| Hell no! We won't... research stuff? |
| Ahh, protests. A grand assembly of dreadlocks and bongo drums. A congregation of putrid odors ranging from gym socks to armpits, pechouli to marijuana. Yes, protests are truly a grand affair. But there's a few things to keep in mind when going to these meetings... the most important being research. Well, a lack thereof, really. If you attend a protest rule number one is that you can't know anything about the topic at hand... if you do, you'll be labelled as, well, the man. Protesting used to me an intelligent affair. Individuals of all classes would assemble to argue their point, at times abandoning key facilities in order to disfunction the individual or party that had wronged them. They respected three key components that would typically lead to justice: (1) research and fully comprehend the issue/ topic, (2) get the point across in a concise manner, and most importantly, (3) present the issues that upset/ effect the group in a respectable, presentable form. So what world-changing event dissipitated this process? Vietnam. In the middle of the 1960's, the face of assembled arguments changed forever. Rules number one and two stayed in tact, but no longer were these issues presented by individuals who struck a presence... they were, for lack of a better phrase, dirty hippies. Protests became the centrifugal point of the drug culture, and authorities were influenced more to ban these people than to listen to what they had to say. The anti-war protesters only truly changed one thing about the future... protesters, from that day forward, would no longer be taken seriously. And because drugs and pop culture struck deep into the core of political rebellion, the impressionable youths who were caught up in these movements were caught up in the new form of lifestyle as well. Protests lost their respectability and gained dis-conformity. And as drugs alter minds, individuals under the influence of these substances stop caring about important topics and start driving their attention more towards the party aspects of the cause. It's a fact: most protest attendies today know nothing about the topic they're protesting. They assume that individual(s) leading these "uprisings" are know-all wizards of understanding the world's many "-isms." Penn & Teller, on a related edition of their Showtime television program "Bullsh*t," exposed my long-believed theory with an experiment. They sent a woman to a protest with a petition to ban "hydrogen dioxide" to see how many people they could get to sign it. She explained that this is a chemical found in drinking water. We use it to shower, rinse food and dishes, and kids play in it. Sure enough, hundreds of people signed this petition, some even agreeing and pretending to understand what this individual was talking about... they were full of knowledge about hydrogen dioxide. It was later explained to the viewer (and some of Penn & Teller's victims) what this chemical was... Hydrogen (H) Di (2) Oxide (O)... H20... they had coaxed a large number of individuals into petitioning water. And using very similar scare tactics, it's simple for an influential individual to draw large crowds of others into fighting for their causes. To make a long rant short I'm going to clarify a few simple facts for you. Take this in and think about it before you run off to your next protest... I might be able to save you some time. If you don't believe me about any of this, take your time to conduct your own research. Go to the library or look on the internet, and find sources that have a non-biased opinion into the matter. And if you think about it... some of this makes actual sense... common sense. Peace Protests: As long as human beings are omnivorous creatures there will always be war. That's a fact. As long as there are two people on this planet who disagree about anything, and as long as those people have friends who agree with them, war will always exist. To protest the nature those disagreements are settled? There's nothing wrong with that... in fact, I encourage it. I don't think innocent people who could care less about the cost of gas in their Toyota should run off to blow up other people who also don't care just because Bush tells them to... but to protest the act of war itself... to demand that everyone everywhere should stop killing one another... it's time for realism to step in and kick you in the face. Sweat Shops: I'm sure it hasn't occured to you that there's different currency in other nations, and that those currencies fluctuate constantly, but has it ever crossed your mind that $.50 USD is, in another country, a fabulous wage? Rather than assuming that the wages and work conditions in other countries are unfair and slave-ish, you should talk to the people these wages are affecting. Western individuals who protest the work conditions in other countries are hated; dispised by those who actually work in these establishments, because they enjoy their jobs. They don't mind working 12 hour days because, in a nutshell, they aren't lazy like Americans and most Europeans. They enjoy being able to wear fancy clothes and eat well. To them, $1 USD is a fortune, and they're glad to make it. But protesting performed primarily in the United States has caused some corporations, namely Nike, to lay off thousands of individuals so that others could make more money, just to appease whiney white upper-class suburban kids who have never and will never know a hard days work. I'm sorry, but 8-hour days telemarketing do not consitute hard labor, and neither does asking mom and dad for money until you graduate from your upper-class college (yeah, here I am talking). Go work overtime in a factory for 10 hours a day, even if only for a month, just so you can comprehend what it's like to feel like you've earned something, you lazy fart. Global Warming: No, the ice caps aren't melting. El Nino makes teperatures rise over a period of 39 years, then they decrease for a secondary period of 17.6 years. Go back to the seventh grade. Yes, there's a hole in the ozone, and yes, that truly sucks... maybe all of you Global Warming nuts should spend a little time researching the ozone and try to fix a real problem? I dunno... just a thought. Genetically- Altered/ Created Foods: Gen-food products could feed millions upon millions of starving people around the world. They're scientifically proven to be 100% healthy and perfect for consumption. But your silly protests made many starving nations ban the distribution of these products, which some private investors and corporations that don't suck planned to help out with. That's right, someone somewhere in the world is dying of starvation right now as you read this article... because some ignorant fool lied and pretended to know what he was talking about... some moron whose never gone hungry a day in his life. Why don't you shut up, sit down, stop playing your bongos, stop smoking your pot, and think about that little tidbit of information for a while... let's see how you feel when you realize you may have caused a child to die of hunger in the arms of his mother because you, a silly fat westerner, decided one day that you knew enough to ban genetically engineered food. -Matt Rock |
| October 27, 2003 |
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