I think big-scale, long-term and larger patterns. Immersed in evolutionary theory and the evolution of humans and their unique form of split consciousness, focusing on current politics and social change, I find myself attracted to the bigger picture and longer-term goals or transformations. It’s partly personality, partly habit and partly what I’ve found interesting over time that attracts me to how interconnections form and larger systems function.

Making those Sunday phone calls, I’m struck again and again by how focused organizers are on what is happening in their immediate area and how little they feel attracted to making sure that what they are doing is available for exploration on a larger scale, a broader geographic region. Organizers, generally, don’t think big.

This is particularly obvious to me when I send an email to a large group of organizers that are the heads of chapters or affiliates of national organizations. I note that my communication is authorized or sponsored by their central office. A very small percentage of the organizers respond. Or, a central office emails the affiliates or chapters, urging them to contact PJEP to become part of a statewide network. Few respond. What local organizers are focused on is what they are doing at the moment. Thinking outside the moment to consider how that individual and the local organization will benefit from connections to numerous other organizations is a relatively uncommon occurrence.

In other words, most members of the Left/Progressive movement that I am in contact with, and I’m in personal contact with over 700 organizers in 30 states, don’t think big in the context of interconnections with organizations across their state and in other states around the country. Not thinking big is the same as not thinking in an interconnected, horizontal, transparent fashion. I believe this is because most of the organizers I work with are old (over 55). Organizers often also have low expectations regarding the benefits of working with other organizations or letting other organizations know what they are doing. This sense of isolation seems characteristic of Left organizers of all ages.

I haven’t hit upon a solution, a way of successfully encouraging activists to think big, take risks and see a larger picture across larger periods of time. The American Left/Progressive movement is rife with disappointed, frustrated organizers that keep their focus close to home. This is another reason why I believe the coming changes will be enacted largely through young folks and those with communications technology expertise in Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. For the young, big picture is effortless and ubiquitous. All they need is an expanded sense of time. Then, everything they’d like to see won’t just seem possible; it will feel achievable in an immanent future.

There are, of course, the various national Left organizations that endorsed the protests that occurred the day after Obama announced he was sending additional troops to Afghanistan such as the United for Peace and Justice, Veterans For Peace, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Military Families Speak Out, Peace Action, the A.N.S.W.E.R Coalition, National Assembly, National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance, Pledge of Resistance, Voices for Creative Nonviolence and World Can’t Wait. They supported the actions by sending out emails to the activists on their lists. This is not a particularly creative or innovative way to use online technologies. The American Left is still firmly positioned in Web 1.0. We’ve not seen evidence that encouraging these organizations to behave differently, embracing some 2.0 upgrades, for example, would make a difference. They are almost without exception dramatically underfunded, and they have a mindset mired in one-to-many communications.

One of the problems limiting national organizations is that they don’t usually think in terms of encouraging collaboration at the local “grassroots” level, letting their local chapters work with other organizations’ local chapters within their communities. Such relationships would provide an ability for local chapters and activists to create and initiate their own projects tailored to the circumstances and needs of the community. They could be provided with funding, technical support or other resources. Such results do occur, but haphazardly instead of as part of a larger strategy. The use of new technologies to integrate local chapters of different national organizations is almost nonexistent, other than mentions on one another’s websites.

There are the aggregator websites, like Democraticunderground.org, which provide a place to congregate, converse, post content and share opinions. These sites have not been built to serve as tools for organization, though some of the blogs have crossed that line. Whereas Talkingpointsmemo.com is pretty much pure centrist story posting, Dailykos.com offers powerful organizing trajectories in addition to opinion sharing. Powerful voices there rise to the top, voices expressing unique interpretations of the political landscape and offering effective calls to action. Nevertheless, Dailykos is seen as a support site for the Democratic Party, not a Left venue.

Counterpunch.org, Alternet.org, Truthout.org, Commondreams.org, Buzzflash.com and Truthdig.com, are curator sites displaying and archiving news from a Left perspective and don’t push specific activist interventions or lobby for particular actions. TheNation.com, Motherjones.com, Progressive.org, and Inthesetimes.org, the independent political media, also are not action creation and execution forces on the Left. Click here for an overview of these types of publications and websites.

