[lbo-talk] re: how does it feel

[mark cox]

I remember when I was young an extremely fertile couple, the Pryors, lived 
next door to us for awhile.  They not only procreated at an alarming rate, 
but also, oddly in my opinion, felt compelled to begin all their children's 
names with the letter 'J'.  On one boring summer day, probably during my 9th 
or 10th summer, I was hanging out front of my house idling the time away 
with their two eldest children, Jennifer and James, who were probably 4 and 
6 at the time, when Jennifer came up with the idea that we should play 
"parade".  Since Jennifer and James couldn't cross the driveway that 
bordered the west side of their property or the east side of mine, our 
parade route was necassarilly short, and entailed a lot of turning around.  
Not sure why this memory came so vividly to mind during one anti-war protest 
I attended on Michigan Avenue last fall, but I think probably because, 
relatively, the delineation of our CPD bordered parade route was much the 
same.  We went a couple blocks, turned around and went back, and again and 
then just kind of dispersed having done our little march.

My point I guess is that while demonstrating my peacenikism I often felt 
somewhat patronized.  Maybe it was the bemusement of my girlfriend to the 
whole Cox family protest mania, being a neuroscientist she tends to take the 
long view, considering the present state of the human species to be at best 
a phase in a journey to something better, at worse something to be borne 
with some aplomb or maybe studied resignation while along for the ride.

Or maybe it was the general bemusement of the Chicago cops (except during 
the protest in which 700 protesters were arrested) who've dutifully attended 
all the anti-war protests here.

Maybe it was the derision that most of my 30 something friends felt towards 
the protests in general, lumping it with what they consider other 
exsasperating throw-backs to the 60's and 70's like the return of 
bell-bottoms.  Feeling as they do that the whole ground has shifted, the 
physical space isn't the point anymore and that the anti-war movement is 
misguided in it's use of the same old, old-tech, tactics.

And maybe it's because some of the more strident/silly veins in the 
character of the protests made me question the veracity of the movement too. 

  Illusions of a movement characterized by fierce discipline in lock step 
crashing against the reality of strange folks skipping by in silk dragon 
suits or speakers shouting, when audible, inane things that didn't at all 
reflect my understanding of what forces were at work in the mounting, and in 
retrospect what seemed an inevitable, movement towards war.

Or maybe it was just that I never got the sense that those we were 
protesting against ever really felt that threatened.

But mostly it was how ordinary life for most people just kind of went on as 
usual.  Moments where I'd be walking along the crowded sidewalks of the 
Chicago loop and seeing people going about their daily lives and thinking, 
"Doesn't this freak you out!?"  "Doesn't this piss you off?"  Apparently 
not.

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