So we followed the demonstration up to Lagoon and Hennepin.<\/p>\n
We stood at the corner, flag and signs in hand, as the crowd of “protesters” swelled around us. Oh, we got some good response – an MTC bus driver honked and gave us a thumbs up – as well as some anger (a few middle fingers).<\/p>\n
“So why didn’t you join the Army?”, yelled one vapid\/drunk-looking thirtysomething decked out in Patagonia.<\/p>\n
“Um, because on 9\/11 I was a 38 year old single parent with two bad knees, offhand?” I responded.<\/p>\n
Patagonia stood there, flummoxed, not really thrilled with the whole “eye contact” thing. “Oh, yeah? Are you on the Halliburton payroll?”<\/p>\n
Observation: At their best, <\/em>the typical anti-war protester is incapable of maintaining a discussion of longer than one statement, maybe two, without changing the subject. If you follow these things in my comment section, of course, it’s no surprise, but it’s interesting to see how flummoxed they get when they’re not in complete control of the discussion (as they no doubt are on campus).<\/p>\n On the other hand, at their worst…<\/p>\n Oh, we had the usual – one red-faced guy bellowed “F*CK YOU!” at the top of his lungs (yes, there were kids present). Another, obviously intoxicated, staggered down the bus\/turn lane in front of us, bellowing “YOU MOTHERF*CKING HYPOCRITES” (yeah, still kids present) before staggering in front of someone’s car.<\/p>\n The lowlight of the day?<\/p>\n A shrivelled little husk of a “person”, probably 5’6 with a ill-trimmed fringe of white hair and a tumorous white goatee framing what looked like ill-fitting dentures, walked up to us. “What IS the mission?” he bellowed, sounding mildly intoxicated.<\/p>\n “Win the war”.<\/p>\n “How do we do that?”, he yelled, with a voice whose vocal cords sounded calloused by years of bellowing along on cue at demonstrations.<\/p>\n “Kill the terrorists, make the country safe for the law-abiding Iraqi”.<\/p>\n “What if there’s a million of ’em?”<\/p>\n “There aren’t”.<\/p>\n He upped the ante; “What if there’s ten <\/em>million of ’em?”<\/p>\n “There aren’t”.<\/p>\n “Are you on some oil company’s payroll?”<\/p>\n “Um, yeah. Does it show?”<\/p>\n He put his hand on my left shoulder. Then, with his left hand, he reached over and grabbed my crotch, then staggered away into the crowd.<\/p>\n My hands were in my pockets – partly to keep warm, largely to make sure I couldn’t react to provocations. That little leprechaun’s dentist can be thankful for this.<\/p>\n I’ll be going through any photos I find of the event. If I find him on film, anywhere, I’m going to give the little perv his fifteen minutes of fame.<\/p>\n Got film? I’d love to take a look.\u00a0 I’d love to make sure his co-workers get some idea of his predilections…<\/p>\n …but then, from the looks of him his only job for the last forty years has been “protester”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" So we followed the demonstration up to Lagoon and Hennepin. We stood at the corner, flag and signs in hand, as the crowd of “protesters” swelled around us. Oh, we got some good response – an MTC bus driver honked and gave us a thumbs up – as well as some anger (a few middle […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-war","category-war-on-terror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}