A day of piecework. Like a philosopher exiled to the factory town who puts bread on the table by taking in piecework from the local factory. The ethos that distinguishes the day job from the work has served me well in recent years. And one is grateful to be able to glean a means of survival for the nonce from these industrial fields.
The protests here over the weekend, at least from press reports, look to be rather large. On the order of hundreds of thousands. What makes them unique, though, if I can get the reality of it through the skillful social media manipulation that is now de rigueur for wars, protests, and large corporations, is that the event has an almost sacramental character, with many groups making the pilgrimage on foot. The narrative is that the society has crystallized around the student movements, and frequently you hear it stated that the students are to be trusted. Contrastingly, the loyal opposition to the loyal opposition is camped out in front of the President's offices, and with the polarization of recent days, is treated increasingly unkindly in the left-leaning press and by passerby. And then there are the signs which don't fit neatly into either camp. Veterans of the wars, in civilian clothes, distinguished only by their bearing and the cluster of sargeant-majors standing at a respectful distance in the shadow of the monument, as the leaders shake hands with a group of young men clearly a bit awestruck to be in their presence. Things coming together. Which is interesting.
What distinguishes this from a large DC protest stateside is that this group at least believes itself to be precisely on the centerline of the country, not the partisans of a certain faction. And with this much inertia in play on a given weekend, and with that inertial mass precisely on the centerline, there's certainly the possibility of mercurial changes in the situation. Perhaps not coincidentally, the agenda for the legislature on that day appears to be the quasi-secession of the entity to the west. This comes after a year of shared ethnic congresses, and I think a large meeting under the auspices of the church. Utter amateur at these things, and with no particular information, but there will likely be hundreds of thousands of pilgrims, positively suffused with patriotism, showing up with a need for some sort of event. The mimetic need, as Benjamin Bloch called it. Or perhaps they'll just find a way to make their society work a bit better. Traditionally, spiritual exercises are useful for that sort of thing.
As for myself, laying low is the watchword, and hoping that the theatres and coffeehouses won't be closed for too long. As an ambassador from no one in particular, I have an obligation to neutrality even greater than the ones thought up in Vienna on occasion.