Perhaps inspired by Glenn Beck’s success last September in getting tens of thousands on the D.C. mall, in November, the popular webcast and radio producers, the young Turks at theyoungturks.com called for health care demonstrations in L.A., N.Y. and Atlanta at the offices of CNN. Turnout was small, but it was an interesting experiment. Other than the large immigrant rights demonstrations, has another video, cable or mainstream TV vehicle used its platform to get activists onto the streets? This is again, a one-to-many communication, hardly 2.0, but it sets an interesting precedent if the origin of the action emerges out of, for example, social networking tools.

Candidate Obama’s campaign, of course, used 2.0 tools with maestro-like finesse, empowering local organizers in ways unheard of by providing access to real-time information on campaign supporters which could be used in support of focused projects or to orchestrate local events. The Left has nothing like those kinds of resources or a central message. What might the Left take from the Obama campaign that the Left can use?

Facebook seems to be central to almost all the horizontal, spontaneous demonstrations occurring around the country. Responses to Prop 8 and then the Israeli-Gaza protests were integrally tied to Facebook use, which helped to bring out activists from all demographics. The radicals of the 1960s finally awakened to social media. It feels likely that new organizing tools or techniques are going to emerge in a context of Facebook or Twitter integration. We’re still watching for a large, Twitter-inspired/directed protest to occur in the U.S. as occurred in Dresden, Germany earlier in February where twitter was used successfully to thwart a planned neo-Nazi march.

Though there is a seamless integration between individuals within local organizations posting Iraq War demonstrations to one of 40 networks across the country with all that content appearing in a single spot (pjep.org home page), with over 1500 organizations accessing information about the accumulation, what could enhance this process of individuals within local organizations feeling empowered by awareness of the larger whole?

Please share your thoughts with us regarding the Left, social media, new organizing technologies and effective new strategies and interventions. What exactly do you see happening? How will these technologies be utilized?

-Marcia Bernsten & Andrew Lehman

Those mostly fairly tenuous relationships resulted in our being able to accumulate 100 actions protesting the Obama escalation of Afghanistan, while keeping the 1,500 organizations apprised of the growing number of actions.  Just after the December 1 and 2 actions, I got a call from a North Carolina organizer wanting to know how we were different from United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ), which had limited resources and was not able to organize around the escalation protests, other than sending out emails.  I responded that PJEP is sort of like a national organization’s outreach, communications and technology departments.  PJEP involves itself in no content creation or leadership articulation of the issues.  PJEP is mostly just process, process seeking to empower the actions and projects created by small, local organizations.  PJEP does not initiate or articulate.  We empower and encourage.

Empowering and encouraging involves access to and distribution of high quality information.  The closer to consensus reality we are, the better we’re able to perform our job of mapping out the landscape to achieve goals.  PJEP, by simply being in contact with 1,500 organizations, able to retrieve from them information on what exactly they are doing, allows us to share that information, empowering activists with knowledge of their place in the larger whole.  For example, speakers at local events could state with confidence that over 100 cities around the country were protesting a government decision.  Groups are not acting in isolation.

Just before the protests, one of the places I searched for high quality information was Twitter.  Conducting a number of different searches, such as “Afghanistan protest” or “escalation protest” or just “#protest” or “#Afghanistan,” I was shocked to discover there was very little activity around the 100 emerging protests across the country.  One activist posted his frustration with finding any information regarding the protests on Twitter.  That got more retweets than any protest posting.

Concluding that the protests were not generating heated conversations among youth, it was easy to predict, early December 1, that attendance across the country would be low, with mostly the usual older folks.  Indeed, that was the case.  The largest of the 100 demonstrations was in Chicago, with about 450 in attendance.  The folks in Chicago all considered this a healthy turnout.  I received many emails from organizers in other states that were disappointed by the low attendance.

Chicago was the very first city in the country to post that an action would occur at 5:00 p.m. the evening after the announcement.  Organizers worked hard to create the event, led by Andy Thayer, whose leadership has become integral to almost all Chicago Left mass demonstrations.  Chicago also has almost every Left organization on a single organizational listserve.  This dramatically speeds up the time it takes to put a spontaneous project together.  Most cities don’t display as much cooperation among organizations as Chicago does.  Then again, most cities don’t have activists like Andy Thayer.  Andy doesn’t only take responsibility for doing what other activists don’t step up to do, but he executes those things with efficiency, professionalism and a creative flare.

How could other cities have encouraged larger numbers to attend their 100 demonstrations?  Chicago was a unique situation.  Though Twitter was not engaged, Andy relied upon Facebook extensively, even posting links to the other demonstrations around the country from his Facebook page.  A heavier reliance upon social media like Facebook by other city demonstrations might have had a positive effect.

Still, I don’t think the low numbers around the country were about what organizers could have done differently.  Activists that worked hard for Obama mostly did not show.  This included many faith-based, union and African-American activists.  Clearly, youth mostly were not engaged.  That leaves me wondering what youth in the United States would be inclined to twitter about as regards political change.  Furious Twitter activity around the Iran elections engaged a massive number of Americans.  The Afghanistan escalation jolted few.

What in America would compel a powerful Twitter response?

Many of the Left activists we know move in social circles comprised of other Left activists.  A result of the integration of political activism and friendship networks is an interesting nondifferentiation among actions taken in support of friends, actions taken to impress friends, actions taken because that is what your friends are doing and actions taken because we feel compelled to do so politically.  In other words, the line between friendship and politics becomes blurred.

Whereas I find many of my friends and political associates focused intensely on the larger politics of what they are involved in, my focus is often following through with what I committed to doing, engaging in an action or intervention I find interesting or just doing something because it is with people I know and like.  My work is not driven by emotion.  The politics that are most interesting to me are those that make clear how the Left operates, how the Left responds to events, how the Left seeks to achieve its goals and how working together can achieve those goals.  This is all in the context of relationships I’ve formed with activists across the country.

For me, friendships, relationships and my involvement with social and political change are pretty much the same thing.  It’s all art.  I am part of a process that involves my response to community requests in combination with what emerges from my imagination.

There is a deeper level that this dynamic operates within.  I carry with me a belief that each of us unconsciously plays a part in a larger societal and biological dynamic.  There is no difference between biology and society.  The decisions each of us makes individually is part of a decision we make socially and biologically.  Experiencing the personal, the social and the biological as one integrated whole, I find that the political feels far less “personal” than it evidently does to many of my friends.  What I mean is that I rarely feel personally affronted by the words and behaviors of men and women on the world stage.  I observe men and women making decisions, decisions that they perceive to be in their own best interest, but which nevertheless are decisions informed by a larger personal/social/biological context.  Each plays his or her part.  Rarely do the players show signs of awareness that the decisions they make are not only their own.

The frame of reference that I carry with me when I theorize about human and biological evolution accompanies me when I’m involved in political and social change.  It has at its foundation an artist’s point of view.  I am propelled to write, imagine and behave in particular ways related to what spontaneously emerges from a place within or beneath me that is definitely not my conscious mind.  I theorize and construct political change tools based upon these emerging inclinations.

What I am aware of is what attracts me.  Some things feel fun and I engage in them.  Some people feel attractive and I engage with them.  I let myself be led through love, friendship, work, theory and political activism, aware that I am following along behind where my personal/social/biological path leads me.

I am a political activist that usually feels no blame.  Aware that I am led, I understand we all are led.  Each plays his or her part.

Becoming aware that this essay would not be published until March (after sending it to an editor), I considered what the view of these events would be from a season in the future.  Then, I became aware of myself conducting a dissociation to achieve an alternative perspective.  This was followed by my being aware of my being aware of my conducting a dissociation.

There is a difference between debilitating dissociation that leads to an experience of feeling removed or separated from an integration with the environment and the kind of dissociation that offers an ability to achieve both an experience of integration accompanied by a grasping of the relationship of the constituent parts at several levels.  Dissociation can be characterized by division or integration.

The line between these two kinds of dissociation can be pretty thin.  I spend time in both places.  The people I am close to in my life note that I’m engaged in debilitating dissociation usually before I am aware that that is what is happening.  They then call my attention to it, providing me a reminder to associate and engage.

The United States also features both debilitating and integrative dissociations.  This country has offered an astonishing ability to engender alternative perspectives propelling the world into new creative directions.  This does not always occur in an awareness vacuum where competing parts jostle for achievement with no oversight, but in a larger context where it is understood that the community is renewed by an independence of its parts, while those parts that contribute to the community are most revered.  Dissociation featuring integration does occur.

At the same time, the United States exhibits a shocking disregard for understanding the implications of violently intervening in the affairs of other countries.  Instead of defining U.S. national security in the context of a larger global whole, U.S. foreign policy often revolves around what works best for corporations and the access of those corporations to resources that benefit American investors.

Protesting the Obama escalation in Afghanistan, citizens call attention to government behavior that is resulting in a less integrated, less socially aware, less communally involved population.  Intervention is required.  So we protest.

