It was the usual post-communist leftie march. That is, it was a petit-bourgeois re-enactment of meaningless ritual that passes for serious politics among those too inexperienced, too emotionally excited or too poorly read and too unpracticed at self-reflection or political analysis to know or perhaps care how futile and tired the conventional march has become. Crazed grouplets of anti-capitalist movements trying to fan the embers of Marxism back to life, gender and transgender groups with their own spin on climate, earnest eco-warriors, publicity-seeking hucksters, adrenalin junkies, college kids wanting a taste of the venerable tradition of public protest, and, as always, a great many people who don’t think that burning marijuana adds to the world’s CO2 load, marched down Manhattan’s streets. The chants echoed through the skyscraper canyons, the drums rolled, participants were caught up in a sense of unity and togetherness that some of them had never known. It was almost like politics, almost like the epochal marches that have toppled governments and changed history ever since the Paris mob stormed the Bastille.
Almost. Except street marches today are to real politics what street mime is to Shakespeare. This was an ersatz event: no laws will change, no political balance will tip, no UN delegate will have a change of heart. The world will roll on as if this march had never happened. And the marchers would have emitted less carbon and done more good for the world if they had all stayed home and studied books on economics, politics, science, religion and law. Marches like this create an illusion of politics and an illusion of meaningful activity to fill the void of postmodern life; the tribal ritual matters more than the political result.
In other news, King Canute sits on the beach, against the tide. MT @mrford0: 311,000 march against Climate Change in NYC #climatemarch
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) September 22, 2014
A woman tweeted a photo of a bunch of trash sitting on a mailbox, saying “Litter left by the #peopleClimateMarch. Their love for the Earth is so real, they couldn’t even use a trash can”. It made it into the New York Post, and Twitchy tracked the ensuing liberal outrage.
First tweet story and the aftermath.
Hey, Einstein, for some the only means of $$ comes from collecting cans, bottles, etc to cash-in for the deposit money.
Trying to wrap my head around that gem.
And I now have a headache..
The free newspaper handed out in the subway here has a weekly column by a local ecologist/advocate. Today’s column was about how proud he was to have gone to New York to march. Hey, Leonardo DiCaprio was there!
The carbon that he released getting there? No mention.