I recently logged onto my Facebook account (not on purpose, of course), and had the supreme displeasure of receiving the following message from about eight of my buddies:
The following is a message that was sent to me that not only is worth thinking about……but please also think about this……….
Snap! I will be thinking about this message TWICE! So many periods after the sentence! So much tension being built! I am about to explode!
While our troops lack armor for their bodies and vehicles to fight a war in Iraq, the president……..who is already president and doesn’t NEED to have Inaugural Balls, is spending $40 MILLION dollars to throw parties. This is the ultimate insult to our troops in Iraq or any country. Inauguration Day, Thursday, January 20th, 2005 is "Not One Damn Dime Day" in America. There’s no rally to attend. No marching to do. No left or right wing agenda to rant about. On "Not One Damn Dime Day" you take action by doing nothing. You open your mouth by keeping your wallet closed. Not one damn dime for anything for 24 hours.
Oh yeah, hey this totally works. You spend one day not buying anything, and thinking "Man, I am really sticking it to The Man by not buying this candy bar from my local 7-11." It’s a good thing that the kid working behind the counter happens to also shape U.S. foreign policy. He is secretly a clerk by day, and international relations superhero by night.
The object is simple: Remind the people in power that they work for the people of the United States of America, not for the international corporations and K Street lobbyists who represent the corporations and funnel cash into American politics."Not One Damn Dime Day" is about supporting the troops.
…by sitting around on your ass all day.
The politicians put the troops in harm’s way. Now 1,200 brave young Americans and (some estimate) 100,000 Iraqis have died. The politicians owe our troops a plan — a way to come home. On "Not One Damn Dime Day" those who oppose what is happening in our name in Iraq can speak up with a 24-hour national boycott of all forms of consumer spending. During "Not One Damn Dime Day" please don’t spend money. Not one damn dime for gasoline. Not one damn dime for necessities or for impulse purchases. Please share this email with as many people as possible.
Man.
First off, the last time I checked, sitting around and doing nothing is perhaps the least effective (not to mention wimpiest) way of facilitating change. I mean, at least with armed rebellion or uprisings, you get awesome footage of riot officers beating people up and pumping tear gas into crowds or experimenting with awesome new methods of crowd control (like maybe that gun that shoots out webbing like Spiderman, except Spiderman doesn’t usually web up criminals and then, while they’re webbed up, beat them mercilessly with blood-soaked stick and shout at them to stop resisting arrest. But he should). With peaceful sit-ins, you at least have the potential of some guy acting up and getting a roundhouse kick to the back of the head for his trouble. But sitting around at home and not buying anything? Booorrring.
Not One Damn Dime Day is supposed to be about supporting the troops. Here’s a brilliant idea I came up with while I was flossing – instead of supporting our troops by prancing around and not spending money for an entire twenty-four hours (that is an entire day!), why not support our troops by actually supporting them. Why not actually send some money over via a military charity? That way, you will actually be doing something concrete and worthwhile, rather than sitting around and hoping that your glorious inaction will eventually cause W to say, "Aw man, I guess we better pull out of Iraq now!" You and your buddies would than be all like "Oh man! High fives! Now we can buy Slurpees again!"
To me, this sort of "slacktivism" is the height of idiocy. All this effort is spent getting people to do nothing in the hope that it’ll cause massive upheaval and change. It didn’t work when you didn’t buy gasoline for a day. Remember that one? Gas didn’t suddenly drop when they tried doing that. If doing nothing can’t even get gas prices to drop, how does doing nothing get the United States armed forces to suddenly pull out of the Middle East? The only thing Not One Damn Dime Day would accomplish is a massive feeling of self-righteousness among its participants. It’s the business owners and employees who are suffering. I can guarantee you that the government does not feel a thing.
So look, here’s a list of military charities you could send money to. Don’t participate in this rampant masturbatory form of protest, and do something worthwhile with your money.
http://www.afas.org/ – The Air Force Aid Society
http://www.aerhq.org/ – The Army Emergency Relief
http://www.nmcrs.org/ – Navy/Marine Corps Relief Society
http://www.specialops.org/ – Special Operations Warrior Foundation
While you’re in a donating mood, you probably should donate to the tsunami victims. I’d link here, but every damn website on the internet is linking to those charities.
For more on why Not One Damn Dime Day is stupid: http://www.snopes.com/politics/war/not1dime.asp
-f.w.
Oh man! Slacktivism can certainly suck it.
Patton Oswalt has a brilliant bit in one of his routines about why no one takes antiwar protestors seriously. To paraphrase in an extremely loose manner:
War sucks and most people are against the senseless and needless expenditure of human life. Most people would agree this is something worth protesting against, you know, hey let’s have a rally or a letter writing campaign or something you know. Let the people in charge hear our voices! But then fucking hippies have to ruin it for everyone. They’re always like, ‘no man, a PROTEST is exactly what THE MAN will be expecting, so let’s make the WORLD’S LARGEST FINGER PAINTING! That’ll harmonize the universe and stop the war! Or let’s all get naked and use our bodies to spell out “peace” on the ground! That’ll stick it to THE MAN!’ Shit like this is why I fucking hate hippies.
Not a Damn Dime Day can suck it. Fucking hippies. Fucking slacktivists.
