i saw the president wave, maybe

I spent my morning at the TCC, basically standing around waiting for Bush to drive by. It was a much more emotional experience than I would have thought. I got the around 10 and couldn't find anybody I knew (except Brian, who told me about Students for Fair Trade and his take on them, interesting), and then people kept telling us to go over here, go over there... I ended up near the entrance, where all the people going in to hear the speech were filing in. I wish so much that I hadn't been there; I was so sickened by the anger, hatred, righteous rage, namecalling, and such that I am sure I looked horrified the whole time. This man next to me kept screaming "Sheep! To the slaughter, BAAAAAAHHHH!" which sounds funny in type but really just contained this level of utter hatred that I can't even get my mind around, really. And this towards people who, although I almost certainly don't agree with on many levels, were just walking by with their little children and families and whatever. I don't think that I can direct that kind of personal spite towards people that I don't know much of anything about. It really bothered me a lot.
Anyway, so eventually they made us move again, across the street from the center. A bunch of motorcycle and foot cops lined up in front of where I was, and after a while of standing around in the sun a big-ass convoy of motorcycles, SUV's and two limos drove by and pulled in. People went crazy, screaming, booing and waving signs. I was silent, unable to think of anything that could adequately convey how I was feeling and so struck dumb by emotion and conflicting feelings. After he drove by, everybody clapped for themselves essentially, saying "We did it!" (what did we do? We booed someone through bullet-proof glass from 40 or 50 feet away. He deserved it, but I still didn't feel any great degree of accomplishment from that.) Then practically everybody left. I stayed around waiting for various friends to show up, and by the time Erica arrived he was leaving again and the whole thing repeated. A girl, maybe 10 or a little older, apparently crossed some sort of line and was arrested by about 7 cops, with her hands cuffed behind her back and everything. There was also another, slightly older woman who got the same treatment. They were the only people I saw arrested, although there may have been more. I hope the little girl is okay; what happens when someone so young gets arrested? Right after that, the cops let all the speech-goers cross the street, and I left to avoid a repeat of the name-calling yucky-feelings incident from earlier.
All of this has made me feel so weird. I feel like we did a good job getting a lot of bodies there, but I hate listening to so much of what goes on at protests. Everybody has a very specific agenda, it seems like, and we all just sit around and tell them to each other. That, and the hatred really gets to me. Yes, I hate Bush for doing so much crappy stuff, but I can't believe that everybody listening to him doesn't, on some level, think that they are trying to do something good. Nobody wants their children to die, or the air to become poison. I can't understand being a republican or a conservative, but that doesn't mean I have to blindly hate them all. I don't know. I guess I still kind of go with I won't hate you until I know at least something about you.