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Propaganda is a blunt instrument. Swing it, and there's always collateral damage.

I was reminded of this recently, while reading reports on the anti-war demonstration Saturday in Washington, D.C. There was lots of emotion, lots of yelling, lots of black paint brushed broadly over the bad guys - the Bush administration in this case - accusing them of lying, cheating, murdering, racism, war profiteering and everything evil, no quarter granted. All morality was with the good guys, some of whom now sport "What are you doing to end the war?" T-shirts.

The anti-war movement's ultimate aims are fine. At the least, it's clear that "mistakes were made" by the Bush administration in Iraq, which has become what polite folks might abbreviate as a "cluster." Getting out of Iraq ASAP is not an unreasonable option. The movement this time has been careful to focus its vitriol on Bush & Co., not the troops, who were harangued during Vietnam. People should love, not kill, one another. And people - the administration included - should be held to account for their faults.

It's the blunt trauma used to reach those ends that troubles me. Always has. Even in the late '60s and '70s, when I joined protests against the war in Vietnam, I was unsettled by intolerance I witnessed in soldiers of the left at the tip of the anti-war spear. All peace, love and hope was with the left. All evil was with "them" - the warmongers awash in blood, which included pretty much everybody else.

And yet many on the left were as rigid and doctrinaire, as self-righteous, as ruthless and power-tripping as the people they assaulted. Conflicts between and within leftist organizations were often much worse than with the right. I remember male leaders in one social-justice group fighting for the alpha position so they could troll for groupies, arguing the best service women could perform for the movement was "on their backs." Not exactly avant garde.

Maybe it must be so. Maybe that's the way it's always been. Demonization of the enemy is a well-worn tactic - for the left and the right. It works. And in fairness, so does the other side of the broadsword. Rich and powerful institutions are famous for maintaining a bad status quo by making issues seem more complicated than they are. Consider the tobacco industry, for example.

I tend to see the world in shades of gray, rather than black and white. I admire people who take even difficult stands while maintaining humility, embracing love and rejecting violence. Of course, this isn't the definition of people who "get things done." It looks more like a definition of victim.

I think it's hard to adjust from demonizing your neighbors to living with them after the battle is done. But people seem to gravitate toward what works.

Maybe the best to hope for is a balance - that people will admit they share the ailments they aim to cure. That might take a little weight off the blackjack.

Ehn is Tribune opinion editor.