I've been seeing some sensible liberals whining about the uselessness of protest lately. Here's an alternate perspective:

Do not ever again tell me that protests are merely exercises in 'preaching to the converted.'

I was down with Adam at the 'Still We Rise' protest, as reported earlier. In the crowd was a group of pretty young women dressed in red, white and blue costumes. Some of them were arguing vehemently with the protesters, which piqued my interest. I saw one of them standing off to the side, tapped her on the shoulder, and asked what her group was about.

"We're the GOP Jamboree, a singing group here to support George W. Bush," she said. I asked if I could get an interview, and she said yes.

Confession: I was planning on taking this young Republican apart at the seams, and all on camera. It didn't quite work out that way.

Once the interview was underway, I asked her what it was about Bush and the Republicans she supported. She hesitated, cast her eyes downward, and looked inexplicably sad.

"I don't know," she said.

She came all the way from California as part of an organized singing group whose whole purpose was to support Bush. An afternoon talking to the protesters, however, had filled her head with data that did not jibe with what she had been told.

The video of this will be up soon. Watch it. The crowd educated a dedicated Republican, and did so in a way that made her think instead of making her defensive.

I raise a glass too her for having the courage to wade vocally into a liberal crowd while flying the Republican flag, but I offer a toast to her for having the courage to doubt her own beliefs in the face of facts. Too many won't, or can't, do that.

Cheers.

From the Truthout blog, which lacks permalinks.

Here's the cartoon I wrote last summer, when the GOP's choice of host city was first announced.

I had the same reaction as Sam Rosenfeld over at TAPPED:

Wow, Wolf Blitzer kept telling us we were in for a treat and he was right! Did you all catch that Saturday Night Live spoof they just showed to introduce the convention? Have you ever seen anything so hilarious in your life, ever? Ever? Wolf kept on hammering away to us for about ten minutes beforehand that we were going to be watching a funny SNL spoof that the RNC had put together, and I think it's now obvious that "funny" was just about the understatement of the year.

It was just like the intro to SNL, see, only it was a Don Pardo impersonator, and instead of the cast members from the show -- no, seriously, you're gonna love this -- instead of the cast members, they announced the primetime speakers for the convention! Ha. Ha ha ha haah ha ha Ha HA HA HAAA HAAAA HAAAAA HA!!!!!! Oh man, when the Wolf promises comedy gold from the GOP, he and they deliver it. Just priceless. As Wolf helpfully told White House flack Dan Bartlett after they had finally picked themselves off the floor and wiped the tears of mirth from their eyes, "This shows the Republicans have a sense of humor."

Understatement of the millennium, Wolf.

It's also pretty painful to watch Wolf and the gang pretend to be amused by Mo Rocca's routines. Maybe the stuff would work if Mo were still back on the Daily Show, playing off of Jon Stewart, et al., but the hollow, forced chuckles of Wolf and the gang are comedy death.

After attending the last three party conventions in person, it's an odd thing to watch one on tv--by which I mean C-Span; I'm watching the convention right now, not the talking heads babbling over it. And the thing that strikes me is how amateurish the whole thing seems. It's as if a high school drama department with access to a lot of money and high tech equipment put the show together. The interstitial stuff is really cringeworthy.

When did these little wire-thin microphones sticking out alongside a person's jaw become ubiquitous? Is this just some sort of SWAT/military-chic affectation, or are these things actually superior to conventional lapel mics for some reason?

...all right, apparently they work better. I still think they look silly.

(Note: this entry posted by Bob Harris)

As we careen once more between GOP hell and personal notes from odd chunks of the world... many thanks for your patronage thus far.

(By the way, you may detect a small reluctance to use one common vowel here and below -- "eye," actually. Let's enjoy the challenge, caused by my current locale: Canakkale, Turkey, just up the road from the legendary Troy. The computers here reflect the local language, of course, and thus offer several types of the above-named vowel. None seem to work. Thus the word adventure you see.)

Today began at Selcuk, a small but extremely pleasant town near Efes, better known to readers of the New Testament as Ephesus. A once-great temple stands there -- more accurately, one lone column looms over a swamp -- and so we have yet another head-prod about the dangers of ego. And check off another of the Seven Wonders. Four Wonders down, three to go.

