Sunday, January 22, 2017

Sunday Morning Musing on the March

"There are more of us"
--sign at the Women's March, January 21, 2017 [via The Atlantic,  "When Protest Fails", comparing yesterday's march with Russian protest marches]


I know a lot of people like me who didn't march in the Women's March yesterday, though we hate Trump.

Is "hate" the right word? 
*looks up etymology*
from PIE root *kad- "sorrow, hatred" (source also of Avestan sadra- "grief, sorrow, calamity," Greek kedos "care, trouble, sorrow," Welsh cas "pain, anger")
 (Avestan? [see *footnote])

Sorrow? grief? calamity? care? trouble? pain? anger?

Check, check, check, check, check, check, check.

OK, yeah, I'll stick with "hate." It's a legitimate feeling, after all, not an action. You can hate something and choose nonviolence.

People didn't march because they were sick, out of town, too old for the cold, don't like crowds, working, otherwise unable...
I love everything about this--the bike, the idea, the toy--from this morning ^. (Maybe Red Bear wants to do this too...)

Though the headcount of marchers here went up to 100,000, I can name a dozen people who chose not to or couldn't march but are just as strongly pro-democracy and -human rights as those who did. 

On the other hand, Maura marched with a couple women friends who'd never protested anything before. 

My point is, that was just the tip of the iceberg.  

Isn't it weird, the gap between the march and the inauguration, between the millions of women in pink hats and the one man in the tin hat?
This is the weirdest politics I've ever seen. Not that I pay a lot of attention.
From this blog's sidebar index:
things look like other things (16)
Finland (28)
Starsky and Hutch (43) 
politics (83) 
poetry (85) 
food (96)  
movies (217) 
Star Trek (382)  
But whether I like it or pay close attention or not, US politics usually makes some sense to me.
I can't quite do the math for this though.


So, what now?
Will the energy dissipate, or will we, as the sign with the Beyoncé lyric exhorts, get in formation?

People organize to push back when there's something to push against. This guy [I don't even like to use his name] is so consistently rigid, he might just provide a wall to push against. His whiny, blaming, stupid tweet yesterday [reported by Washington Post], for instance, infuriated me.
And all his petty bickering about size. He's disgusting, like stepping on something wet and soft with your bare foot when you get up at night.

I was heartened by the marches around the world!
Women's rights = human rights. 

I think my blog's index entries for "politics" will start going up.
____________
*[footnote]
"Avestan is one of the Eastern Iranian languages (related to Old Persian) within the Indo-European language family known only from its use as the language of Zoroastrian scripture, i.e. the Avesta*, from which it derives its name." 

BELOW: An illustrated copy of the Avestan Videvdad Sadeh, the longest of all the Zoroastrian liturgies, copied in Yazd, Iran in 1647, British Library:

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