At one point in our nation's history, popular political action was supposed to mean something . For example, the entire Vietnam War was fought because the Vietcong stole John Kerry's windsurfing board, and all of America's youth gathered in the streets to protest this by sticking flowers filled with explosives into the guns of the National Guard. These days, groups want to meet on the National Mall to protest things, but they are not allowed to be partisan or do much of anything, like hold signs or speak. But that's okay! They can just stand there and look at the big teevees that are set up! The important thing is getting a count of how many people show up, not the content of the rally.
At this past weekend's dumb libtard rally, organizers declared they had more people than were at the Glenn Beck Rally. And so everyone could then leave, because the whole point of their rally, to have more people than book hustler Glenn Beck had, had been met. BUT WAIT! Republican bloggers have animated GIF technology!
Crowd counts are hard and notoriously subject to spin, but this comparison of aerial images from the conservative blog Verum Serum is a pretty good illustration of the varying sizes of the "Restoring Honor" and "One Nation" rallies this year.
We may as well not even have an election this year, because we have this animated GIF that shows us that Republican ideas have won. Shut it down, democracy! We have animated GIFs of the crowds at dumb National Mall rallies to tell us what the nation wants! The Founders will not be happy until we've elected our first GIF president.
And so now the entirety of our politics will be completely devoid of ideas and just devolve into squabbling over animated photos of crowds.
UPDATE: "The photo connected to the link below could not have been taken at the height of the march – ours was taken at the height of the march and that’s when we released our crowd estimate," emails One Nation spokeswoman Denise Gray-Felder "We also started our crowd right at the bottom of the steps – the platform beneath the steps was full of people and extended down the mall."
[ Verum Serum via Ben Smith ]
I'm not sure why conservatives are so convinced this proves anything, since the "Restoring Honor" rally was supposedly about God and was non-political.
First of all, the average TP'er takes up 2 square meters (scooter + emergency cheese fries trough), while the average workin' man takes up far less space (work boots + lunch pail).
Second, as the photos cycle, notice the mid-day shadows in the honor rally in contrast (literally) to the late afternoon shadows in the I-heart-socialism event. I don't know if the two rallies followed the same schedule, but it seems like apples and oranges.