A liberal takes her first steps

I started to blog this during the morning nap when the computer crashed. We have pushed our memory so far to the edge that she's breaking up at the edges.

We took Ciela to her first protest/vigil/rally last night. We were part of the 400-500 people lining the intersection of Camelback and 24th in Phoenix standing vigil alongside Cindy Sheehan in Texas. Personally, I don't believe that the president is obligated to speak with Sheehan, but I do think that the questions coalescing around her vigil do need to be addressed: questions concerning the false reasons for going to war, the inept handling of the occupation, and the growing corruption. We are trapped in an unjust war, and Sheehan has become a symbolic figure. She's certainly following in a long line of mothers of warriors standing in as the nagging conscience to power.

We stayed around for about an hour, pushing Ciela's temper, and then retired to chez beige to watch the news. Comical and inept as usual when it comes to local news. I almost never watch the local news because they have denegrated into half-hour long infantile babbling and commercials for forthcoming inept babbling...and the weather. FOX was pushing its investigative report on being a firefighter in Phoenix. After donning the full fireman's gear and hauling himself up a ladder in the practice "fire tower," the intrepid reporter came to the penetrating insight that it was hot. Stupid, stupid, stupid with at least three in-news promos AND it was done live. Live! Who really watches this shit?

The coverage that we did see about the protest can be reduced to two points: 1, gosh a lot more people came out here than we expected; 2, here's a schmuck we found near the protest who thinks W. is an allright guy.

Of note is that all the broadcasts that I was able to catch (4, if I remember correctly), felt compelled to present an "opposing view" to the protest. Now the story in and of itself was not about the war. See #1 above. The coverage was primarily about the numbers. Yet all the stations had somebody to respond. This was some misguided equal coverage, I suppose, but the upshot of the coverage was that 500 angry people organized for a night against a misguided war and one random guy off the street are equivalent arguments.

What is it about hawks that they are unable to understand the distinction between outrage at a stupid foreign policy move and feelings toward the individuals forced to carry out that policy. As a bleeding heart liberal, I've been against this war from the very beginning, but I'm not so stupid as to think that those who support it are gung-ho to see young Americans killed--even though that is the immediate result. What missing card from the decks of these idiots prevents them from seeing that a desire to bring military people home is not an insult to those men and women. We don't want them to die, and Tony FratBoy is "disgusted at what we are doing to the military." Frankie Silkshirt's stomach is turned "by these people and their attack on our military." It takes some incredible amount of stupidity and/or willful ignorance to see more dead people as good for the military and lots more live people as an affront.

Neither Judy, Ciela or I made the news.