it had lay dormant all those years. I pinned it to my jacket once again and loped around Washington. I thought of it as a symbol of triumph, a vindication of sorts.
When I found that button again, memories of eight surreal years came back to me. Going to sleep satisfied (in Switzerland) after Gore had won, only to wake up and learn that CNN had lied. NPR fading out Morning Edition, fading in an urgent bulletin, while I drove to work on the crystal blue morning of September 11th. Driving past the charred wall of the Pentagon and walking past the rubble heap of the World Trade Center. The raw nerves and anger and fear that transformed into blind rage on an international scale. The fanatical jingoism of our neighbors in northern Virginia, the flags and the campy merchandise. The cheers of the people around me, at a bar near GMU, when Bush announced the invasion of Afghanistan. Mocking France and the United Nations. The inevitable war in Iraq. Each day another Bush or Rumsfeld speech, another new justification, pulled like a rabbit from a hat. Mission Accomplished. Looting Baghdad. No coffins on the television. American Idol. The sinking sensation in my stomach that nothing was real anymore, that the world only existed on the television. Another bar in Reston where my friend and I sat heartbroken by the 2004 election returns and were nearly physically threatened by a pro-Bush zealot. Katrina. Wiretapping. Abu Ghraib. You don't need this montage. It has been EIGHT YEARS OF CONSTANT DISAPPOINTMENT.
EIGHT YEARS OF CONSTANT DISAPPOINTMENT! My blood would boil every time I saw his ratty grin being a podium. My hairs turned whiter every morning. My ears would bleed listening to him drool all over English. Nucular. Misunderestimation. That sneer and that “uh-heh heh heh” snicker after he'd say anything. And that was just the physical revulsion-- I could've handled that, but: EVERY. SINGLE. DECISION. WRONG. WRONG. WRONG! Every action, a step further backwards towards the simian way of life! He never once failed to sicken me, the degree to which he handed over America to his cronies and sold snake-oil to normal Americans (the majority of whom were apparently happy to drink it, and to embrace masochistically their own punishment).
Bush was a leech, sucking away my soul and yours. Through all those years I found myself hunting for paranoid angles to every news story, every sound byte... I would shake my head and hurl things at televisions. At some point I had to give up, tune out, dare I say "move on"? And so has gone the anti-war movement, recognizing its own belated futility. Screaming at a wall, we simply ran out of breath. The passion never died, but we'd lost any sense of power. ...And to our dismay, still there were people who thought-- and some still exist-- that Bush was a saint!
The damage wreaked by Bush will persist for decades. Just look at the Supreme Court, for an easy example. It seemed like a fantasy that we could ever overcome our national stupidity. By 2002 our country had morphed into Yosemite Sam, firing his revolvers into the air, never recognizing the laughingstock it had become, the twisted mockery it had made of its core principles. Principles? Yeah, you know, the Bill of Rights, for example, and all those other scraps of paper lying in glass displays at the National Archives. Next to jars of White-Out with Cheney's fat fingerprints all over 'em.
Wandering around Washington the past few days, I was suddenly reminded of how I used to feel about America. I don't mean America the historically confused nation which whips slaves and shoots striking miners and bombs Cambodians and arrests critics and then waves miniature flags. I mean America the concept, the principled philosophical experiment they taught us in school. I was once genuinely proud to be an American. Those of us who exercised our right to dissent, back in 2001 and 2002, were criticized, without irony, as un-American. I-- and a fair number of Enlightenment-era philosophers, too-- have always believed that dissent is more patriotic, in this country at least, than following after a herd (particularly when it is a herd of lemmings). But throughout the 2000s, our media made that seem laughable and outlandish.
Love it or leave it! Good or evil! Warhawk or traitor'! Hoo-ah!
Eight fucking years. It seemed our national shame would never subside. Even after election day 2008, I thought it might be a dream. I'm not joking, I couldn't sleep on the night of the 19th! I'd wake up on January 20th, 2009, to the sound of sirens and choppers and gunfire. Dick Cheney would be strolling the Mall in a metal robot suit, crushing all in his path. Bush would be grinning on his couch, eating pretzels and swallowing them successfully, watching baseball before stepping onto the White House lawn to burn some crosses and hand out popsicles made from the blood of kittens.