Freddie-
What you fail to realize is that ideas such as this are dreamed up by lazy ass liberals who have no actual sense of their own to speak of. The rarely think about the consequences or results (or lack therof) to their actions, they simply do it and hope it turns out the way they planned it (it rarely does). This is just another example. Your point about the military charities is a good one. Instead of some stupid “not one damn dime day” which will affect NOTHING and no one will care, try actually supporting those troops. But then again, we all knew that whoever dreamed this up didn’t actually care about doing anything for the troops, they’re just in it for the politics and visibility that comes with dreaming up such a dumbass, useless idea.
-Michael G.
Did I hear someone trashing on liberals? To me, this is like the Batman beacon…
OK–here’s my thing: I agree that this particular “protest” is a bit silly. But what I don’t think is silly is the sentiment behind it.
The point of the protest is not to be “lazy” or to “not do anything,” but to demonstrate that part of the economy is controlled by people that don’t support the war in Iraq. Bush believes he has a “mandate,” so it’s important that the American people show him that this mandate isn’t universal.
Most likely, people won’t care enough to participate in this protest, but I applaud the fact that it’s taking place because it means that people are thinking about how governmental decisions affect them. It’s a sign of a healthy democracy.
The military doesn’t need more money. It needs less. Schools need more money. Social security needs more money. Poor people need more money. Tsunami victims need more money. AIDS research needs more money. The military doesn’t need more money.
“Doing nothing,” contrary to some opinions expressed here is a great way of facillitating change. Almost every truly succesful form of protest involves “doing nothing.” The Civil Rights movement, and the movement for a free India were both driven primarily by lots of people “doing nothing.” They went on strike. That sat down where they weren’t supposed to. The didn’t fight back against authorities.
If business owners “suffer,” maybe they’ll have less disposable income to dump into inaugaration festivities.
Kevin “I’m not an unwashed hippy, I’m just a member of the leftist intellectual elite.” Kimura
I was going to say just two words, those words being “Rosa Parks” but Kevin, in many more words, has elegantly conveyed the point I would have alluded to. While your analysis of this protest is appealing it its generalities and clever labels “slacktivism” etc I think you failed to think about this issue in a truly broad context…all its implications etc. pretty much im not saying anythign right now . kevin said it really well. im too lazy to be coherent.
-lakesider
“If business owners “suffer,” maybe they’ll have less disposable income to dump into inaugaration festivities.”
Hello? Since when is the guy who owns his own restaurant dumping his disposable income into inaugaration festivities? Those are the people who suffer from this “protest.” This statement is unbelievably short-sighted, Kev.
And how can you possibly equate not spending money to Rosa Parks? Rosa Parks and Ghandi “did nothing” but _facilitated change_. By doing nothing, they actually did SOMETHING. This kind of protest invites participants to do nothing, and in turn _accomplish nothing_.
I would love to hear some of the implications of this kind of protest, and the “broad context” that I’m missing. People want the government to watch its spending. Sitting on your ass for a single day doesn’t cause W to wake up the next day and be like “OMG WE ARE TOTALLY SPENDING TOO MUCH! GET EVARYBODYS ADRESSES AND SEND THEM LETTERS OF THANKS AND SIGNED 8X10Z!”
Read the Snopes article first. It sums up my feelings very well – this kind of protest might be great for stirring up conversation, but it’s saying that it’s supporting the troops by doing nothing. Yeah, great support there. Do you honestly believe that spending nothing for a single day works as functional protest, and will actually accomplish something? Please.
You want to do something? Do something. Send money to troops. Demonstrate. Start a website. Write to your paper. Go get some rags and cheap bottles of vodka. ANYTHING is much better than sitting around with the lights and heat off in your house doing nothing, and crossing your fingers and hoping that the government will suddenly “get it” because you didn’t purchase your 2-liter of Mountain Dew for the day.
-f.w.
Hmmmm…this has me longing for the days of BBS Political…
I don’t think you really understand what I’m saying, because I’m really not saying anything too radical.
I think the protest is kind of silly. There. I said it.
I’m just saying that protest and dissent are kind of falling by the wayside in our society-wide fear epidemic. Any show of political activism should be welcome, not ridiculed. I think enemy number one is apathy, not “short-sightedness.”
I can buy your argument about mom-and-pop stores being victimized by misguided hippies, but only in some cases. But you live in LA and I live in Philly. How many mom-and-pop stores are really victimized by this protest? OK–if you’re in North Dakota and you frequent the general store whose proprietors will go hungry if you don’t buy soda that day, your pointis well taken. But on the day in question, I would have given money to CVS of KMart or some other such bloated Fortune 500 company.
Obviously, this protest didn’t exactly impoverish corporate America, so what exactly is the problem here? Why is there this huge backlash against this silly little hippy protest?
There’s that famous quote: “Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our greatest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.”
I think the people that try to make fun of grassroots political expression are really just afraid that it’ll eventually work.
I think that it is right to hope that these kinds of things won’t work. Should a few thousand – even a few tens of thousands – be able to veto policies that 30 million people agree with? I don’t think so. The fact is, there will always be extremists on both sides of every issue, and I like that neither group usually has much effect – it is the way that sensible things are accomplished.
Finally surrounded by Republicans and loving it,
Ryan