Walk a mile in someone else's caterpillar tracks
Just a quick bit of mind-bending irony. In Hungary, apparently, you have to lodge notice 72 hours in advance of any demonstration you might wish to make, and face the wrath of the riot police once you get there. A couple of them decided to make the effort count. From the ABC:
Hungarian anti-Government protesters have gained control of a Soviet-era T-34 tank in Budapest during street riots that have marred the 50th anniversary of the anti-Soviet uprising.
Protesters managed to start the tank, which had been parked in the capital as part of the anniversary commemorations, and drove it some 100 metres towards a wall of riot police near Deak square in the heart of the city.
I suppose it could be a model of empathetic role-playing, to let demonstrators know what it must have felt like to be one of the Soviet tank crews, and for the riot police to experience being out-armed. It’s a perverse reversal of what should happen at a demo where there’s a tank.
The shopping bag man, in the unlikely event that he’s still alive and reading the Hungarian news, must be baffled. Hundreds of thousands of rock-throwing Palestinian kids must also be getting dangerous ideas.
The other question you have to ask is where the people who hijacked the tank learned to drive tanks? It’d be an added level of wierdness if it was during military service in the Cold War era.
All the Hungarians need now is flowers to go in the gun barrel.
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