That stuff didn't happen.
Instead, traipsing all over Washington DC with my obsolete anti-war button, I bought Obama merchadise, I sang “na-na hey hey goodbye”, I extended my middle finger to the White House, I booed Bush and Cheney at the Inauguration every time they appeared on the Jumbotron. Maybe you think this was all low class, but I enjoyed it, and it was cathartic, damnit. I got teary-eyed every few minutes, in a bittersweet but upbeat mood, just looking at all the smiling faces of visitors. I've been through the city hundreds of times, but this was different. There were young anti-globalization kids in hoodies and grizzled Vietnam vets in fatigues, old women with floral hats and twenty-somethings in three-piece suits... Say, I think I remember some of these people.
Much of my own electoral sentiment, as you can hopefully see, was motivated by a hatred of Bush. Any change of power would have been worthy of celebration, even if the new leader were John McCain. But these past few days there was far more love evident for the new leader than there was rage at the old one. The feeling transcended mere Bush hatred, like mine, and also the dramatic new chapter in the civil rights struggle. Whereas I'd still like to see Obama personally stuff Bush and Cheney into a wood chipper, like in Fargo, the overall mood of Washington was optimistic, not punitive.
Unless this is still part of the dream, and I'll return to the nightmare when I awake: Obama is actually now president.
I don't think I ever considered *not* attending the inauguration, after biting my nails and then dancing in the streets on election night. I had to be in Washington this year. It was a little late, really, but we finally have a president with whom I agree on issues that I understand, and in whom I trust on issues I do not understand. That's really something. That's really fucking something after what we've been through. Better late than never. For me, that was the _other_ civil rights struggle: the long-deferred dream that an intelligent and responsible adult could someday be elected. I'm tired of ignorant! I'm tired of knee-jerk! I'm tired of irresponsible! I'm tired of hearing the nonsensical term “War on Terror”! I'm tired of being told I don't exist! After eight years of banging our heads on the wall, the country finally woke up and did something. Tears of joy, hallelujah! How could anyone have missed the inauguration? There should have been three hundred million people in Washington last Tuesday.
The Bush era is over. The shame is gone. My embarrassment is subsiding. I think I might just be proud to be an American again.
I wasn't the only one who died again every day for eight years. Barack Obama's tapped, ingeniously, into that shared sense of despair and abandonment. Simple words like CHANGE and HOPE motivated millions because we'd stopped believing change would come and we'd lost all hope. Politics is politics, and disappointment is par for the course, but I have actual faith in Obama, his judgment, and the truth of his message. When he declared his candidacy and started to gather his troops, many of us responded. Those of us who longed for a “values America”-- by which I mean ethics and civic values, not religious ones-- had not abandoned our beliefs, but we thought we'd never see them incarnated by a politician.
Maybe it won't happen, maybe we'll be disappointed. That remains to be seen, but for once we have hope again. For once I can turn the television to CNN and see something that makes me smile. Man. Seeing Barack Obama sitting at the Oval Office desk really makes me smile. God damn it makes me smile!
The Bush Era Is Over! The Bush Era Is Actually Over! Shout it from the rooftops, then shout it some more! There is a brain in the White House: a functioning human brain!
Free at last, free at last. Thank God almighty, we are free at last!
--Jan 22, 2009
THE 2009 PORTLAND ACCORD
Jessica Anthony is a hell of a writer and a lunatic and the Portland Accord would like to express their love for her by declaring an immediate and instantaneous moratorium on all activities which do not involve chaotic drinking, notwithstanding mandatory socio-biological requirements pursuant to the perpetuation of life systems (i.e. energy-production) and legalistic jargon. Jess is single-handedly causing global climate change by being so hot... and yet so cool. Her novel The Convalescent appears in June. Buy it. It will surpass even the grilled cheese + tomato sandwiches at the Tastee 29, and that is the highest form of praise.
