It seems that the only thing more massively ineffective than all the various “Wars on X” that Americans love so much (Crime, Cancer, Terrorism) is any effort to end another–frequently undeclared–War.  I’m thinking of a flyer I saw the other day urging people to gather somewhere earnest in the Mission and stop the War on Women.  I didn’t pay attention long enough to read a single grievance.

And that’s the point.  It’s almost perfect white noise, its conspicuousness entirely a function of form rather than content.  “I AM A POLITICAL FLYER” is practically the extent of the message.  There is definitely a strong performative quotient to the whole exercise; people get together and fulminate against this or that, they talk shit about consumer capitalism while wearing clothes that brand their alternative identity, some of them carrying a torch for half-forgotten or just plain weird causes.  (Plus legalization of marijuana, which will probably become the new gay marriage in ten years’ time.)

When I think about the unspoken need in political discourse to equate and balance the “freaks” on the Left and Right as if both were equally numerous, equally embarrassing and equally powerful, I have to laugh a little.  There’s no denying that the Tea Partiers are peaking right now, and really, there just hasn’t been media exposure shining on the left’s fringes approaching that scale for decades now.  Yet everyone knows they’re there, toiling in liberal enclaves (or, more accurately, in the impoverished enclaves of affluent, liberal metro areas).

Crusades to end The War on Women sound ridiculous to most people’s ears.  They cringe.  Even I cringe.  It bespeaks youthful disorganization and a crazy person ranting at a microphone.  The disjunction between the Dirty Fucking Hippies being right about most everything and the leprous aversion that anyone who commands power and respect has for them has been chronicled on a thousand liberal blogs, and it’s seriously amazing.  When I hear about a rally, I make sure not to be there.  Today’s clumsy March against Oppression breeds tomorrow’s more focused progressive leaders, but still.  I’m such a hypocrite.

On the other hand, I drove by a July 4 Tea Party rally in Monterey and really wanted to get out of the car.  I would have been like a bird that decides to check out what it’s like to swim with fish, but holy shit, I’m fascinated.  And while both hippies/Greens/malcontents and Tea Baggers want to reduce the power (read: ownership) that Finance and its high priests exert on the US political system, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” will never take root.  Both sides are quite powerless, although the Tea Partiers might be holding the conch.  If one were of a conspiratorial bent, it might seem self-evident that this is way it was planned to be.