Archive for the 'Politics' Category

Hmmm…

A few days ago, I walked by a group of people protesting outside the local alternative radio station. A couple guys had a big sheet they’d painted up with a bunch of slogans and there were people with signs and whatnot. I was in a hurry to catch a bus, but I did manage to catch the basic gist of their complaints, namely that Bush is evil for wanting to privatize Social Security. Lots of Hitler comparisons, some swastikas, humming Deutschland Über Alles, you get the idea.

Which I thought was a little weird. I mean, taken at face value the message seems to be that these guys want “Hitler” in charge of mediating the transfer of wealth from young to old. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be trying to convince him not to relinquish some tiny modicum of control over it, right? I mean, I don’t necessarily want to say Stockholm Syndrome, but let’s just say the thought crossed my mind once or twice during the ensuing four hours I spent stuck in traffic on that damn bus.

(And no, I don’t think they were savvy enough to recognize that you’d have to stretch the meaning of the word pretty far to classify Bush’s plan as “privatization”; a sense of irony and a Friday-afternoon political protest usually don’t mix too well)