Home

The bar top was a replica of (or perhaps not) of an old-style shuffleboard table, of the type that one upon a time inhabited the bars, pubs and taverns of America. At semi-regular intervals, abandoned newspapers, dinosaur-like in their non-digitalness, sprawled sadly, crying for attention and relevance. Dick Dale, who also cried for attention and relevance, shredded surf-redolent notes from the jukebox. State of the art flat screen televisions, a counterpoint to the many Post-it Notes™ and handwritten signs, lit the interior with a ghostly light. Home, or a reasonable facsimile thereof.

He sat at the bar, equidistant between the off-sale cooler, stacked high with beers-for-the masses, and the giant bag of popcorn which invited speculation about bacteria and mass-produced faux butter. It was close to empty, as it often was on a Thursday afternoon, populated only by the white guy who insisted that he was one quarter Cherokee (why is it that white people who claim Indian ancestry are always Cherokee?) and the guy in the waist-length black ponytail who announced at regular intervals that he was the illegitimate son of Anastasia Romanov. Regulars. At home. Like him.

Fairly easy it is to call a bar home when the usual definition doesn’t apply; after all, home is where you go when you’re done doing all the things that you have to do, where the day ends, where your stuff is. When you don’t have any stuff, when the day doesn’t ever really end, when it’s not just metaphorical, you enjoy your illusions wherever you can get ‘em. Especially when reality doesn’t quite measure up. And why should it? He knew that reality would kick in quite smartly at 2:00AM, when ready or not, it was time to leave his home and descend into the nightmare. Not exactly “livin’ the dream”.

What is madness? Some might say that it’s the recognition that the world isn’t what we want it to be…and it never will be. That it’s the railing against the unfairness of “the way things are” and the creation of a reality that fits our sense of right and wrong. That it’s a howling – knowing that “what’s real” will never, ever be the same as “what should be”. He knew madness, he knew the howling, he knew the emptiness.

Away from home, away from the nine-to-five, as the howling died down, reality was the back seat of an unheated car, wrapped in layers of goose-down and a woolen hat.

               

               

                

Million Muslim March

The "Million Muslim March", to paraphrase Voltaire's description of the Holy Roman Empire, was neither Muslim, a march and was quite short of a million. While the central organizing group was indeed the American Muslim Political Action Committee (AMPAC), the planned march was a "Truther" event. A "Truther", for those who don't know, is one of a variety of people who believe that we have not been given "The Truth" about the events of September 11, 2001. The so-called Truth includes claims that the United States government or perhaps one of the intelligence agencies set the whole thing up, or maybe it was Israel. There are assertions that the planes crashing into the World Trade Center could not have caused them to collapse and that explosives must have been planted from within. Truthers generally believe that the government, or elements thereof, caused the events of 9-11 in order to justify the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and to provide a pretext for curtailing civil liberties. Non-Muslim truther groups such as the DC Area 9/11 Truth Movement and Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth Movement were listed as partners in the event. Interestingly enough, AMPAC encourages it's followers to support Congressman Ron Paul and his son Senator Rand Paul. In addition to the Truther aspects of the Million Americans Against Fear (the new name for The Million Muslim March) - the event was to highlight the discrimination and targeting of Muslims by law enforcement that took place post 9-11 as well as the general discrimination by the public. 

So what was the big deal? A fringe group decides to stage their event on a significant day, yes a tragic day, in order to get attention. And get attention they did, despite their march turning into, as The Huffington Post called it, "A Few Hundred People Walking Down the Street". Without the outrage, and yes, the bigotry, that their event engendered, no one would have noticed them save the few tourists who happened to cross their path as they waited for the light to change. What was the big deal? If this had been a "Million Christian March", or if Glenn Beck had staged his event on 9/11/2010 instead of in late August, would there have been the anger, the anti-Muslim signs, the "patriotic" holding up traffic? 

And how about them bikers? How is riding around DC honoring the victims of 9-11, or the military or whoever they're supposed to be honoring? Sounds more like a visceral response to a group that they hate exercising their rights to free speech. Of course the somewhat-less-than-two-million bikers have the right as Americans to oppose a tiny-percentage-of-one-million Americans' exercise of their rights.

But just what are they protesting, these noble bikers? The message? I doubt they even know what it is. The fact that they're Muslims?

I guess in all of this I should be thankful that both groups got the opportunity to express their views.