Dissociation can be characterized by division or integration.  The choice to escalate in Afghanistan has compelled, in me, an association.  A deep sadness often establishes itself in my body.  When a choice by some invests sadness or anger in others, it’s often a sign that integration will only happen after grief is faced.

The escalation in Afghanistan is founded on dissociation, leading inevitably to grief.

At the end of last November and the beginning of December, Peace, Justice & Environment Project (PJEP) volunteers worked hard to keep the 41 websites serving 50 states current with actions appearing across the country, which were protests of the Obama Afghanistan escalation. There were 99 events posted, by far the most comprehensive list available on the web.  Nevertheless, though attendance was often excellent at these events, it was usually older activists.

Though some activists posted the wider list to Facebook, Facebook events were mostly not linking to other Facebook actions in other locations.  Twitter, profoundly effective at encouraging worldwide attention on events in Iran, was strangely absent from the almost 100 events occurring across the U.S.

This obviously points to young people not being as motivated to fight the Obama escalation as their older activist associates.  If young people were not Twittering their friends to attend events, then it is likely young people were not consumed by the particular issue.  There is another thing suggested.  Not only were young people not feeling compelled to congregate, young people were possibly not feeling empowered to make their feelings known.  There is the possibility that former young supporters of Obama are responding to these developments by returning to a state of noninvolvement.

In other words, assuming that young people were often against the escalation and that young people were not demonstrating their objection, then we can predict a dramatic drop in young people showing up to vote in the next election.

In a blog posting of December 2, the second day of demonstrations, Paul Krugman discussed the increasing likelihood of a double-dip Great Recession.  Krugman described the repercussions of the Obama economic intervention resulting in a drift back into severe recession.  Though the piece did not discuss a combination of recession, war in Afghanistan and a resurgence in the number of Republicans elected congressmen and senators, the absence of youth in our streets suggests this scenario.

There now emerges the strong possibility that deep systemic change will only occur at state levels.  The federal government’s ability to initiate change is disappearing before our eyes.  The Senate will not approve executive support of international treaties.  Environmental legislation is deeply compromised.  The federal government behaves as if incapable of legislating additional large-scale job programs.  Congress will not inhibit presidential right-leaning initiatives.  The president cannot push left-leaning legislation through the Congress.

If the young do not exhibit their passion, the positive energy of our country’s government is destined to disappear.

The Afghanistan protests were a season ago.  The repercussions of these demonstrations will be with us for a while.

There is the actual idea and there is my awareness of the context of the idea generation.  Then, there is my awareness of the context’s context.  One of the interesting repercussions of theorizing about the origins of consciousness is a frequent shift of position to being aware of how I am aware.

Back to the idea.  It struck me that our PJEP network of almost 1,500 organizations spread across 50 states has little ability to effortlessly proliferate a local action, petition, boycott, eletter or fundraiser campaign across state lines without someone having to cajole, encourage or harangue an ally or potential ally, who could then take that action or campaign and post it in a different state network.  Negotiation accompanies almost every attempt to forge an alliance if there is text involved.  Most organizations have few contacts outside their immediate town or region and so don’t even start the process.

The idea was to simply allow the banding together of different local organizations, or chapters of nationwide organizations, in organizational alliances that would authorize a member of an organization to post an action or campaign for all participating organizations, at one time, across all participating states.  Once an action or campaign were posted, the members of any local organization could adjust the language of the action or campaign to their local liking or choose to remove themselves from that particular project.

I’m seeking to enhance a seamless proliferation of social change interventions across the country, encouraging relationships, empowering individuals, providing an opportunity for an idea emerging anywhere to have access to the resources to make its fulfillment possible.

Studying how quickly evolution operates through the extraordinary ability of natural systems to respond to information by adjusting the structure of individuals and societies, I’m seeking to program into our social change online applications an ability for small local organizations to easily share information and impact allies, thus creating opportunities for large shifts quickly.

Pieces of this particular idea have bounced around my head and been discussed by Dave, Laurel, Marcia and I for over a year, but it has never felt particularly compelling.  Then, twice this week, Marcia and I were in discussion with national or international organizations working for peace that were having trouble integrating existing chapters.  In one case, a large national organization was disintegrating, for several reasons, and not the least of all was the ineffectiveness of their communications infrastructure, based mostly on one-to-many communications.

So, it’s feeling like it is time to integrate this new programming protocol.

