George W. Bush paid a visit to Country Club University this afternoon. He was in the area for an event in nearby Silicon City, and then stopped by the campus for a dinner with the University's president and the fellows of the Eureka Institution, which is housed on campus.

The visit had not been publicized in advance. Like many on campus, I first learned of it when an administrator sent an e-mail cautioning that the campus area around the Eureka Institution would be cordoned off, and protected by snipers posted atop the Eureka Tower.

Nevertheless, word spread quickly enough to bring out students and community residents to demonstrate. The turnout was pretty lame, no doubt in part because of the late notice; but also because CCU students are not a particularly activist bunch. I saw only three students from the law school, which didn't particularly surprise me.

Separating the crowd from the Eureka grounds were a perimeter of steel barriers, and a phalanx of county sheriff's deputies and Silicon City police officers, all in full riot regalia. At least one officer carried what appeared to be a teargas gun. Eventually, a line of mounted police paraded in. But, if the aim was to create an aura of intimidation, the effect was somewhat spoiled by a small group of bicycle cops wearing
shorts and sporty sunglasses.

The show of force seemed entirely unnecessary, given the easygoing, peaceful nature of the crowd. Nothing much happened. There was, so far as I'm aware, only one arrest. At one point, a fire truck drove up behind the crowd. Thinking that the truck wanted to get through, the crowd parted to let it pass. But the truck just stopped there, separating the crowd in two. A couple of students sat down on the pavement in front of the truck, but behind the cordon. When the sheriff's deputies directed the students to move, they did. But one of them evidently didn't move quickly enough to satisfy the deputies. Five of them swooped down, grabbed her and hauled her away. Why it took five strong deputies to accomplish this feat was not at all clear, as the young woman was fairly small and put up no resistance. Meanwhile, the fire truck remained in place for a while, and then back out and drove away. There didn't appear to be any purpose to the entire exercise, other than an attempt to disperse, or perhaps harass and antagonize the crowd. If so, it didn't work. Most people remained at the scene, and those who did remained peaceful.

There were the usual chants, most prominently the now ubiquitous, "This is what democracy looks like", which, since the WTO protests in Seattle, has displaced the old favorite, "The people united, will never be defeated",¹ at the top of the protest charts. Surveying the scene -- a gaggle of hapless peaceful demonstrators penned in by steel barricades under the watchful glare of rows of armed, club-wielding, helmeted, masked, jackbooted thugs, helicopters buzzing overhead, and invisible snipers aiming their rifles from on high -- it didn't appear much to me to be what democracy looks like, but rather what a police state looks like. Much more effective, I thought, was when someone took hold of the loud hailer and serenaded the cops with a lilting chorus of "Can you feel the love tonight".

The whole thing would have been pretty boring, but for one nice moment of levity. At one point, a bright yellow Hummer drove up behind the assembled demonstrators, perched atop of which were two figures masquerading as George W. Bush and Condoleeza Rice (herself formerly an administrator a CCU and a Eureka Fellow). The ersatz Bush addressed the crowd, proclaiming, among other things, that, "I'm the decider. And I've decided to nuke Iran." All the while, mock-Condi stood silently by her man, gazing wistfully and nodding gently in agreement.

After that, I left. It didn't appear that the real Bush had yet arrived. But the crowd by then was thinning, and I needed to catch my train home.


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¹I have always found that one to be particularly annoying, not merely because it is trite and hackneyed, but more significantly because it is empirically false. In the history of social movements, there have been all-too-many instances in which the people united have been soundly defeated by a superior armed counter-revolutionary force. See, e.g., Tienanmen Square (1989).

(Cross-posted from Reports from Poisonville.)