Last night I made a major error in judgment. I attended the Save the Internet rally. In my defense I attended it not because I thought I’d agree with what was being presented (that went out the door the second I heard Al Franken was going to be speaking) but because I thought it would be a good forum for debate. My error in judgment was forgetting to fact that “progressive” liberals don’t like debate and thus do everything they can to squash it.
My dumbass detector went off the second I entered the room. I arrived late but two of my friends were there early and happened to save me a seat. The first thing my friend told me upon my sitting down was “this is a liberal’s wet dream.” That’s one Hell of a comment as this friend is a self-professed communist (not a socialist or democrat but he is an honest-to-goodness communist). When a self-professed communist says an event is a liberal circle jerk you know you’re going to lose braincells just by being there.
One of the constant things being parroted by the speakers was the fact telecommunications companies have a powerful lobby in Washington. This was being brought up as a danger because the lobbies would use their might to coerce government into allowing major ISPs to filter and throttle Internet access as they see fit. I may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer (as evident by me going to this event) but I still can’t figure out the “logic” they were using. In essence the speakers were saying the only way to prevent powerful lobbyists from using government to ruin our Internet was to… make government regulate our Internet. Wow my brain hurts just from remembering that.
That wasn’t all. After some time they brought out a Latino woman to speak. Unlike most “progressive” liberals I’m not obsessed with the race of another person, it’s irrelevant to me so I didn’t realize this would be significant. Shortly into her speech she bring up a statistic saying only a low percentage (she had an actual number that I’ve forgotten) of Latinos in this country have Internet connectivity and the FCC must do something to correct this. What does the percentage of people connected to the Internet have to do with net neutrality? Your guess is as good as mine really. Frankly I think they wanted to play the race card so badly that they were willing to bring somebody on stage to make an entirely different argument just to bring race into the game. Democrats playing the race card always confuses me since traditionally it’s been the Republican Party (whom I hate equally) that’s supported civil rights for minorities. Hell the slaves were freed by a republican. Either way they love the race card and play it whenever possible.
I’m not sure at exactly what time it was but during the speeches Al Franken excused himself from the event. He made a mention that some of his family members were in town so he wanted to go see them. According to his Wikipedia page (I know not an authoritative source, I don’t care) he resides in Minneapolis so it would seem likely his family would be in town. I’m not going to knock the guy because it could very well be they were family members from out of town but either way he ducked out before any dissent (in other words the public) could speak. That’s usually his method of operating so I wasn’t surprised.
Alas the night moved forward. A panel of speakers were brought out whom simply parroted the ongoing theme of the night. This was more bullshit that really added nothing. Finally came the point where people were able to speak. I didn’t realize this but the only way you were allowed to speak was to sign up and receive a number. One of my friends had a number which he gave to me (apparently I’m more entertaining since I don’t care if I piss off an entire auditorium of people). Before anybody was allowed to speak ground rules were being set which was fine by me. Let me rephrase that it was fine by me until one of the ground rules established was not being able to ask anybody on stage questions. This is why “progressive” liberal events piss me off, they don’t want debates they want obedience. Their motto should be “shut up slave.”
The number I had was 53 and each speaker was allowed up to two minutes to speak. This meant in a worst case scenario I’d have to wait 106 minutes before I could go up and make a statement. Two thing occurred to me at this point; what I was planning on doing was asking the FCC chairman a question and probably wasn’t going to have the chance to speak anyways. Only people with numbers one through 40 were asked to come up which is generally a good way of saying everybody else isn’t going to get time. My group and I stayed there for a short while to see what the statements were going to be and left once we realized that everybody was going to use their entire two minutes.
The first, second, and third speakers took half their time rattling of their credentials (at least it seemed like half their time). After they rattled off why they felt themselves to be so great they would make a statement about how the Internet can’t survive without the government regulating it. Needless to say we left after the third speaker opened her mouth, there was just no point in being there.
After that we went and grabbed a couple of beers hoping to numb the brain damage caused by being there. Seriously I’ve never seen such a circle jerk in my life.