30 October, 2002


Aargh! I am so very mad right now...

And it's all my fault, of course... It always is. You see, I should have been studying tonight; I have a Chemistry midterm tomorrow, and a Calculus exam on Friday, plus I have to do around thirty math homework problems by Friday as well. 

But instead, I went to a Democratic rally, where all the local Democrats came together to talk about why people should vote for them. It was like a debate, except there was no debate; no republicans were present. And nobody gave any arguments as to why I should vote for them! They just spouted crap about why the position they are running for is important, and they said stuff like "I have experience" and "the other guy doesn't pay his taxes." Dear God, am I the only one who could hear the BS they were talking about? 

I asked three of them questions, mostly to the effect of: "You talked a lot about what it is that the office that you're running for does, but you gave ZERO reasons as to why you're a better candidate than the other guy." I got three different responses from each of them. The first said that it is because she currently holds the office so she knows the job better than a new guy would. The second said that he's the new guy, and he blamed all the current problems on the guy who's currently in office. The third said that her opponent got $60k in funding for his platform from a wealthy landowner in the area. 

WTF? How is that even a valid reason for not voting for him? Is she insinuating quid pro quo with no evidence? 


I got mad enough that I left as soon as it ended, without talking to the candidates afterward. 

And then I went to a talk put on by a group that is trying to dissolve the "School Of Americas". For those of you that watch the news, that's the school for combat training in the US that has trained current dictators in South America. You can get more information on it by going to www.soaw.org, but I wouldn't recommend it. The speech they gave tonight was full of logical errors and empty arguments. They talked for upwards of two hours, including a film session and Q&A to an audience upwards of two hundred people. They received a standing ovation. Every person in the room was mesmerized by what was said. Over fifty people signed up to go to the School Of Americas this upcoming November to stage a march. According to the information given at their speech, they are expecting over ten thousand people to come from all over the nation to march on this school. 

Yet they never once during the entire speech ever gave an argument as to why they want the school closed. 

Sure, we teach combat training there. Sure, some of the graduates have gone to become dictators. But we're not the ones who taught them to be dictators. How can they miss this simple logical fact? 

When the Q&A started, I wanted to tear up this guy's logical argument. But I hesitated. In the audience were people that knew me. They all clapped. They all agreed. I was the only person in the entire room who saw what this guy was preaching. But I hesitated. 

I was afraid to speak out. 

I was afraid because the guy that gave the speech spent two years in prison because he broke into the School of Americas by impersonating a colonel and doing crazy stupid stuff. This guytruly believed in what he was preaching. I could tell that he wasn't faking it; this guy actually believed that what he was saying was inherently right. He truly believed that the US gov't is immoral for allowing the School Of Americas to exist. 

I was afraid to raise my hand, because I knew that if I started an argument, I wouldn't stop until I had won. I would have started a shouting match in front of all these people that respect me. I was afraid to speak out because I was afraid my friends would think me bad for doing so. 

I chickened out. 

And it pisses me off. It pisses me off because what was said was so very obviously wrong, and they were deceiving so many of my fellow students. 

The problem is that I attend a Jesuit college, so all of my classmates are Christians. 

Yet I sat silently. I did not ask a question. I did not voice my thoughts. 

In the next philosophy club meeting, I will bring up this issue. But for now, I am silent. I am silent because I am alone in my opinion. Some of the people that I consider good friends, people that I have class with and eat lunch with... These people signed up to do an illegal march on the School Of Americas. Illegal as in ILLEGAL, because the School Of Americas is a military base where combat training is taught. 

I'm sorry, but you don't march on a US military base. If you're crazy enough to do that, then you've crossed the line. 

This march is something they do every year, and the speaker said that there are over three dozen people still in jail for participating in the last march.

Yet fifty people still signed that sheet

...and I sat, silently, watching them do it. If I had just spoken up, then maybe some people wouldn't have signed. If I had just torn apart that guy's logical arguments like I knew I could, then maybe my friends wouldn't have signed that sheet. Maybe my professors wouldn't have clapped for him. ::sigh:: I feel like I sold my soul, just so that I could fit in. Just so that others wouldn't know I was different. I feel used. I feel... like a second-hander. ...

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