Quote:
Originally Posted by dreambrother808
In many ways it's an ego trip, being the biggest activist, the most left-wing, etc. A competition amongst relatively privileged people. Logic or rational arguments hold little water there. They may eschew certain hierarchical standards for their own equally suffocating ones.
This is not to dismiss progressive activism. But admittedly there are those who lack a counterbalancing pragmatism to their vision. I believe in change, but I can also recognize its limits. However, my vision and/or limits may not concur with someone else's.
Nevertheless we are all somewhere on that spectrum. Being the biggest right-wing douchebag is an ego-driven power trip as well. It just has different markers to tally who's "winning".
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I couldn't agree more with this statement. There are a few people out there I knew in a previous life (high school, university), who are among these crowds of "activists" in the last 5-8 years that make me shake my head. Ego-driven, self-promoting, narcissistic behaviour at it's finest.
An education about the world around you seems to have missed some of these people. There was a soundbite on CKNW all day the other day with some guy going on about "
Vancouver has the lowest corporate tax rate of any city in the world", and how it needed to provide more housing for the poor/homeless. I can't even begin to think of how many things are wrong with that statement.
It's just more of the "gimme gimme gimme" crowd that doesn't seem to care about the consequences of their actions.
Regarding "geoff's 2 cents" comments, I'm not sure I agree. I think these people are causing people like us to write off the whole group as whining losers, when really there are some issues with people suffering that these privileged idiots take focus away from.
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While I question the politics and ethics of the city's anti-poverty activist squad from time to time (I have mixed feelings about their Olympics protest tactics, for instance), they do play a key role in drawing attention to an issue most of us would rather just forget about. They're a large part of the reason the Woodward's development most of us are quite proud of turned out the way it did. Obviously Rennie feels similarly, else he wouldn't have taken the time out of his multi-million dollar schedule to confront them directly. He does come across as an admirable, honest and conscientious individual here; maybe it's those east side roots of his. The protestors were being a tad unfair to him, but I was pleasantly surprised at how cordial the dialogue between them actually was.
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