My book notes now read across the top: Almost Seven Wonders. Necessary to compose a proper proposal soon. So much to tell.

But the real wonder of the journey so far has been the people along the way. Every town and stop has been much the same: the Turks have been spectacularly warm. Expect more on same when cafe keyboards allow.

Granted, there are Kurds on the wrong end of the deal here, and the currency plummets as a matter of course, and problem problem problem, sure. But the actual regular folks on the street are the subject here. And a common phrase of goodbye says a great deal about what almost everyone here seems to be about.

The translated call and response goes: "Allah watch over you" and then, as the last phrase (untypeable vowel as * here): "sm*l*ng, sm*l*ng."

Sweet, yes?

And very much how the treatment has been. Much to adore. Sm*l*ng, sm*l*ng *s the ma*n th*ng *'m do*ng of late.

Except about the keyboards here...

Hesiod was one of the first bloggers on the Swift Boat story, and he's come out of retirement to put it all in perspective.

As I've mentioned, the Republicans picked a piss-poor week to hold their convention, at least for me personally. If they'd held it mid-summer like a normal political party, rather than pushing it to the first week of September in yet another pathetic attempt to exploit 9/11, I'd have been able to attend, but there's too much going on with my family this week for me to be able to duck out. So I'm watching a distance, like most of you. Yesterday's march looked extraordinary on C-Span. It gets harder and harder to marginalize that vast percentage of the population which distrusts the President. Not that the effort won't be made, of course.

Next week, things quiet down at home, just in time for me to head to Colorado, where I'll be travelling on a bus with John Sayles for a few days. He's promoting a new film, raising some money for local environmental groups, and generally hosting a sort of rolling salon. I'll be a part of the pre-screening festivities at each of the venues; I'll post more details as I have them.

For now...if you're in New York, and you have stories to tell, you should send them to me for posting.

(Note: this entry posted by Bob Harris)

The trip continues. As always, I've squeezed in more to do and see (except sleep and actually write anything) than any sane person would, resulting in a million notes and little analysis, even more so than on the round-the-world thing. Still, some stuff I gotta share, even if completely out of context, just for coolness and I hope your vicarious enjoyment. Top of the head...

Coolest thing to do on a lark: head up to Olympia, find the original stone starting line, and sprint 200 meters in 95-degree heat in street clothes with nobody around, giggling like a little kid. Also a stupid thing to do, in retrospect. But fun... still, if I start acting like I'm having insights here, remember, it could just be the fried brain cells talking.

I'm writing this from the island of Rhodes, now a part of Greece, located just off the Turkish coast in the southeastern end of the Aegean. That's Rhodes as in The Colossus Of, which used to be about 200 yards from where I'm sitting, at the entrance to the harbor.

Backstory: Alexander the Great's conquering army eventually got tired, sick, and partly dead while walking home from India (and really, have you ever walked home from India?), and even Ali G. himself died in Babylon. Soon, his successors had a big hassle over who got which piece of the known world.

The folks in Rhodes sided with Ptolemy. This made one of his rivals, Antigonus, severely antagonized. So he sent an army to invade Rhodes and kill everybody here, but the plucky Rhodians survived long enough for Ptolemy to send in the cavalry (sort of -- actually, it was a naval fleet, this being an island and all).

Thrilled to be not dead, the Rhodians decided to build a statue to Helios, the sun god and their main guy, using leftover war crap conveniently left behind by the retreating army. This is my favorite bit of recycling in history.

So up went Helios, probably wearing a spiked crown and holding a torch, and about the same size as our modern Statue of Liberty. So mentally stick one of those here, and you've got most of the picture.

(Common portrayals of Helios standing astride the harbor, with ships suggestively passing just under his groin, are fun to look at but thoroughly insane, by the way. Standing right here, you can see that construction would have blocked the harbor -- and thus the island's entire economy -- for years. The Rhodians were ancient, not stupid. No, most historians agree that the statue was just pretty much the standard Greek guy-standing-there deal, albeit a really big one.)

