protest – Esoteric Epistemology

You gross old war pigs

We are literally at war with Russia right now. Take it from me. My grandpa literally fought the Nazis!

You could call it a “proxy” war, because we are providing weapons to Ukraine, which Russia has invaded, but that does not make it any less of a war between Russia and the United States.

We have a history of doing stuff like this! We arm one side of a conflict when we believe that it benefits our interests as a country. Sometimes we even arm both sides of a conflict and make ridiculous profits from selling weapons and construction contracts to rebuild the cities that are destroyed with American-made bombs.

When I was a kid, my mom took me to anti-war protests and she made sure that I knew the phrase “conscientious objector.” She made me repeat that phrase back to her.

My mom grew up during the cold war. She, like many members of my heavily military family, knows that war is always a possibility. She also knows that the last thing that someone like me wants is to participate in a war.

I’m going to say it right now, because I want to make myself absolutely clear.

I am not going to die for your war, you gross old war pigs.

I am not going to sign up to get blown up or blow up other people so that you can secure access to natural resources or settle some old score among the lizard-brained overlords who treat the planet I live on like some kind of macabre chess board.

I am not going to carry an assault rifle and use it to shoot kids or people who are adults but who already look like kids to me, at the ripe old age of thirty.

I am not going to participate in propaganda campaigns smearing Russia and China as evil communists who need to be liberated by American freedom. It is reasonable to criticize the domestic and foreign policies of these countries, just as it is reasonable to criticize the domestic and foreign policies of this country.

What is not reasonable is playing a gigantic game of Chicken or Russian Roulette with nuclear weapons pointed at all of our heads.

I will not die for your war, you sick fucks.

I’m staying home.

Is my hometown f*ing serious?

Thompson Elk Statue 2006 | Photo: Wikimedia Commons — Thompson Elk Statue circa 2006, Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Oregon Public Broadcasting reports that 1.5 million dollars has been designated to replace the historic David P. Thompson elk statute downtown.

I remember growing up with the elk statue! It’s near the college campus where I lived with my Mom when I was small. I was also a witness to the destruction of the elk statue over the past three years. Protestors really did some crazy stuff to mess up that elk, let me tell you.

Here’s a photograph I took at a protest in May 2020: in this photo protestors are roasting pig’s heads over an open fire that they lit on the stone base of the statue.

pigs heads being roasted on elk statue base with “fuck 12” graffiti and “black lives over capitalism” sign — Photo courtesy of author

Do we need a new elk?

While I loved the elk statue, and it made me sad to see it get totally destroyed, I understood the anger of the people who were doing it, and why they felt that destroying a piece of property might be an acceptable way to express that anger.

Personally, I’m not really big on the “tear down statues” method of protesting. I get why it happens, but something like an elk (it’s an animal, dude) seems pretty benign to me. The elk was pretty to look at, and I’m pretty sure that the local elk population isn’t guilty of anything bad.

It didn’t seem fair to me that the elk face the wrath of the protestor’s anger when it wasn’t really the elk’s fault or the fault of the artist who made the elk.

I’m not opposed to replacing the elk. I kind of miss it. But one million dollars seems like a lot of money for an elk statue. Money that could be going to say, things like helping the homeless get off the street or deal with their drug addictions and mental illness.

Or maybe the money could go to pushing for the kind of criminal justice reform which is needed in order to prevent the kind of misplaced rage in the populace which caused the destruction of the elk in the first place.

Remember the tram?

The one point five million approved for the elk reminds me of when the OHSU aerial tram was built in Portland. Essentially, the tram is a giant and terrifying way for the local hospital to give people more access to parking.

The tram cost A LOT of money, and it didn’t really have the full support of the community. It was marketed as something that would It was marketed as something that would look good as a part of the Portland skyline. But not everyone was into it.

People who live underneath the tram even went as far as to put up a sign that said “Fuck the Tram.” They felt that it encroached upon their privacy and other rights.

large sign on fence which reads “FUCK THE TRAM” — Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Is the elk another tram?

As OPB reports, ten years after the tram’s construction, the tram costs millions of dollars, much of which came straight out of the pockets of local taxpayers. It was controversial at the time of its construction and remains so today.

“Accusations of mismanagement and subterfuge flew,” writes OPB’s Randy Gragg of the funds used to build the tram. The people who designed and built the tram ended up going way over budget. Gragg also notes that the affordable housing in the south Waterfront neighborhood went unfinished as the tram was finished.

Is the new elk statute another expensive and ridiculous boondoggle put in place by the leaders of the city of Portland to make it seem like everything is going well when it isn’t?

Wouldn’t the money be better spent feeding the homeless?

Tag: protest

I Will Not Die For Your Stupid War