Last Sunday we had our Pride Parade in Seattle. The parade starts on Second Avenue heading north, loops over to Fourth Avenue and continues north, finally ending at the Seattle Center where the Space Needle is.
I’m noticing that the parade seems to be themed from year to year. One year for instance they focused on gay-owned businesses, so there was a float for the dog grooming service with the inspired name of “High Maintenance Bitch”. This year I noticed that they had canned all those floats for the different bars they always used to have, with the interchangeable boring skinny twinks gyrating like people are watching and the god-awful bathhouse/techno dance music. Something else was we noticed was that this was the year of the corporation; everyone who was anyone had their gays and lesbians out marching: Microsoft, Starbucks – apparently corporate shut them down on calling themselves the “Starbuggers” – and even Price Waterhouse. Price Waterhouse surprised me, but I guess in this city of young software types with lots of loose cash there’s a market. But some things about the parade never change.
One of the perennial features of this celebration is small groups here and there of Fundamentalists of various flavors with signs to the effect that God hates fags and bullhorns they use without cease to enlighten those walking in darkness. It’s hard work because they are mostly figures of fun and it doesn’t help that to many in the crowds it is obvious that these street preachers shit on Jesus’ warnings to them here and here, these “blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel. …”
Now if one simply cannot just ignore these benighted souls, one can respond in any number of reasonable ways. A friend of mine used to post their pictures to the web somewhere, with explanatory notes. Or you could get a little creative and have your friends help you pile a few bundles of prunings – bundles of sticks, faggots – get it? – around these heretics, and they are without exceptions all heretics, as a bit of street theater. (But then you might need to post guards to keep people with fire away.) Or failing that you might make some bedsheet-sized signs of your own with “Woe to you Pharisees” or more simply and directly “Fundamentalists hate God” to wave right next to their “God hates faggots” signs.
But we have our share of stupid people in Seattle, and stupid people do things differently. They do things like this. Here we have two jackasses – actually in this case a jack and a jenny ass – getting physical with these other jackasses who after all are exercising their Constitutional right to speak in public. As they say, watch the whole thing. Stupidity cannot be a grounds for excluding people from their political rights in a democracy because if it did there would be too few people left to have a democracy and we’d be left with an oligiarchy.
These morons stomp on someone’s civil rights to show them people’s civil rights are sacred because they apparently agree with these other morons that some people’s civil rights matter more than others – two sets of morons in full agreement at each others’ throats. This is how you make the other side’s point for them. Thanks for nothing, Jenny Ass and Jack Ass.
With friends like you we don’t need enemies. You speak for no one but your own stupid, grandstanding asses.
Unfortunately no one stopped them, but this tape footage may be enough to identify them.
- The Woman Card - May 2, 2016
- Frat boy bachelorettes and the invasion of gay bars - April 15, 2016
- “Not my kid….” - February 22, 2016
by 
We already have an effective oligarchy, it’s just disguised as a democracy.
The rich are the ones who direct policies, they make politicians scared of them (while also financing their campaigns), so they never up taxes on the rich. They get lip service about countering tax evasion and tax avoidance, but very little is done. The governments prefer attacking the small taxpayers who might pay under the table (no contract thus no tax) on 3 digit stuff (like car repairs), than the company doing it with 8-9 digits on a public construction contract.
@Schala
It’s more precisely identified as a corporatist hierarchy with democracy to be used as a pressure release valve. Politicians aren’t servants of disinterest and the public good, they are unthinking managers who manage the various groups (or “corporations”) to keep them functioning normally with a minimum of fuss. In such a system no-one is an individual, they are just a piece of a demographic (appeals to the”woman vote” or the “black vote” come to mind). Suddenly the success of the ideology of feminism becomes a bit clearer. In such a system women are a group unto themselves, that just have to be managed, but no real inclusion or responsibility is sought or warranted – they are just appeased and used to attack troublemakers. This is abetted by politicians themselves plundering the public system in emulation of long term private plundering by corporate managers. They justify all their inaction in the face of a seemingly inevitable ideology (neoconservatism/neoliberalism /economic determinism) by the fact that if it was wrong they would be punished for this. In other words it must be right because it feels right. The whole economic system is about beyond repair at this stage -the correct ‘archy’ at this point is actually a ‘kleptarchy’ or ‘kleptocracy’. The snivelling sneaking apexuals are in charge after centuries of existing outside the realms of real power – and now it’s time to make everyone else pay for it…
Schala and Robert, those are excellent points, especially your point Robert, about how feminism found a niche utility in the system. Nancy Fraser notices the same thing from another angle.
But that’s all strategy, and this post was about tactics, specifically stupid and counter-productive tactics.
I particularly appreciated Robert’s comment, which reminded me of John Brunner’s splendid book: The Shockwave Rider. In it, Brunner portrayed the apexual utility of democracy through massive television billboards that displayed “poll data,” all of which was fabricated by the powers that be. People saw the poll data, believed it reflected public sentiment, and conformed to it secure in the feeling that their voices had been heard. We have been on this path for generations, and have just about reached “The Limits to Growth” under the current constraints. We are in for a few hard years. Will the oligarchy crumble? I fear not. Reason: Andrea Rossi’s “cold fusion” E-Cat reactor. While I applaud this device, the first manufacturing facility for which is being built in the US right now, I fear it will breathe new life into the global empire of the three cities. Mainland China will be unthrilled, but they are dealing with economic challenges of their own.
http://politicalviolenceataglance.org/2013/07/11/male-victimhood-in-armed-conflict/
Sure they were idiots, but the crowd quickly pulled them apart before any serious harm was done. Pretty rare in most mob like situations.
And people ask why they have to register a protest march with the police? This is why.
Bloody fools, at least we can be thankful that they’re very much an exception.