If the large left-wing baka (idiot) population is looking for a columnist who’s going to agree with its ideas of political change (i.e. pillage and rapine), look somewhere else. If you’re a right-wing mouthbreather with an IQ smaller than your hat size who thinks of Rush Limbaugh as a role model, I’m not your guy either. Basically, here’s the deal. I try to offend everyone who deserves it. So here’s my first attempt.
Baka (Japn.): (bA-kA) n, adj. 1. A fool or fools. 2. Foolish. 3. A term referring to certain persons on both the extreme political left and some major industrial and political institutions.
Remember Seattle? Remember the chaos that erupted when activists and police clashed in the streets? It seems that ever since the “victory” in Seattle in 1999, no protest can be peaceful anymore. Someone has to turn every peaceful march into a battle with the authorities through what is now known as “direct action.” Direct action seems to be a code word for the destruction and disruption of peaceful speech.
The right to protest a government’s policies or a company’s beliefs is one of the hallmarks of American society. At times, it is necessary to disobey laws to protect that right. However, what happens when exercising the right to free speech becomes destructive to property and overshadows other voices?
In Seattle, Washington and Prague, the worst part of the baka taking over was that everyone with legitimate protests and concerns was overshadowed and out-shouted by a handful of attention-seekers and media hogs who were only there because the cameras were.
For every “Ruckus Society” member out there, there were more people who weren’t being violent. Who remembers their pleas? We only remember the shots of windows being broken by looters acting under a political umbrella.
The Ruckus Society and its ilk are just the descendants of ’60s baka like Jerry Rubin, whose main claim to fame was that he tried to levitate the Pentagon. With the Ruckus Society and Rubin, the message is not human rights or saving the rain forest. Direct action is the message. Do you think the Ruckus Society would actually go to Indonesia or Korea to shut down a Nike factory? Do you think they would really go to China to protest human rights abuses? Any chance they’d tie themselves to trees in the Brazilian rain forest? They’d never be heard from again. Much easier to disrupt a meeting of head honchos in this country or Europe, where the news cameras are sure to be. Besides, what’s there to loot and smash in Indonesia? The anti-Suharto riots pretty much cleaned Jakarta out.
The idiocy surrounding them notwithstanding, the problems and complaints are relevant. In China, political prisoners are used to make consumer products as part of their penal servitude. Indonesian factories are virtual sweatshops where workers are forced to labor 15 hours a day or more without breaks to make clothing articles for American backs.
There shouldn’t be an argument that these practices are wrong. Nike, for instance, should take more control of what their factories are doing in the far corners of the world.
Still, two wrongs don’t make a right. By destroying a Starbucks, you’re putting 10 or more people out of work for anywhere from a week to a month. By clogging streets, you’re keeping people here in the United States from earning a living. By rioting, you cast a pall of fear and turn off people like me who see all demonstrators as rioters, not as people with legitimate complaints.
Of course, if you’ve read to this point, you’re probably not a demonstrator.