My First Rally

I was going to open with a review of "Basic Economics" by Thomas Sowell. (Summary: a long, slow, and very worthwhile read), But I saw something today that struck a nerve. Last night, I was perusing TechDirt (as I am wont to do) and ran across a "What are you doing for the fourth" post, which lead to (among other places), "Restore the Fourth" and a nationwide effort to mobilize the populous into rallies to, well, restore the fourth amendment and bring back the quaint notion of "due process" to law enforcement activities. (For those living in a vacuum, a whistleblower named Edward Snowden recently revealed to an unsuspecting public that the NSA has been gathering phone usage data on, well, nearly everyone in the country in the name of "national security". The press, instead of focusing on the massive violation of civil rights, flagrant lies (including perjury before Congress) by the people in charge, and the complete lack of evidence that  any of this has made the American people safer, has been focusing on praising/demonizing/chasing Mr. Snowden around the globe; classic misdirection).

Anyway, one such rally was an hour drive away, so I grabbed my ironic hat, slapped on some sunscreen, and headed out to show my support etc. etc.

When I finally arrived, things were in... well, as full swing as they were gonna get. Roughly 100 people had shown up in the small park just a couple blocks from the state capitol. They were standing around in the stifling 40°C heat, 2 or 3 people deep in a quarter circle arc focused on the speaker about 10m away. Said speaker was using a microphone and boombox-looking amplifier, but was nonetheless all but inaudible, whether this was because of inadequate technology or local noise ordinances enforced by the two bicycle cops looking bored, hot, and not very menacing as they straddled their rides at the edge of the crowd, I can't say. The second speaker was even harder to hear, with a softer voice and a stilted reading-from-an-unfamiliar-script manner. But what little I could hear was, uhm, not very compelling. I was expecting (maybe hoping?) for vehement exhortations. Scathing denouncements. Outraged (or even outrageous) demands. I thought there would be genuine anger in the audience. Instead, it felt like both the speakers and the audience were in a bad mood, perhaps cranky from inadequate sleep. Maybe it was the preaching-to-the-choir aspect (though after I'd been there a little while, I started to realize that maybe a quarter of the sparse audience were people who had just been hanging around the park when the rally people showed up), but there was nothing very inspiring or memorable in what was being said. I wasn't expecting "I have a dream!", but this just sounded like public whining. The applause generated was dutiful and loud, but had a brevity that said, "there, I clapped, now get on with it." I left after about half an hour, a little disappointed, a bit uncomfortable with the faint smell of weed from a small group of tough-guys in training nearby, and very dehydrated.

Are we really this jaded? Do we really expect so little of our elected officials and the bureaucrats they appoint? Have we reached a point where lies, cover-ups, and flagrant/outrageous abuse of powers has become de rigueur and hardly worthy of note? Maybe this is a tipping point. Maybe this is just the start of something bigger. It sure didn't feel like it though.

When I was a kid, we were the good guys. What the hell happened?