There is Richard Stallman’s late 20th-century crusade to carve out a commons on the web.  His influence has been astonishing.  In the Left community that I am part of, I am in contact with hundreds of activists.  His name has never been mentioned.

The word “hacker” has evolved over the last 20 years.  It rarely appears in Leftists’ conversations.  Nevertheless, its emerging meaning has more to do with an egalitarian revolution than with one that violates private cyber space.  The folks I am in contact with are little aware of the young programmers’ community fighting for free code and shared universal software.  There are few bringing the young, creative, digital commons movement to the older Leftist radicals writing leaflets and blogs.

I end up part of many discussions that involve bringing in speakers to Chicago to raise funds and excite the Left/Progressive community.  Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky are the names most often raised.  Cindy Sheehan and Seymour Hersh come up.  Never do the names of the champions of the electronic commons, the creative commons and Internet freedom come up in those conversations.  Names such as Richard Stallman, Lawrence Lessig, Joi Ito…

We need bridges between the political Left and the Internet commons.  I’m not clear why there is such a gap, perhaps because it seems most of the Left is 55 and older.  Not unlike the 60s when there was a clearly identified generation gap, there is perhaps a wider one now featuring older Leftists unable to see the commons that is growing around them.  Most older Leftists don’t identify the rip, burn, share, create Internet culture as a natural ally.  To the older folks, change has to be political.  Cultural change is just not on their radar.

Right now, actions are proliferating across the country that protest Obama’s escalation in Afghanistan.  Yet, there is relatively very little activity on Twitter.  Little on Twitter is alluding to the depth of the demonstrations.  There are almost no links to those pages showing over 80 cities conducting protests.  Few Twitter posts call attention to local protests.  I predict that tonight’s December 2 protests will be mostly older activists.

We need translator advocates that can speak both lingos, ones who can talk both cultural change and political transformation.  We need blogs dedicated to explaining to the denser old folks what exactly is going on with the young.  The older postmodern-angst advocates need to be introduced to the young horizontalists that have little respect for what has gone before.

There is a generation gap.  We need some writers to bridge the chasm.

Spontaneous protests have been emerging across the country this last week with activists demonstrating against Obama’s anticipated escalation of the Afghanistan war. Currently United for Peace & Justice (UFPJ) is in flux. They are in debt functioning with all volunteer staff as the steering committee reaches out to member groups to help define the future of UFPJ. As a result, A.N.S.W.E.R., National Assembly, Codepink and World Can’t Wait (WCW) have been, by and large, offering attention to this issue as national organizations. Nevertheless, none of those organizations have an inclusive national presence with chapters or affiliates in every state. Only WCW has put any effort into trying keep up with the actions proliferating around the country.

With PJEP, keeping up has been relatively easy. Our 1500 participating organizations post actions to their state network websites themselves or send the actions to us to post for them. We have keep a running tally of Dec 1 and Dec 2 Afghanistan escalation protest actions. I email WCW and National Assembly my running totals. WCW then posts that tally on their national website. We’re also finding WCW events on their website that we didn’t know about. A.N.S.W.E.R. hasn’t responded to emails offering them information, except for a Washington state chapter that we work with.

As the list of local protests grows we send it out to local activists in the various states. This seems to be encouraging the creation of new events. As of 8 am (today, Dec 1) we are following almost 70 protests across the country.

We observe the momentum. We share the information. We see increases in momentum and action.

This has been an interesting experience. I’ve been monitoring the use of Facebook and Twitter as a communication device for the coming demonstrations, it has become clear that Facebook and Twitter offer no opportunity to monitor or experience an integration of related events across the country. By contrast, PJEP has had 50-state coverage since early July, 2009. This is the first time our breadth of operations has been able to magnify our members’ goals and actions into a clear contribution to a national movement. The networks are fulfilling one of the goals we set out to accomplish as we envisioned what PJEP could be.

That money bought stuff never seemed particularly relevant.

So my contribution to the Left in the 1960s and 1970s was mostly handling the accounting for the various things that were exchanged.  Forty years later, at protest planning meetings, I mostly handle display and transfer of information because web development is my profession.  Watching and listening to organizers in meetings, I notice that same deadpan earnestness I remember from my youth, but relations today are plagued by decades of hurt feelings and activists taking personally the former strategic decisions of their peers.  I am constantly astonished by how often present behaviors are informed by past disappointments or frustrations.  Experiencing forgiveness is not a common experience in the Leftist avocation.  Training oneself to be vigilant of abuse skews one’s world view toward being nonaccepting.