The Colossus stood for 56 years, then fell in an earthquake, leaving pieces of Helios strewn about in the water -- shinbone here, thumb sticking out over there -- for the next thousand years. (This is a good time to mentally reference Charlton Heston at the end of Planet Of The Apes.)

Finally, some Arab invaders grabbed the metal for scrap. More recycling.

Which means this particular wonder was fascinating trash about 20 times longer than it was anything useful. This seems the standard life cycle for products of hubris.

The spot is now marked with twin pedestals bearing not-so-colossal deer, which are the modern emblem of the island. As a lifelong fan of various relatively tiny adorable ungulates, this makes me extremely happy.

Nearby, you find the walled city built by the Knights of St. John, an order of monastic warriors who ruled this joint for a while, in between various bursts of Persians, Greeks, Arabs, and assorted Turks. (Incidentally, the order's modern version has reportedly counted among its members, if memory serves, William Casey, Allen Dulles, and Augusto Pinochet. I mention this for no reason other than it's fun to have in your head, and you might just grow a tinfoil hat.)

Inside the walled city, you find the Mosque of Suleiman the Magnificent, medieval architecture in unparalleled condition, and maybe a hundred kiosks selling modern disposable tourist crap of the first order.

There's also a cool vertical rectangle that took me a full minute to study before I finally realized it was a sundial with Arabic markings. Neat.

What to make of all this, other than glee?

It's one thing to read it all in books, but being here I'm getting a much more profound sense of just how many grand civilizations before our own have thrived briefly, fallen, and been completely forgotten, even though they were completely certain that their gods were real, their customs were the highest evolution of human development, and their future was necessary for the very destiny of life on earth.

Now we barely even remember their names.

Of course, this time it's different...

We've got a whole planet in serious trouble from global warming, well-armed religious fanaticism, WMD proliferation into countries which, unlike Iraq, actually have them, and a dozen other things of unprecedented scale. And every great civilization which didn't actively address its problems has fallen as surely as Helios.

I turned on CNN in my hotel today, the first time I've seen it on the trip. They said absolutely nothing of any importance, really urgently, for about ten minutes.

Man, if there's one thing I'm learning: human beings are really good at simply "solving" their problems by killing each other with complete certainty that it's the will of God, using us in a divine struggle to project our own egos onto the world, against all evidence in the whole of human experience.

It's actually funny, the whole pageant, when you look at it on a time line. What a bunch of maroons we are.

Which is a lot more fun than I'm making it sound. Honest.

One other thing I've learned:

If you get to the island of Hydra, when the old woman standing at the dock offers you a donkey, don't say no. Give her some money, finally figure out how to ride a donkey about halfway up the hill, and enjoy the view.

Headed to Turkey next. I'm gonna have to start writing books about all this stuff I'm seeing. Didn't even touch my notes, which are huge, and the pictures are beyond wild. Gotta find a publisher one of these days...

Apparently some of you missed this when I mentioned it last week, but yes, it is true, many parts of the site are currently inaccessible. Had some trouble with bandwidth leeching this month. That problem has been resolved, but I needed to keep bandwidth down. Will try to find time to get everything back up and running once we're into September.

An anti-Kerry journalist apparently once let the Moonies vet his work. Details here.

Forget the journalists. Bloggers can best be compared to what I once heard Garry Trudeau refer to as "opinionists"--a category which encompasses everyone from Trudeau (and myself) to Robert Novak. And opinionsts of every stripe can be found at the conventions of either party. No one denies Novak a credential to the Democratic convention because he is a right winger. And if I didn't have some family stuff keeping me close to home next week, I could most likely have scrounged up some credentials for the Republican convention (though as an "opinionist"--not as a blogger). Lord knows Trudeau could, easily.

When bloggers can get credentialed for either convention, or any other damn thing, regardless of their personal ideologies, then blogging will have grown up. Until then, getting credentialed as a blogger is about as impressive as getting credentialed for the Weekly Reader.

* * *

(A small note: Though I do have obligations next week which mostly preclude any blogging from New York, I have some interesting stuff lined up the week after. Stay tuned.)