Rage against... Donkeys and Elephants

This NYT piece reports on Rage Against the Machine as they held concerts/protests/riots outside both conventions over the past two weeks. John has more pictures and recon from the scene here. Synopsis as follows:

“I hope you all leave peacefully, but you don’t have to be passive,” Mr. Morello said. “Don’t let anyone put their hands on you.”

Thousands took that advice, and a few took it a step further, refusing orders to disperse at Seventh Street and Second Avenue.

Arrests, a mainstay of the latest Rage shows, quickly ensued.

I have always been a casual Rage Against the Machine fan, and I use the word casual in all sincerity after experiencing the RATM concert experience this year. I managed to find myself in the second row at the Lollapalooza show where they stopped the set 4 times because the crowd was pushing through the front steel and concrete barriers. The security staff was hopeless to control the power and energy of this crowd and could only try to pull the vulnerable patrons from being smashed and trampled by the crowd. It was unlike anything I had ever seen before, unlike any emotional or motivational response to music, or to any artform. The pull to this message and cause is understandable, especially with the unpopularity of this administration, but the combination of the message of the music and the intensity in which its delivered to massive crowds is something I can understand so much clearer after not only witnessing it, but truly being engulfed by it. 

After last night I craved for 'hope'

After the MSM reaction to Palin's speech last, which they felt the need to ignore everything they had been uncovering the past 5 days and come to the conclusion that one fiery speech means she's a formidable candidate, I needed a reprieve. I dug into my Obama speech archives, I needed, I hate to say it, but I needed some hope. I needed to read something that washed away the cynicism and slime of division that this party has represented for so long. I needed something that reminded me that we still had a chance to say goodbye to all that a couple months from now. I ended up settling on Mr. Obama's address at Ebenezer Church -The Great Need of the Hour: 

Unity is the great need of the hour - the great need of this hour. Not because it sounds pleasant or because it makes us feel good, but because it's the only way we can overcome the essential deficit that exists in this country. I'm not talking about a budget deficit. I'm not talking about a trade deficit. I'm not talking about a deficit of good ideas or new plans... But of course, true unity cannot be so easily won. It starts with a change in attitudes - a broadening of our minds, and a broadening of our hearts. It's not easy to stand in somebody else's shoes. It's not easy to see past our differences. We've all encountered this in our own lives. But what makes it even more difficult is that we have a politics in this country that seeks to drive us apart - that puts up walls between us. We are told that those who differ from us on a few things are different from us on all things; that our problems are the fault of those who don't think like us or look like us or come from where we do.

There was no broadening of anything last night but division, division of our parties and of our ideas. There was no mention of a unified country to march towards making America great again, it was our plan and their plan, choose one. Thats what their party and their strategy has been for these past few elections, I know, I was a part of it. Obama opened my eyes and my mind to dispel the arrogance and ignorance the republican party had been feeding me for so long. This morning, after watching all of those tired republican dividing attack lines with the same old sleazy smile delivery, it feels so good to have escaped when I did..