What I find most sad and laughable about the bitter, bigoted invectives launched at the Québec Students is how completely the commenters are trapped under the weight of their own suffering. Statements like: "I had to work hard. It's time for a reality check!" Really? This is the world you want to live in? Because, without fail, each comment laments how easy the students have it, or how they are all puffed up with entitlement. So when our soldiers come back from war they should wish it upon their children? "I had to go to war and kill or be killed. Why should these young punks have it any different?" To my ears the person whining about how someone else has it better or easier sounds like the person with the inflated sense of entitlement.
Socially speaking, we're in this to win it aren't we? Are we really supposed to stop improving society? Because that suggests that Democracy, as envisioned by your government, is the end of the line; we've reached the pinnacle of human achievement and there is no more room for social improvement. Accept it, this is the best we can do. Give me a break. We can do far better than this. Particularly if we stop jumping down the throats of people who suggest differently or literally beating down those that actually try to make it better than we had it. What is wrong with, not only freezing tuition, but doing away with it? But "Who's gonna pay?" or "Nothing is free!" will be shouted from the chorus. Instead of answering let me instead ask: Why does it matter?
I have heard claims from good folk and morons alike that the Quebec student protest represents a minority opinion. Hahaha.
ReplyDeleteNo.
Their actions are merely the first splashes of water boiling over the edge of an over-heated pot.
If all the protests we see in Canada (and the planet) don't succeed in reducing the heat on the lower 99%, then ALL of us will be eventually finding purpose to make the lid dance, if not boil over ourselves. The students aren't a vocal minority so much as an early warning to the 20th century powers-that-be. Therefor, I sincerely hope the protesters are successful in creating awareness, scaring some give into The Man, and stopping the purposeful erosion of quality, public-accessible education.
Truth be told, we 99% will be successful at all three of those. (We have numbers on our side.) The only battle is to do it as quickly and painlessly as possible before fear or panic takes grip. It IS possible friends.
"...the first splashes of water boiling over" is quite on point. If you take a protest to be a kind of poll, and I believe it is quite reasonable to see it as such, the numbers must be frightening to our self styled leaders. Hence their heavy handed, fear based response.
ReplyDeleteThey do frighten easily. True, for every protester on the street, there are probably 10 at home who feel likewise, but are too busy, lazy or scared to march.
ReplyDeleteYeah, they are scared. But of what, exactly? Are the Harpers and Charests actually scared themselves? Is it their own fear of what these protests might do to their careers the motive for their ham-fistedly fascist reactions? Or are they being compelled to act like fools for a bigger, more global, more legitimate fear? I'm just asking! (oops, ... conspiracy theory alert. Ok, time to go to bed.)