He was wearing full dress whites with what looked like enough ribbons to have fought in every battle since Iwo Jima, which I have to admit was kind of intimidating. But I was a Democrat at the end of December in the year 2000, and absolutely prepared to stand my ground.
Here was our conversation:
“Did you put that up there?”
“Yup.”
“Why are you displaying the flag like that?”
“It’s an international sign of distress.”
“I know it’s a sign of distress. Why did you put it there?”
“Because I feel my country’s in danger. That’s why I’m flying the flag upside down.”
“Why do you say that?” He stared directly in my eyes and spoke in a clipped, interrogational tone. I stared back and answered firmly and resolutely, doing my best to ignore the fact that he could’ve beaten the crap out of me in about twelve seconds,
“Because they didn’t count the votes. This is a place where you’re supposed to count the votes. And they didn’t.”
“Well…” he said after a few seconds, “You still shouldn’t display the flag like that.”
“I think I should.”
After another few seconds of staring and he turned and walked away. He did not, as I’d expected, go onto the bridge and take down my sign, which I really appreciated. And despite what the sign said, I found myself deeply appreciating the fact that a guy who looked like that, and one who looked like me were standing on ground where we were equals, because I’d traveled enough to know that was more the exception than the rule.
I guess I was about forty years old, and had never felt such anguish and anger about my country as I did back then. Although I’m pretty damn close to it right now. I’m sure you all remember what it was like, and we all share the same fear it’s about to happen again. Let me put your mind at rest on that: it is. The judges are in place, lawlessness by the administration has been thoroughly normalized, the legitimacy of the election has been attacked or questioned a hundred different ways by a party whose sole platform has become the hatred and demonization of liberals and Democrats. They’ve had no compunction about telling us to fuck-off every chance they get and have made it perfectly clear they’re have a much more comfortable and cooperative relationship with Russia.
Their candidate has killed about 230,000 Americans in the last 7 months, has absolutely no stated plans or goals for his second term, been impeached for blackmailing an ally to frame Hunter Biden who he is now trying to frame again! Ignored bounties on our troops, insulted the fallen, lied 21,000 times and the list goes on and on and on. He’s also done everything possible to maximize the damage and spread of the coronavirus pandemic, which I mention because I read yesterday Deutsche Bank had forgiven $287 million in debt owed by our President, so I think it’s safe to say he’s being paid by one of the Bank’s other clients. In short, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to believe the Republicans intend to act in good faith in the upcoming elections.
I didn’t start putting signs up because of Bush V Gore. I started putting signs up because of the protest I went to afterwards. Almost everything that’s wrong with protests was wrong with that one. It was poorly attended (250 people of the 400 total protesting the theft of 437,000 Gore votes in San Diego County,) and held in a lonely, hidden little corner of Balboa Park, presumably so we wouldn’t bother anyone. The only actionable advice given was the usual call and write your representatives, write letters to the editor and get out the vote. Precisely what I’ve been told to do throughout the lifetime I’ve spent watching the Republican Party drag this country straight to hell.
Mostly what got to me was seeing these two things, which I can still see clearly in my mind. One was watching about three or four people shoving and jostling each other to be in front of one of the TV cameras, and then about a minute later seeing two men grabbing at the same microphone literally break out into a fight. Watching the people jostling each other made me think of monkeys dancing for treats from the cameraman, which was depressing enough. But the two men with the mike reminded me of rats fighting over scraps, and that was just about as much as I was willing to bear.
The location and fighting really brought home how much this was all just for the benefit of the TV cameras, and that the end product would be a little over two minutes of local news protest boilerplate, a quarter of it going to the eight or ten counter protesters over by the parking lot. Seeing a van from one of the news/talk radio stations spelled it out more clearly: radio stories might run up to four or five minutes, with 20 second mentions on the hour. Three or four repeats added up to 21 or 22 minutes on a station that routinely provides about 21 or 22 hours of conservative content. And that, in a nutshell, was the heart of the problem.
That was 20 years ago, and we still haven’t addressed it. Which is a pity because I had it figured out in about 24 hours.
It’s all about numbers, and living in a land of “Free Speech” where people like Rush Limbaugh talk to 20 million people a day while you and I are told to call our representatives. Or jump through those mysterious hoops that get letters published to the editor. Or dance around like monkeys, or fight like rats. All that just for a chance to have someone else ultimately decide what our message is. That isn’t Free Speech.
As an American I had some things I felt needed to be said, and they needed to be said to as many of my goddam fellow citizens as possible. And the way to do that was by putting signs on freeways, but not like the ones I’d seen because those signs looked like crap. And it wasn’t about my rights or the First Amendment or some social experiment to address partisan disparity in the media: it was because I Was Fucking Pissed Off. And being some fraction of a crowd described as “angry” over a decision that was “controversial” in some two-minute news spot wasn’t gonna do the trick.
I fully anticipate a replay of what happened last time this time around. And while that’s going to be hard on all of us, imagine what it’s gonna be like for me, having spent literally the last twenty years of my life trying to make sure it didn’t happen again. But don’t worry, whatever happens next week I’ve been thoroughly inoculated against by something I saw last week, which I’ll tell you about later.