Revolution in D.C.

A late-night bulletin from Egyptian Television, complete with graphics:

For two weeks now, up to four- or five-hundred-thousand protesters have camped on the mall and in much smaller numbers in Lafayette Park, most of them peacefully surrounding the White House, but some have already sprayed graffiti on the various memorials and a few have broken some windows and burned cars along streets leading to the gathering places. Their leaders, nameless by design apparently but reported to be members of the fanatic Southern Baptist Convention party, have distributed signs bearing the messages OBAMA MUST GO and LEAVE NOW.

The momentum for the protest has been gathering steam for especially the last few weeks as proponents have tweeted, blogged, and used FaceBook to whip up enthusiasm and angst. Leaders have sought out members of the foreign press to enunciate their grievances, and reporters from entities such as al Jazeera have sought out any Egyptian-speakers or Arab-speakers in general in order to convey these complaints to the Middle East countries, whose leaders/populations have long hated the United States and longed for its demise.

The protesters have come prepared to stay – as some have said – until that well-known hot place freezes over or the president is forced to resign and leave the country, whichever comes first, though California would also be acceptable as a foreign destination. Their main complaint is that he not only has not kept his campaign promises but has also, obviously by design, attempted to take the nation into socialism and even regulate salt-amounts in potato chips. Their leaders have appealed to the military for its support in a rather transparent effort to effect a palace coup.

President Mubarak of Egypt, the most important of the Arab nations and despite its longstanding friendship with and support of the U.S., made it clear at the outset, both officially through himself and his prime minister, as well as through its largely government-controlled press that Obama should resign immediately and not bother with any constitutional requirements but simply let the people choose a new leader, hopefully with as little bloodshed as possible. However, the Egyptian position has changed on a daily basis, so no one knows exactly what it is, though Vice President Biden has reported that it’s just a three-letter word: GO.

What is commonly known as the mainstream media in the U.S. has virtually no presence in the protest-area, but some members of the Egyptian press have been roughed up by presumably the D.C. police and many have been detained for interrogation. The administration has attempted to blackout all TV newscasts of the event but has been unsuccessful. Protesters are still arriving in droves.

There are many groups of protesters with many different grievances. Some are incensed because Obama has not closed Guantanamo as he promised he would by January of 2010. Others are mad because instead of getting Americans out of Afghanistan by this summer the president has poured in more troops to fight the Taliban and al Qaeda until 2014.

Others are gravely disappointed that the president has lied inasmuch as he has added 30 million people and no doctors to healthcare protection while claiming to lower the deficit, an impossibility, not to mention the breakdown of the finest health effort in the world. Older people are incensed over the “death panels” incorporated in the legislation as well as because nearly 800 entities (translated big givers and cronies) have been exempted from the requirements of the law, not to mention that hip-replacement victims will have to wait up to two years for cheap plastic bones.

Still others are calling for his resignation because he has attempted to make good on a campaign promise everyone thought was a joke, namely that he would make electricity costs skyrocket, not least by disallowing the drilling for oil that would make the country oil-independent from nations that hate the U.S., and shutting down manufacturing via enormous cap-and-trade taxes, thus throwing millions out of work, with the actual unemployment rate at 22%, making it a third-world nation largely owned by the Chinese.

There’s great unrest among the protesters account Obama’s worldwide apologies for the very existence of this nation as well as his surrounding himself with financiers and czars, forming a sort of oligarchy, the public be damned. Some protesters, waving dirty socks, are calling for him to leave because he hasn’t withdrawn all troops from Iraq. However, the word has been all day that he’s about to step down and the people are jubilant and throwing parties in the WWII Memorial.

Barbed wire has been placed around the Capitol and the White House. Top military brass is at the Pentagon across the river, the rumor being that decisions are having to be made as to whether or not the military will side with the president, who has just said in a midnight speech he has no intention of leaving before 2012 and perhaps not then and that his position will not be dictated by foreign powers.

In the meantime, Mubarak has demanded that an orderly process of transfer of power and timeline be instituted tonight and has declared that the parties known as the SBC Convention, New Black Panthers and Weather Underground, inordinately beneficent groups, will not hijack the movement, never mind their history of extreme doctrine and/or violence.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark