Ineffectual protests, young people hoping to get attention, and a bit of tear gas and mace are so expected now that it's pretty laughable. It's not really news, and if a few people get arrested and a couple windows get broken it's just par for the course. I'm not sure whether that's terribly sad (they are protesting the war, a war that's brought back torture but mostly not affected most people in the US) or just means we have other things to worry about. However, what about the pre-convention raids?

Somehow it seems to me to be much less normal to have the cops raid houses and sites with protesters BEFORE they've even done anything, and with FBI help at that... It seems to me a lot like a way or suppressing political speech. I'm not sure what to think of what's going on in St.Paul, except that it's bad news in some vauge way.

I think the hippies had it right, protest is useless, the only thing to do is provide an alternative and better way of life (except you'll probably get arrested for that too). Somehow it all seems like a bad joke. Nobody is paying attention to them, we're all too worried about a pregnant teenager. And of course they're all anarchists, so who cares anyway?

What exactly DO we care about here? Does the media have anything important to say? What matters?

Adamatari:

..... a bit of tear gas and mace are so expected now that it's pretty laughable.

.....

I think the hippies had it right, protest is useless, the only thing to do is provide an alternative and better way of life (except you'll probably get arrested for that too). ....

Those Chinese that took part in the 'festivities' of 1989 have come up with the same conclusion.

Also, rebellion and being 'anti-' has been thoroughly commercialized over the last several decades. How much of protests today (in the west) is performitivity?