alternative hippopotamus

progressive cyberdadaism from our nation’s capital

August 29, 2007

I’m a Surrender Monkey. So Sue Me.

by AltHippo @ 2:51 pm. Filed under Uncategorized

One of the more difficult aspects of life in our fair city is dealing with the crazies. By the crazies I mean the zealots of both the right and the left.

For example, ANSWER is organizing an anti-war rally for Sept 15. You may remember that ANSWER was one of the organizers of the big anti-war rally in DC 2 years ago. I thought it was a good event, I just don’t think that any group should own the anti-war protest franchise. So, I’m going to sit this one out. But it’s not just the ownership issue. It’s also ANSWER’s obsession with utility boxes.

As guerilla marketers of all stripes know, there’s a wide variety of places you can put up fliers. One place you can’t put up fliers is on public utility boxes found on your local streets. For the September 15 event, ANSWER is making a point of using only public utility boxes. On Connecticut Ave., pretty much every utility box has an ANSWER flier glued to it. And, when they got fined for doing this they replied with a popular hand-gesture meaning, in polite terms: “not on your life.”

So, there’s crazies like ANSWER. But there’s also crazies like the Gathering of the Eagles:

But unlike the 60s and 70s, the anti-war lemmings will not have the streets or the political stage to themselves. This time, Eagle Americans — we who support our troops, understand the stakes in the War on Terror and the true nature of our enemy, who aren’t blinded by an insane hatred of our way of life and our form of government — will also be in Washington, D.C., to show Congress that we will not tolerate another betrayal of our own forces or our allies.

Eagles will land in Washington to protect our monuments from desecration, show overwhelming support for our troops and their mission, and ensure that Gen. Petraeus knows he has an army of loyal supporters here at home.

Eagle Americans, give me a freaking break. Oh, and please stay away from the monuments. If you really feel you need to guard something, try the utility boxes.

I think it’s time we started to call it what it is. This isn’t “supporting the troops.” It’s defending the right of American exceptionalists to declare themselves an empire. On the subject of which Chris Bowers is making a good point:

The cost of Empire to America is extreme, and transforming the country from an Empire to a Republic will be one of the greatest, long-term struggles of the progressive movement for at least the next half-century (it is right up there with the struggle over pluralism and the fight for renewable energy). The struggle over the Iraq war is just one step in that larger fight. Of course, since the war started under the auspices that Iraq was somehow a threat to us, and we would solve that problem by invading them and causing them to adopt our values, it is difficult to find a better example since, say, Vietnam, of how our desire for Empire got us into real trouble. The National Priorities Project offers a simple comparison for what we, as a Republic, could have done to improve the quality of lives of our citizens instead of invading Iraq. Of course, we didn’t do it, because as a nation we decided we wanted to be an Empire instead.

The damage that our invasion of Iraq goes beyond the disaster we’ve caused there. It’s also evident in what we’ve gone without here, such as health care or affordable college tuition.

The problem is that we keep giving Bush his $50 billion incrementals, afraid that Rush Limbaugh will call us “surrender monkeys.”

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2 Responses to “I’m a Surrender Monkey. So Sue Me.”

  1. KCinDC Says:
    August 30th, 2007 at 12:32 pm

    On Connecticut Ave., pretty much every utility box has an ANSWER flier glued to it.

    If only. I’d say pretty much every utility box has four ANSWER posters, one on each side. Maybe 3.2 on average, if you count the ones that people have been able to partially remove.

  2. cheapcigar Says:
    November 6th, 2007 at 4:18 pm

    Very nice this blog =)

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