Dan Feidt's log on Minnesota, Information Operations, spinstorms and latent contradictions.
Right now it's about 22 hours from departure. Dan Schned and I are cruising to Philadelphia, leaving early Friday morning. Then we get on the train. Wednesday was filled with the last tasks.
Fortunately, I just got a new cell phone from Sprint. This will probably be essential among the concrete canyons of the delirious city. My new number is 651 338 7661. The phone also gets email @ dfedt01@sprintpcs.com . Why dfedt? They made a typo. So maybe I will get that fixed later.
So now comes the difficult part. How do I justify this trip? What do I expect?
I am not traveling to New York City to carry a sign. I have felt irresistibly drawn to the site ever since the Republicans made their disgusting announcement so many months ago. How could they dare to convene in this scarred landscape? What were they trying to prove?
The course of the trip will take me to Ground Zero. This will surely seem redundant, as anything you say about the place sounds worn, shitty, generally repackaged to sell something else. Where the curtain fell on the modern era. Where Sentiments Acquired Capital Letters and Histrionic Importance. This plot opened with the destruction of the symbols, and three years later, the government has answered by attacking, destroying and abetting the obliteration of a whole swath of important symbols in the Muslim world, up to this very hour.
The war on terror is all about symbols, obviously, but the tricky part is that every person assigns each symbol a different value. When the towers fell, the symbol of destruction was manipulated into a symbol of vengeance. But who ever thought that the wreckage would get us to hell so quickly? Who would have thought the symbols could call the bombs so easily? How did these symbols make all the violence look cathartic and redemptive to us?
What black magic performed there caused Abu Ghraib to happen?
I'll go with one goal in mind: to seize control of the deep sense of fear and dread that has chilled my soul for the last three years. There's no more useful way to say it. I have to attack my problem by driving straight to the core. Blitz the situation. Turn it back on itself. Find the symbols that finally unlock it for me. Come back better.
So, am I worried about a terrorist attack?
Yes, obviously. I have a tinge of mortal fear about me, but I'm trying to rationalize by pegging numbers to the imaginary horrors (and let it never be said that I have a lack of imagination) of attacks here. I feel there is a 5% chance of nuclear or radioactive material getting all over, 10% biological or chemical materials. Less than that for modern bombs. That is, the dirty bomb is a lot more likely than a nuclear weapon.
However, if the Air Force manages to level the holiest site in all of Shi'ism during the convention, or even cause a nice gaping hole in the wall, or better yet the dome, then these bets are off. And then the Israeli settlers or the Syrians will make their move...
These are some hypothetical situations... but with narrow odds. With regards to the DanMN team's ability to survive the situation without injury, we are not planning to charge into clouds of tear gas. But that doesn't mean we won't end up in proximity to madness. Oh, there will be madness.
I'm wondering what the tenor of the protesters will really be like. I think it will be different than Chicago '68 in the sense that most of the folks I've seen protesting the war in the twin cities, for example, were relatively mainstream-looking mom and pop types.
The networks say that the 'vast left wing of dissent' exists as some unexplained solid bloc, slowly drifting between San Francisco and Cincinnati, made of radicals, disgruntled Dean enthusiasts, people only worth quoting for fractions of a sentence. Yet the sober reality is that President Bush is easily the most unpopular national leader we have seen in a long time. The strains that will appear in New York will reflect the breadth of that fear and loathing from across the land, I'm sure.
I will say this, to the President's credit. I saw him with my own two eyes, not one week ago, in my hometown. His speech was at the landmark Hudson arch (by the old bridge that formerly went into Minnesota). So that symbol has been permanently perverted for me. And it made me angry.
But I saw the President. And I could see that he was just one man. I could see that a lone soul couldn't have caused all the mess, couldn't have been the one to level such destruction all around.
The buck stops at Bush's desk, it's true, but these days it's more clear to me than ever that the problem is so deep and complex that there's not a chance in hell he's figured out all the levers.
We are led to believe that his power is natural and complete, but in reality it is the opposite. The pity is that he doesn't seem to know it.
Will the hoopla around the convention be covered on this website? Yeah, when I get the chance, but I have no idea how often that will be. Bill Potter, i.e. Jiriki5 on AIM, will be our gracious host, and he might make some posts as things are going on. But at this point nothing is assured.
Packing a suitcase for a place none of us has been
A place that has to be believed to be seen - U2