Saturday, October 15, 2011

QotD: Who's the insurrectionist, again? Edition

My roomie on the news from the Big Apple:
"(How come) You can have several thousand TEA Party activists (the people weenies like CSGV and the Bradys call "violent insurrectionists") descend on Washington with nary an arrest -- hardly any parking tickets, even -- but a smaller number of (supposedly peaceful, egalitarian) Occupiers of Wall Street in NYC (and other places) manage to clash repeatedly with officers and bring out the worst in both sides?"

7 comments:

Bob said...

That's one of them ree-torical questions, ain't it?

Stretch said...

If standards are good,
double standards are better.

GuardDuck said...

Yup, if it weren't for double standards they'd have no standards at all...

the pawnbroker said...

"(How come)..."?

Because for the former activism is a means to an end, whereas for the latter the means *is* the end.

NotClauswitz said...

You get to party, meet chicks, get your nut off and your freak on. One report is that the #OWS locations are one big get-down bong-party hippy-hootenanny -- which is perhaps as it should be, that's how the 60's were, the politics (of course) are provided by the Left as an excuse and are actually peripheral (for the actors) to the action.
The the Media-Filter descends...

global village idiot said...

Last Saturday my daughter Emily and I went to the art museum at the University in My Fair City. The price was right (gratis - thank you, V.U. alumni!), and it was worth every penny and more.

The room immediately on the left as you pass the "greeter's wheelhouse" has a collection of late 60s/early 70s photos of rock & roll legends with the unintentionally hilarious title (I swear I'm not making this up) "Woodstock & Friends." It was obvious from the gestalt of the collection that there was not a hint of irony in the name, which of course is to be expected of such a bunch of annoyingly sincere ding-a-lings.

Along one wall, near the corner, was a collection of photos of a Bay Area "be-in," which I presume was meant by the organizers of the event to be meaningful and spiritual. The pictures, however, told a somewhat different story, as described by Emily:

"Dad, this is how hippies really were? It's pathetic! It's nothing but adults acting like 6-year olds! You can tell every single one of them is high. Ugh - disgusting!"

At 13 she easily gets the distinction between what the "children" of the 60s would have you believe (meaning and spirituality) and the reality (wanton self-absorption and drug-induced hedonism).

The photos included several of Allen Ginsberg, the most despicable, deviant reprobate of a generation not known for decency and decorum. Those few photos took more explaining than everything else in the museum combined.

The thing I particularly pointed out to my daughter was the wall full of photos of the Woodstock festival itself. The photos were much as Ayn Rand described them in her essay, Apollo and Dionysus: "Beautiful pictures of scummy little savages."

Emily looked with at the pictures with a small amount of horror. While she admired the stage shots of the musicians performing, she was appalled at the destruction the concert-goers spread over the countryside. She saw and understood the contrast between the high-minded ideals and mindles, ravenous self-indulgence.

She'd read Apollo and Dionysus, you see, so you might say she was primed.

I'm looking forward to getting her opinion of the Occupy Wall Street protests. I suspect she'll see a similarity between the two without my coaching it out of her.

gvi

WV: cialion "See that ponytailed, pot-bellied, creepy old man in the tye-dye trying to hook up with Tricia from 'Global World Hunger Action Alliance Coalition?' What a cialion!"

Brian J. said...

Sadly, though, I've seen this question posed as evidence that The Man, that is, the oppressive jackbooted right-wing government is treating the peaceful people representing the rest of us violently, whereas they completely supported the racist reductionist Christianist totalitarian message of the Tea Party.

All facts are evidence of one's preconceptions, not information to use in actually seeking truth.