It's like he's talking to me. I've said the same thing before, but the realization that everything I do is useless doesn't spur me to action. What am I going to do? Quit my job? I can hear my mom and my ex-wife calling me names already. What do I tell them? Sorry, but the boys are going to have to go without their daddy... for a change... but also without $240 bucks every two weeks. They'll be dumbed down corporate slaves and might get tortured (what do you think tasering is?), imprisoned without cause, and be subject to a totalitarian dictatorship, but they'll have their daddy... at the same 300-mile distance, and $240 every two weeks!
So, after I walk away from my job and abandon my family, I drive my shitty truck as close to DC as it will get me, then walk the rest of the way? I've hitchhiked before. No big deal. If I hang a cardboard sign that says "Washington, DC" on it, I'll have no trouble getting rides. Then what? No, really, what then? I don't fucking know. It's not like I would be surrounded by an army of angry protesters, determined to take decisive action. I would be one unemployed man, shouting at people that don't care while I get tasered and cuffed by the Brown Shirts.
Friends and family reading this might be starting to worry. They know that dropping everything to take on a hopeless cause sounds like just the kind of thing I might have done, a decade ago, in my impetuous youth.
Maybe you should worry. I ain't that damn old. I just don't want to be this guy (Not pictured: Those tanks rolling right over his ass five seconds later):
2 comments:
There is no uprising partly because there is no draft this time around.
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=13240
We are not faced with getting forced to fight and/or die for "our country" as the young men during the Vietnam and Korean wars. Getting the public to set down their iPods and PSPs to stop campus cops from tasering a guy who was being annoying (and overacting) to begin. Those kids probably thought it was a skit or something off of Punk'd. NOT that I'm excusing their inaction, I'm just saying they knew the whole thing was pointless.
There were some kids shouting in the background for the cops to stop and leave him alone - did anyone mention them?
I know I risk getting some sort of smart ass backlash from you for writing this - that's why I rarely comment. However, you seem to think that setting aside your life and loved ones to live like Cindy Sheehan would actually DO something to change things. The Korean war has been in a stalemate for 54 years now, despite the efforts of the original protestors.
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/07/09/a-formal-end-to-korean-war/
The Vietnam war wasn't stopped by hordes of sign carrying kids - well, read this:
http://www.fpri.org/ww/0108.200006.garfinkle.mythedopportunities.html
Anyway, If you want to be the next Cindy Sheehan, more power to you. If you want to make actual and real changes, start with yourself and your lifestyle. Don't like the war for oil or tainted imports/job exports? Quit driving, only buy domestic products, use companies that don't export jobs - I'm starting to enjoy not having a car. Of course I live within 2 miles of everything I need so it's not so bad. Pretty much everything I buy is grown or made domestically now. Don't like taxes taken out of your check? Start a business, tax breaks out the wazoo in my business. I also meet folks online who barter with me, like materials and other items I need to make my items. Quit buying cigarettes (most of the price of a pack of smokes goes straight to the government, hello!) and put that money towards buying the gold and silver you keep on about. Don't forget to invest in test kits - I keep finding more fake or poor quality gold & silver than real (not to mention inflated prices). So if you find a reputable dealer, let me know.
There's more to my lunacy on my MySpace blog.
But... I'm annoying. I don't want to get tasered for it. And why would I want to be like Cindy Sheehan? She's just a protester. Protesting hasn't done shit, yet. It's when protesters get beat up and start hitting back that things get done. That non-violent crap is just what you have to go through so you don't look like the bad guy.
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