And there is perhaps the deepest irony of the Left.  Focused on needed change, the Left has a difficult time perceiving change when it occurs.

Nevertheless, these days it is not the Left that is receiving media attention.

I wonder what the organizing meetings of the Right look like.  Is it men in suits in hotel meeting rooms, suburban homes or offices?  Is there a budget for food being brought in?  Do attendees all go out and drink or go to a restaurant after meetings?  Are these all people that have worked together before and share tactics and strategies?  Are these almost all men with political connections?

Early last autumn, watching video of the September 12 D.C. demonstrations, I found myself trying to parse out differences between these two political extremes.  Whereas large national demonstrations of the Left haphazardly emerge from coalitions with no single person influencing the outcome, on the right, figures like Dick Armey or Glenn Beck almost single-handedly propel events into national prominence.  They have money and/or media control, providing enhanced one-to-many communications.  On the right, name recognition goes a long way.

At demonstrations of the Left, participants often move in people clumps as they congregate with a particular organization that they identify with.  Costume is common.  Of course, long hair and hippie affects are ubiquitous.  Other dress conventions such as anarchist attire and union tee shirts can be found.  Music is often integral to the contribution, often in the form of drums.  Education institutions are widely represented with students and professors.  Youth dress, which includes backpacks, music, head attire, jeans, beards and no bras, all signal a Left event.  Unlike organizing for a protest, where organization representatives seem often dour, at the events themselves there is often a sense of jubilation.  Participants seem to be celebrating their participation.

At the September 12 event, the tea bag protests and the town hall gatherings of the Right displayed a different aesthetic.  Attire seemed mostly to signal that the individual was a person that was not a member of a specific group.  Whereas on the left there is an almost aboriginal compulsion to signal tribal association, on the right the display of conventional clothing itself is a proclamation that the participant is an “American.”

Whereas a default frame of reference on the left is peace, on the right there is a respect or reverence for physical, even violent, intervention.  Guns are often heralded as a symbol of independence.  Wars are looked at as essential and reasonable ways of relating to societies that retain competing beliefs or agendas.  On the left, there is a deep sensitivity toward oligarchic and fascist behaviors in government.  On the right, there is this hyperawareness of socialism and fascism, as if the two are closely related.

On the right, placard-bearers often display the words they have seen or heard on TV and AM radio, tied to viewpoints that originated in a specific place within mainstream media.  On the left, signs bear slogans that represent opinions shared at the level of individual conversations.  Rarely are the words on signs from a living individual, let alone a media figure.

I attended an anti-war protest in September of 2005, in D.C., that brought in more than 300,000 people.  That’s my estimate, not the estimate of the organizers, which was far higher.  There was no media coverage.  None, with the exception of a mention on CNN.  Estimates for this year’s September 12 protest were 50,000 to 70,000 people, and that protest got strong coverage on all networks.

At a Left protest it is relatively difficult to distinguish the truly strange, those individuals bearing beliefs suggesting paranoia or a personality disorder.  The crazies dress in ways that look like everybody else, with the rare exception of those distressed individuals that dress really strange.  At a Right protest, those with truly strange perspectives, those that use FOX and AM radio as their exclusive sources of information, seem to be everywhere.  Those with deeply unconventional perspectives are the norm.  It seems to me that on the right there are many people without personality disorders that bear extreme beliefs because their sources of information are very specific and often wrong.  This seems partly a function of education.  I get the impression that a far larger percentage of the Left has a university or college education.

Most video of the September 12 tea bag and town hall events focuses on the most extreme cases of opinion.  If video portraying the Left did the same, I believe we’d look less strangely extreme, but it would not be a complimentary perspective.  Those with the most rage often emerge on these videos promoted by the other side.  The Left embraces compassion.  The Right extols forgiveness.  You’d never know this from the information that gets exchanged.

Not unlike when I was young, nowadays numbers are still often how I interpret my experience.  At demonstrations, even big ones, I count the protesters.  I pay close attention to how the events are promoted and conducted.  I find the logistics more interesting than the words.

Following the Right Wing protests and comparing them to Left events, I am struck by the differences.  Clearly, there is jubilation on both sides.  Protesters seem to display exultation with their expressions of dismay.  Yet, on the left, there is the idea that an ideal world exists.  On the right, there seems no such sensibility.  On the left, there is the desire that each and every person feel supported.

On the right, it seems that an ideal world is one where that individual protester gets what he or she wants.