Below: photo taken with my crappy cell camera.

Not much of a turn out at today’s anti-war demonstration. What conclusions can be drawn from this? Naomi Klein recently suggested that Obama, as the president-who-is-not-Bush, has been gifted a constituency that is willing– with obvious exceptions such as the libertarian Tea Party faction and RNC careerists–  to sit back and wait.  The irony, as many malcontents observe, is that more than a few of Obama’s policies are consonant with those of his predecessor: a bailout directed at financial elites rather than ordinary people who are losing jobs and whose homes are in foreclosure; an expansion of the war in Afghanistan under the rubric of “Af-Pak”; and the preservation of key features of an “imperial presidency” including domestic spying, extraordinary rendition and state secrets.

More to the point, it now seems cruelly obvious that the rising body count and financial costs of the War on Terror (rebranded as “overseas contingency operations” by the Obama administration) simply aren’t enough to motivate most Americans to take direct action. How are we to interpret this situation? What does widespread silence on the matter of wars abroad mean? Acceptance? Resignation? Cynicism? Obliviousness?

Below: A hippie jug band playing at the farmers’ market at the Embarcadero. Note the crisp image provided by my tracphone.