 |
|
January 21, 2005 Insecure Insanity: The Crowning of the President by Mary E. Hunt, Ph.D.
I had to see for myself the spectacle of George W. Bush’s second inaugural. Quite the show it was, a sickening reminder that insanity rules in the nation’s capital as security fences worthy of San Quentin and empty buses lined nose to nose chocked off any semblance of freedom of assembly. My Mennonite pastor friend Cindy Lapp and I bundled up and bustled downtown. The temperature was in the low 30’s; when the sun departed it was downright cold. We knew that many of our friends around the world would have wanted to be there to convey their anti-war sentiments, their contempt for Bush’s unjust domestic policies, and their outrage that this country would spend upwards of $40 million to party while tsunami survivors need clean drinking water. I wore a pink scarf (Code Pink is a feminist anti-war group) and a peace pin, enough to make clear I was not part of the fur coat, big hair, high heels, party set. Little shocks me from this administration, but the absurdity of this scene took a prize. Picture the beautiful expanse of Washington, DC, along Pennsylvania Avenue from the Capitol to the White House, a distance of about 1.3 miles, lined with military personnel stationed every 15 feet or so. Security is the latest make-work project of the Bush Administration. Police trainees with their backs turned to the crowd were interspersed with the soldiers for reasons that remained obscure. Sharpshooters stood atop the buildings; helicopters hovered. Police cars zipped about. To get this close we had to pick one of several entrances to the cordoned-off zone and go through a pat-down search. An earnest young man asked me if I wanted a woman to do the search. Only in the interest of time did I say no! The dried fruit and nuts in my pockets passed muster. No backpacks allowed; the pile of them and their contents that people discarded in order to enter reminded me that waste is a sin. I had not seen gates so stout since I did an internship in a prison some years ago. We were now inside. We picked the right entrance because on arrival at our viewing site we were pleased to see so many protestors. Creative signs and chants lent a festive air. We stood cheek by jowl with people who were there to cheer their president. One visiting woman instructed her children on the various branches of the military as their units came by. The kids were just cold and wanted to go back to the hotel. I hope that will be their enduring memory and not the guns and swords. We did not apologize for shouting “End the war,” “Play music, don’t shoot.” But it was obvious from some chilling looks that people had not come from all that way to have free speech rain on their parade. Democracy sneaks up when you least expect it, folks. Security personnel were everywhere. One fellow looked like something out of a movie: thin, plainclothes, sunglasses at a rakish angle, earpiece, chewing gum, pacing our section like a nervous cat, scanning the crowd for dangerous customers. If I had met him alone on a street I would have clutched my cell phone to call the police. It was bizarre, but he was obviously a honcho security dude, some high ranking Secret Serviceman, a reversal of serious proportions. There were really two parades. The first was a phalanx of police on motor bikes, followed by black vans, cars, emergency vehicles of all sorts. Wedged inside the tangled mess was the limousine carrying George W. Bush, the most precious package of all. He was behind tinted glass, waving at what looked like the wrong side of the street when he got even with us. Spectators were only allowed on our side and he seemed to be turned the other way waving at no one. I was not surprised. I executed the pivot I learned watching young activists, turning my back in a non-violent gesture of disgust, shouting “Stop the war” in a vain but cathartic effort to influence foreign policy. Then he was gone, the parade seemed over. More tangles of black vehicles followed—one protected the vice presidential limo—but it looked more like military maneuvers or the Mafia on holiday than a parade. The real parade came later. This had only been the warm up act, the President’s way to get to the reviewing stand. All I could think of were those cold children as Cindy and I, along with thousands of other protestors, left the scene of the crime before the marching bands began. Millions of dollars in Homeland Security Funds for the District of Columbia had just been spent to assure George Bush’s safe passage from the swearing in to the reviewing stand. Talk about sin. And don’t talk about disaster if/when some real security problem arises in DC and there is no money to prevent it. We wove our way around street closings and metal fences to the 12th Street entrance to the prison-like enclosure on the theory that the closer to the White House (17th Street) the more furs and boots and Republican red scarves we would see. It was bleacher seating by invitation and ticket only at that point. At one street corner we were denied access to the zone while fur-wearing folks ahead of us were ushered in sans identity checks by a Secret Service officer. He claimed they were congressional people. I wished for more legal observers because such is the stuff of law suits. After all, this was not a private night club with bouncers, but a public event on public land. What you are wearing is irrelevant though it seemed to be the coin of the realm there. When the President was safely ensconced in his bubble of a reviewing stand, security apparatus was suddenly torn down and the hoi polloi were allowed in. A short time later we exited at 14th Street into a cordon of helmeted DC police (someone suggested they looked by armadillos in their rippled security vests) who were holding protestors at bay. Why, I wondered as two blocks below the gates were wide open. Sanity had little place at the inaugural event. Things were tense there as we headed home to collect our children. I learned later on the evening news that the armadillos unleashed their pepper spray shortly after we left. Several protesters and police were injured. It was pointless as the gates were wide open two blocks away. In his inaugural address George W. Bush said piously: “There is only one force of history that can break the reign of hatred and resentment and expose the pretensions of tyrants and reward the hopes of the decent and tolerant, and that is the force of human freedom.” We experienced the antithesis of freedom on the streets of Washington. President Bush prattled about “the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world" while we lived tyranny here in the name of security. The one thing Mr. Bush did say in his speech that rang true was, “The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands” because his administration has all but killed liberty here. If Inaugural Day is any indication, now that George Bush wears the crown for his second term, we in the U.S. need all the help we can get from free people around the world. More is the pity.
Mary E. Hunt, Ph.D. Co-director, WATER Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual 8035 13th Street Suites 1,3,5 Silver Spring, Maryland 20910 USA 301 589-2509 301 589-3150 (fax) mhunt@hers.com www.hers.com/water Home About Us Newsletters News Archives Donate
|
Co-director,
WATER (Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics
and Ritual)