THERE ISN'T ENOUGH POPCORN.

Tonight will come the presidential debate, with the spinning to follow.  I'm already in the mood for strong drink, and as a starter let's have some fun with Common Dreams contributor Robert Koehler, disillusioned with the Donks' convention in Chicago attempting to appeal to Normals.  "The message I hear is this: Democrats are as patriotic as Republicans! Democrats are as religious as Republicans! We can put on a good show too!"

Normals know better, but the squabbles between the corporatist and communist wings of that party never fail to amuse.

Here I was, gawking at the event’s opening ceremony of day two: A pastor delivers a public prayer, at one point saying we should treat all humans “as sacred creations of the Almighty.” Huh? Is he serious? Does he really mean this? The word “sacredness” has been let loose; joined by “God.” Someone sings the National Anthem. The delegates recite the good ol’ Pledge of Allegiance, their hands ceremoniously pressed against their hearts. Then “God bless America” fills the hall.

In 1968, the outrage was over the NLF, which was gonna win. A month ago, it was over the Philistines.

Ceremony can matter, but when it’s basically just a curtain hiding reality... God help us all. I felt squeezed by fury and frustration. Oh, the platitudes of peace. I shut off my computer and decided, I’m gonna do it. Earlier I had received an email from the American Friends Service Committee, inviting me to an interfaith “Remember Gaza” vigil, happening that night at Montrose Harbor, a few miles from where I live.

Suddenly I felt called to be there, at this “interfaith vigil to honor those who have been killed in the genocide in Gaza, to highlight the urgent need for a permanent cease-fire and an end to U.S. weapons sales to Israel.”

The speakers would be Jewish, Muslim, Christian, as well as people who had lost loved ones in Gaza. And it would be taking place in the wake of the Biden administration’s latest approval of $20 billion in arms sales to Israel—you know, the reality the DNC event was hiding behind its curtain of faith and patriotism.

I had to do something besides sit in my study and stew. Attending a vigil on Lake Michigan at least seemed doable. Would it “solve” anything? Uh... maybe not, but I had to make my opposition to my country’s policy physically apparent, or so I heard my conscience scream from some deep inner place.

There might be a principled pacifism, and then there's aiding and abetting the enemy, and the service committee in question crosses that line repeatedly.

Oh my God, I had made it. Things were just about to start. There may have been as many as 200 people sitting along the concrete steps facing the beach. The sun was setting, the sky was a beautiful reddish blue, the dark waves swooshed into shore.

“Our souls are tired,” a speaker lamented, and another speaker reminded us that the ground we were sitting on, this very moment, had been Hopi, Ojibway, Pottawatomie homeland... forcibly taken through genocide “Think of the many untold stories of genocide that happened right here on this land.”

That set the tone—for the poetry and grief and mourning, mixed with the sunset and the waves.

One speaker declared: “Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, we call upon you to remember the people of Gaza! Our country has the power to be a leader of peace. We want to vote for candidates that are pro-peace. Please give us that choice.”

In a different context, such words might seem trivial, easily shrugged off. But in that moment, they seemed not only deeply felt but real—as real as the wind that swept across the beach and stirred the waves.

A day later—what? I know that such words amount to virtually nothing by themselves. They only resonate when they are spoken in a context of commitment, plans, and action, a la the civil rights movement. For now, as the DNC continues, I hear them not simply as a cry of hope but as an emerging certainty, the struggle for which will not stop.

Without the Bureau of Indian Affairs to protect the Hopi from the Navajo, there wouldn't be any Hopi to honor.  Does the legend live on from the Chippewa on down of great victories south of Gitchee Gumee?

These Common Dreams types, however, argue a lot with Democrats, and vote for them in the hopes of being able to change their minds, whether through guilt trips or direct action.  If in the course of those agitations, Normals are deprived of their ceiling fans and gas stoves, all the better.