AndyH
Well-known member
The point I think, Nubo, is that neither of us are in a position to mandate what is or is not significant to another. How sure are you that 'those SF protesters are doing quite well'? Do you know any of them?Nubo said:What it means is protests should be about something meaningful and significant. A bus is neither. And while Buddha teaches us that all life is suffering, these SF protesters are doing quite well. It's not very compelling when the complaint is that someone in a $1million dollar home is being "pushed out" because the prices are being bid up to $2million. Or that rents in one of the most expensive places to live in the country, are going up. The wealthy being pinched by the more wealthy...
I suppose I have failed to make my point clear. I have no shortage of sympathy for suffering, and I do recognize the growing income disparity in the U.S., and I DO AGREE it is a problem. But this is not a justification for any and all random protests. Protesting the "Google buses" is just plain stupid and some of the actions criminal. Saying so doesn't make me a heartless bastard. Because try as they may, those protests really have nothing to do with the people that are really suffering or the underlying causes.
Seems to me that you are making a ton of assumptions in order to support your bias and/or preconceptions.
The point of protests, as I struggle to understand them (keep in mind that a 21 year military career doth not a protester make ), is that they have been working through normal channels for years and getting ZERO help. In order to bring the issue into the public view, they have to do something that can break through the narrow filters of the corporately-controlled mess we call 'media' in this country. Nobody is protesting "a bus" - it's not GMC or Greyhound or Bart - it's simply a SYMBOL of one of the symptoms. The point is they have to fight to get some HELP - and this is what it takes today.
Here in Texas, private property has been condemned by TransCanada for the southern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline. Even in a very strong property-rights state, with a team of attorneys and millions in donated cash, landowners fighting to keep heavy equipment off their crops are arrested by local police hired by TransCanada and trained to consider protesters to be domestic terrorists.
http://nacstop.org/standwithjulia/
http://fuelfix.com/blog/2013/11/06/texas-farmer-wins-entry-of-default-in-keystone-pipeline-case/
http://www.fwweekly.com/2012/10/17/drawing-line-tar-sand/
Dirty hippies - need a bath - sound familiar?In a bizarre response that sounded like that of a backwoods sheriff complaining about dirty hippies in the 1960s, Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson sent out an opinion piece a few days ago, calling the protesters “self-appointed ‘eco-anarchists’ ” for whom it is time “to come down out of the trees, take a bath, and hit the road.”
But the blockade group includes Texas ranchers, property owners, business owners, and environmentalists — some of whom have endured pepper spray, dangerous Taser jolts, and chokeholds administered by local law enforcement officers in attempts to remove them from the path of the pipeline construction.
This is not our parent's 1950s world. In this world, a disabled vet with a VA loan guarantee cannot buy a foreclosed house from a bank that WANTS to get the property off their books - even after offering $10,000 (10%) over the list price - because the bank prefers to sell to an 'investor' that walks in with a briefcase of $100 bills and pays 10% LESS than asking price.
This is not the country I thought I was serving, but that's my problem, not yours.
I'll go away now - this horse is dead. Sorry.