I suppose you’ve seen, heard and read reports on the recent demonstration at the Lincoln Memorial, by Glen Beck and Ms. Palin. It is a clear exercise of free speech. Likewise it is a cynical demonstration of self-serving half-truths being spouted by people whose very words and actions contradict what they purport to believe. Somehow seeing this brought to mind Albert Speer, Hitler’s architect, who so successfully staged the outdoor rallies for the Reich. It seems that discourse has devolved into little more than spectacle.

I do think contempt, stereotyping and intolerance are as much a problem as cynicism these days, and they’re popping up everywhere. I remember a time when “liberal” and “tolerance” went together, but today? Not so much.

I think, too, that the nature and value of demonstrations changed when the internet took over. It used to be that, if you were going to organize a demonstration, people worked together in person, constructed networks and got to know other people. Now, someone tweets a time and location and you get an aggregate of strangers showing up, not a community.

I suspect that’s one reason personal, even hand-written letters have such effect. They can’t be dismissed as just another bit of internet detritus.

As we have all become consumers of the information of our choice, favor and bias, we have little time to consider the implications of the demo of the day, even if it happens in front of us. Watch one of these demonstrations closely and you’ll see people on their cell phones, tweeting, checking their email even playing games on their Droids. So I am cynical–read an observer, reader and listener. What I see, hear and read tells me that as a people, nation and world we are in deep deep trouble. We can’t ferret the meaningful from the information overload. And increasingly we are learning there is no one we can trust.

Our politicians in order to get elected and reelected of necessity become liars. They simply cannot afford to bite the hand(s) that feed them–big business. Consequently we the citizenry NEVER get the full truth from our leaders only the PR, the vetted line–the party line. So the cycle continues.

But the other reason I chuckled was last year when I was in Paris, the bus was very late. I stood in the bus shelter with rather a crowd of native Parisians and tourists, cranning our necks to look down Rue du Rivoli to see if it was coming. One of the tourists said to another, “I wonder why it’s so late,” and a Parisian with good English said, “Oh, it’s just another demonstration! We have them all the time!”

I couldn’t help but think it was interesting that demos were just taken for granted as something that comes along, and you just wait till the bus cuts through. We always make such a big deal.

Later that night I saw one myself (something to do with the soccer championships) and the book I just finished referred to the demonstrations as well. So, whenever I see them here, I think much as you do — and then, “But in Paris, we’d be dealing with them all the time!”