By Jacob M. Babcock
Welcome to the mainland, where you can shout and whine and rally until your voice succumbs to exhaustion, belting out your liberal animadversions to the empty, unsympathetic sky. At the end of the day, you're still wrong. Protesting hasn't been an effective medium for national change in many, many years. Vietnam didn't sink because of the couches that University of Minnesota students pulled onto the main thoroughfares. It ended because it became politically unsustainable. Likewise, the politicians in Washington aren't going to end the war in Iraq just because a few thousand people in Portland walk toward the river making fun of the president. He'll be gone within a year, be patient. But rest assured the next guy that comes in isn't going to be some radical revolutionary, no spokesman for peace or active drug use. He (and I do mean 'he') will come from some upper-class mansion on the east coast, just as eager to piss on plebian protesters as anyone else. Your little rallies hit with a punch approximating a syndicated sitcom joke eliciting a weak laugh-track, and run Oven-Mitt a close second in the one-hundred meter, poor marketing strategy dash.
I wish you would wise up and realize that you will never make a change, because frankly, you don't have a voice. Even if you could, I would love to see the one-sided decimation that would ensue if you went toe-to-toe with Michael Savage or Lars Larson. The truth is, you'd be a political corpse by the end, and though you would still hold grudgingly to your peaceful ideals, you would wake in cold sweats at the realization that you are meaningless on the larger political scale. You're not even a registered radar blip.
And by the way, I would really appreciate it if you didn't destroy the English language. In little neo-Ginsbergian rants about the legitimacy of drug use, you use "mmmkay" as a word, twice. As much as I am pissed at "The Beacon" for publishing this little gem of a neologism, I'm furious that you would find it acceptable to actively mongrelize your own language. Though English may not be the official language of our country, it is, for all intents and purposes, the lowest common denominator of national, and some international affairs. It's because English is flexible, not because Americans are egotistical hate-mongers. I realize that tolerance, drug-support, and bilingualism are all in line with your liberal, revolutionary claim to fame, but don't misuse the only vehicle you have to voice your concerns. Else, I may have to misuse my vehicle by driving headlong into a sweaty crowd of liberal protesters in my ugly, fuel-efficient car.
