1. over 5,000. cool!
2. i have entered Extreme Procrastination Mode. when was the last time i posted thrice in a day? i don't remember.
3. the times has an über-snarky piece about a south carolina war protestor today...it says in part,

"Unlike most of his peers, Mr. Bursey never got a nine-to-five job; instead he founded "progressive" organizations and started an alternative weekly newspaper. And he protested against things: nuclear power, nuclear warheads, government corruption and, of course, the aforementioned Confederate battle flag, which until two years ago flew on the dome of the Statehouse here."

i particularly like how this man's work is not a "real job," not progressive but "progressive." this was absolutely in keeping with the general tone of the article, which portrayed him as a sentimental throwback and eccentric rather than a person with a serious message. we've gotten so used to hearing stories about activism as silly or nonviable that even those of use who "do" activism occasionally feel compelled to smirk at ourselves. it's funny what sorts of things americans are allowed to take seriously these days.

even more disturbing than its attitude toward activism and activists is the article's nonchalance about the repressive measures that are currently being used against protesters. i think that one of the major worries of many anti-war/opposition people in the last several months has been the erosion of american civic virtues and civic freedoms...and now we're seeing our worries played out, in hints and buried sentences, all over the major media. thing is, they're reporting it as if they don't know what they're reporting. surely anthony lewis, who wrote at length early this week about so-called "enemy combatants," knew what he was writing about. but the increasingly common throwaway sentences about detentions, arrests and the like all seem to point to a refusal to see such incidents as a pattern.

the major media report on ashcroft's detentions and oakland police firing on protesters and efforts to rein in people like brett bursey...and occasionally there's even a sentence alluding to a new trend toward repression of protest. but, as in this article, those sorts of thoughts are often countered by implicitly damning assertions about the targets of that repression. people who get prosecuted for protesting aren't like us. they don't have nine-to-five jobs. instead they do silly things like found underground newspapers. they become "characters"...which somehow gives us license to ignore them.

...which ignorance, all things considered, seems like a pretty bad idea at the moment.