Archive for September 27th, 2008
I knew this wasn’t a conservative crowd. The district leader asked us:
Did you see the debate last night?
Catcalls of affirmation.
Who won?
I thought the two of them said pretty much the same thing for as long as I could stand to watch it, so it was a wash. The crowd disagreed, and so, by acclimation, it was Obama. We did most things that day by acclamation.
Most of the day wasn’t by the book. We winged it, more or less, touching on a few important points but otherwise letting whatever happens, happen.
Of the 12 sections in our instruction packet, we covered four or five, because we decided to, by acclamation. When the book said we should watch the first half of Obama’s 2004 speech and not the Kerry-praising second, we saw the whole thing, because we decided to, by acclamation.
We talked when we wanted to, we sat around generally when we wanted to, we ignored instructions when we wanted to and we left training when we wanted to. We, the trainees, were more in control of the training than our trainers.
I saw mob rule by an untrained, sometimes callous mob. I saw what was nearly chaos, held together only by a deep, pre-existing common interest. In as pure a sense as I’ve ever seen, I saw democracy.
I’m glad someone decided that republics were a better idea for our American experiment.
