Hate

I Hate Ignorance

If student activism truly is entering a new era, then surely this is the age of ignorance.

Generally speaking, those who are most active in causes are the ones most informed about them.Student activists at the UO are a notable exception.

Recently I have succumbed to curiosity and actually talked with a couple of these fearless crusaders. For my efforts, I was rewarded with a healthy overdose of ignorance. One young lady at the WRC protest couldn't tell me if she was a capitalist or a socialist. She couldn't tell me what a "living wage" was in the targeted countries. She didn't know what she believed about government price controls. In fact, she didn't know much of anything except that she didn't like it, and stuff.

I will point out that she seemed more informed than most of her comrades. The OSPIRG guy that I talked to a couple weeks ago wasn't much better. When I asked him, "Where does OSPIRG's money go?" He gave me a blank stare and told me he didn't know, but I could "rest assured that it goes to a good cause." Enough is enough! Regular ol' sitting-in-the-back-of-the-room-hoping-not-to-get-called-on ignorance is excusable, but this in-your-face, self-righteous brand of ignorance is downright insulting. I hate it! Just like a bad herpes flare-up, the ignorant activists are out in force to garner support for misguided causes. Why? Because they can.

The WRC literature I read and the protesters I talked to made about as much sense as Hatoon (the woman who lives outside the library) does on a good day. What is the purpose of the WRC? Your guess is as good anyone's.

But hey, it's an excuse to badmouth a hard-working entrepreneur who also happens to be a generous contributor to the University. Yeah, he's successful, and therefore it follows that he's screwing someone. This is what I call "crack logic." It's kind of like the recent CDC study linking higher beer taxes to lower gonorrhea rates - it isn't accurate.

While I'm on the WRC/Nike subject, I have some not-so-constructive criticism for you too, Frohnmayer: I'm curious as to why it didn't occur to you to at least mention to Phil Knight that you were planning to join the WRC. After all, it's an organization that will send our reps out to poke around in his factories. You're weak, and you're not looking out for the University's best interests. Don't take these clowns seriously - just kick back and enjoy the comedy.

I'm surprised that a few douchebags who camp outside Johnson Hall carry more weight with you than a longtime, generous contributor to the University such as Knight. Oh well, we can always make up the difference with higher tuition and student fees. Happily, the freedom fighters of the WRC protest managed to show their true colors with their camping equipment. I saw a lot of Coleman tents out there, guys. Coleman products are mostly made in China, as of the last few years. China represents the single largest organized oppression of humanity that history has ever seen.

You thought Hitler was bad? By some estimates, Mao killed 10 times as many Chinese as Hitler killed Jews. It's hard to know for sure, what with the mass graves and all. Political slave labor continues there today. But you don't care about China's human rights abuses because you're apologists for communism. The Marxists here on campus seem to think China's okay because they have socialized medicine (Kevorkian-style) and guaranteed work (slavery.) Of course, they also have concentration camps, a national forced-abortion policy, and the suspension of many rights which the free world takes for granted.

Why didn't I see any protest of Chinese-made goods? You were protesting about worker's rights in Southeast Asia while sleeping in tents made with slave labor in the country that not long ago ran over protesters with tanks? Just checking. Probably the most informed activist I've talked with recently was with ecopledge.com. This isn't a huge compliment, mind you. One of the things his organization was deeply concerned about was the fact that, "GE could be making appliances that are more efficient." Yes, that's a direct quote. When asked exactly how much more efficient he pulled out the trump card, "Uh... well, I haven't seen the statistics, but I know they could be more efficient." Let me paraphrase: "I don't know jack."

This fellow wasted my time and yours with a campaign to pressure arbitrarily chosen corporations to manufacture appliances that are sort of like, more efficient, or something. It gets better, though. One of the other key points of ecopledge.com is to pressure Disney Corp. to stop making toys out of PVC. The reasoning is that "PVC toys can be poisonous to kids that swallow them." I've got some news for you idiots: it is standard building code to use PVC pipe to route city water. I promise you that nearly 100 percent of the water you drink travels through PVC pipes. That brings us to the other side of this sticky issue: would swallowing PVC toys be worse than say, swallowing glass or aluminum toys? How about recycled toys? This is a huge issue with massive ramifications.

And to all you so-called political rebels out there, I've about had it with you socialists/communists masquerading as "anarchists." If you guys weren't smoking dope before political science class you'd already know that true capitalism is economic anarchy. You guys are just dime-a-dozen Marxists. Just come out and admit it: you love big, tax-and-spend government. Libertarians are the closest thing to anarchists that you'll find around here. You commie-types don't like libertarians because they believe in freedom - something all Marxists despise. Why don't all you Marxists move to China or Cuba and see how you like it? I hate communists.

By pure chance I recently attended a demonstration that had something to do with Mumia and bicycles. (Don't ask.) There was this fellow there with a megaphone yelling about the Eugene Police Department. He said the cops were trying to make it like "Nazi Germany" and that they were "fascists."

Question: Do any of you suppose for a second that you could get away with standing on a street corner with a megaphone in Nazi Germany and shout derogatory comments about the police? Try Libya or Cuba, maybe. I'll tell you what happens to guys like you in a real fascist country: you get shot - immediately. You protesters have it too good here.

It's sad to see so many passionate activists so very ignorant of the causes they embrace. I will always defend the First Amendment and the right to exercise it. However, the constitutional right to protest something and the moral obligation to be informed about it are two different things.

Have enough self-respect and common decency to know what the hell you're talking about if you insist on wasting people's time with it. Most of you will grow out of it within the next few years anyway, so don't get too worked up about the crisis du jour. Those of you who don't are the ones I really feel sorry for. Maybe someday you'll grow up and sell joke books. Nothing personal, but I hate you.

Brandon Oberlin, a sophomore majoring in Sweatshop Management, is a staff writer for the Oregon Commentator