BW INQUIRES PART TWO

Heck, they couldn't even raise a decent anti-war protest.

She's right on the money about this. Protesters have been relegated to "free speech zones" miles away from where the action is, starting with this current administration and it was ratcheted up as we approached the war. People have been arrested and detained and tossed for wearing T shirts that have a revolutionary message. Kids have been suspended from school, people have lost jobs for sporting the wrong bumper sticker.
I remember the Viet Nam days up to the Kent state thing, I went to demonstrations at UT, some of them dissolved into tear gas laden rock throwing slugfests with law enforcement and pro war pro party assholes. People got hurt on all sides, but that was part of the risk of speaking your mind.
That's not the case anymore.
Protests and demonstrations are regulated by the government these days, you have to get a permit, you have to stay in a designated area. There are unwritten dress and signage codes. It's pathetically ironic to me that the focus of a lot of these demonstrations are the ones making the rules ( and pocketing the fees) for the demonstrators.
Gone are the days when you could gather around the ROTC at the university with signs and howl at them as they went through thier exercises. Try that now and you'll get arrested.
I have to watch a good old fashioned demonstration on cable, televised from another country.
I thought it was hilarious that when Bush went to the popes funeral, he could'nt mingle with the crowds outside, because he is so despised and reviled that even his image on the giant screen TV's elicited howls and boos and much deserved derision.It was too dangerous. That can't happen in this country anymore. The land of the free, home of the brave is an illusion, carefully cultivated by the people in power.
The wool, however, has been pulled over our eyes so tightly for so long now that it's becoming threadbare and gauzy. And a fuzzy image is starting to peek through, I hope it is anyway.