The Hypocrisy of the Protest

I don't normally write about my job, because for the most part it's an inappropriate topic to write about. I work for a local MLA, and my job mostly involves explaining government policy and decisions, and helping people connect with the provincial government services they need. I get yelled at a lot by people who are pissed off and ignorant, but for the most part it's an interesting and fulfilling job.

Today, there was a protest at my office. The details aren't really important - it was regarding the potential sale of some land to housing developers. Small group of protestors decided for some reason utterly unfathomable to me that the appropriate thing to do to protest the sale of private land was to throw chickens at us. Live chickens. In my office. Yes, it's as stupid, cruel, and ineffective as it sounds. So I spent about half an hour with live chickens in my office while I waited for animal control. The chickens were actually rather pleasant, to be honest, and to be fair to the protest at large, several of the protestors including the organizer of the protest came to our door and said that they did not know about this in advance and didn't condone it. The police and animal control were great about the whole thing.

This inspired me to think about the ineffectiveness of protests and protestors. Consider that many of the same people who today were protesting the possibile construction of new housing were a few months ago publically protesting the lack of affordable housing. Prior to that, they were protesting the lack of funding for arts, and before that, protesting taxes. I know these are many of these same people because we keep track of who writes our office, and there are dozens of people who have written complaining about all of these issues.

Pick your bloody battles. Seriously.

If you want housing, you need to understand that either you're going to have to tear down a block of houses and replace them with highrises, or you're going to have to start chopping down forests. Houses have to go somewhere. You can't be simultaneously in favour of affordable and expanded housing and opposed to increased land-use. Likewise, if you are concerned about funding for the arts, health care, education, or whatever else, you need to understand that the primary source of government revenue is taxation. I've written a lot lately about the importance of understanding issues before sounding off about them and this is no different. However much some people would like to pretend otherwise, governments can't simply borrow indefinitely. If you want that arts funding or that funding for scholarships or whatever else it is that's important to you, you need to understand two things:

1. Government has to raise the revenue to pay for it. That means taxes.

and

2. People have dramatically different priorities. You may believe that $15 million of government funding should go to arts grants. Someone else may believe equally passionately and with equal justification that that $15 million ought to go to funding scholarships for graduate students in the sciences.

So if you want to argue that government ought to fund these things, don't turn around and start complaining about the horrors of taxation.

And if you want to get up on your moral high horse about anything, don't throw chickens at me, and don't throw marbles under horses' hooves. Cruelty to animals is pathetic, and not only should you be arrested, and not only do you lose your moral highground, you've dived into a moral cesspool with only the dregs of society to keep you company.

Anyway, the point I'm trying to get at is that most protestors are ignorant hypocrites who would rather scream and yell and make asses of themselves than understand the nuances of issues and work constructively to improve the quality of life in this country.