The upcoming Republican Party convention

The Republican convention has been described as cold. [..] But the sense of brute power was overwhelming, like that of a great monster with little brain which plodded forward and could not be stopped. It was a most representative crowd, representative of a massive and selfish and cynical demand for place. [..] It was the gathering together of distributed privileges, [..] business lawyers, and pillars of society from all over the union. It was the quintessence of all that is commonplace, machine made, complacent and arbitrary in American life. [..]

This brutal fact flowered up into flamboyant oratory. I shall not soon forget the nine and a half hours I sat wedged in, listening to the nominating speeches and subsisting on apple pie and loganberry juice--hours of bellow and rant punctuated by screeches and roars. [..] It was a nightmare, a witches' dance of idiocy and adult hypocrisy. DuPont for instance, and his wonderful grandfather, and the grand old state of Ohio, and the golden state of Iowa, and the flag, red, white and blue, all its stripes, all its stars, and the flag again a thousand times over, and Americanism till your ears ached, [..] and Abraham Lincoln, mauled and dragged about and his name taken in vain and his spirit degraded, prostituted to every insincerity and used as window-dressing for every cheap politician. The incredible sordidness of that convention passes all description. It was a gathering of insanitary callous men, who blasphemed patriotism, made a mockery of Republican government and filled the air with sodden and scheming stupidity.

To go from the Republican to the Progressive Convention was to find again the open generosity of a better America. The mass of the delegates there were the most warm hearted crowd I have ever seen. But [..] in 1912 the cant phrase which dominated them was "service." This year the word was " leadership." They have no creed, none whatever. [..] They clung to [their leader] as a woman without occupation or external interests will cling to, her husband. [..] They loved without self respect and without privacy. [..] They took a creed from him which subsequent events showed was not their real creed. They trusted their leaders, but their leaders never trusted them. The delegates never understood what was happening, and it was never fully explained to them.

It just goes to show that hyperbole has long been a favorite device of Leftist scribblers, and that Manichaean notions are not confined to the Right.

In a smaller protest, police used clubs briefly to disperse a handful of demonstrators holding a "kiss-in" not far from Times Square. There were no immediate details about injuries or arrests.

"There's been a few minor arrests," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. "It has been peaceful."

Residents leaned from windows along the demonstration route to shout their support. Scattered opposition was visible only around Madison Square Garden, where the GOP convention opens Monday. Some early convention arrivals looked across police lines, shouting at demonstrators: "Go home!"

You in an angry mood today Finn?

The day's most noteworthy street theater wasn't even the creation of leftists; it was the brainchild of a conservative group calling themselves Communists for Kerry [..]. Dressed as Lenin, Castro, and Che Guevara, and speaking in appropriate Russian and Spanish accents, they marched up Seventh Avenue waving red flags and calling for revolution. (The fact that their display was satire wasn't immediately obvious to some of their fellow marchers.)

Protest Warriors. Any Republican in New York not safely ensconced inside of Madison Square Garden can find refuge with the Protest Warriors--just look for the signs reading "Hey France, Shut the Hell Up" and "Communism has only killed 100 Million People: Let's Give it Another Chance!" The only major protest group devoted to protesting the protestors, Protest Warriors now has a total membership of 8,000 spread out across the country. Approximately 600 of them are expected to show up for the convention.

Tom Paladrino, the twenty-seven year old leader of the group's New York chapter, is an art director for a major department store--where, he says, amongst a sea of MoveOn.org posters, his desk boasts the only Bush/Cheney 2004 poster. "My biggest problem with conservative political activism is that it didn't really exist," he explained. "Sure, you could join the Young Republicans or something but then you would just sit in a room and talk. It was boring. I wanted to be proactive."

The group's signature approach is coopting the aggressive street tactics traditionally associated with leftist causes. Members snuck into the live audience outside of NBC's "Today" show and briefly held up a sign behind anchor Matt Lauer's head reading "Don't believe the liberal media." Says Paladrino of his group's strategy for engaging left-wing activists: "We aren't just counter-protesting. We mix right in with the rally. We take our signs and get right into the march and debate and argue with the people who are marching." One of the group's more popular signs reads, "War has never solved anything"; in smaller letters below it says, "Except for ending slavery, fascism, Nazism and Communism."

During the convention, which Paladrino describes as the "protest Olympics," the group will confront several of the larger marches and rallies. In addition to their traditional tactics, they will be working with their new spin-off group, Communists for Kerry, which is the right's answer to Billionaires for Bush. "The left shouldn't have a monopoly on street theater," Paladrino says. "This is the information age and we need to compete. We need to be in people's faces."