ClearTheRail

Abolitionism

I took a road trip this weekend with my girlfriend to Atlantic City and Philadelphia. We went to good old A.C. to stay at the Borgata (always nice to stay at a 5 star hotel) and see Dave Chappelle live. I have to say that Dave Chappelle may be the funniest comedian ever. His material was great, though it was unfortunately cut short by hecklers. Fortunately his responses to the idiots in the audience were just as funny as some of his written material, so it wasn’t a total loss. He probably would have gone on a lot longer if not for the hecklers, but oh well.
After the Borgata we headed on to Philadelphia for the Independence Day festivities. This turned out to be the ideal place to be on the 4th of July weekend. I guess given that the events being celebrated occurred there it isn’t too surprising. We did all of the touristy things that you have to do in Philly, like see the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, and eat a cheese steak. Unfortunately I made the mistake of deciding that I wanted my steak from Gino’s, which is one of the top 2 places in Philly. I guess this place is a tourist trap, and why I don’t know because the food was awful. If you are ever in town eat at Tony Luke’s and leave those places alone.
One highlight of the trip was the African American protest outside of the Independence Mall. They had such witty slogans “Your Whitehouse is our out house” and “Your liberty bell is our slavery hell”. Apparently these people were unaware that slavery is now illegal in America. Don’t need to protest it any more fellas, it is gone. They were from the Coalition for Avenging the Ancestors, which I find funny because the ancestors are all dead and no amount of senseless protesting will avenge what they had to suffer through. The local newspaper said that their protests this year were enraged by the recent discovery of a ninth slave in the George Washington household. As if having 9 is so much worse than having 8. And even if he had 872 what does any of that have to do with the Whitehouse? GW never lived there.
I was standing at the ready to run at the first sign of any race related violence but fortunately none ever broke out. Most people seemed to walk by the dashiki clad protesters with little thought. There were of course some people muttering racist remarks, but to me these were uncalled for. These people were, in my humble opinion, just plain stupid. Of course I think that protesting is always fairly stupid, just because it doesn’t work. One well written letter to the editor in the New York Times will do a lot more to advance any cause than 800 defuses with corny clichés on cheap signs. I can't remember the last time any war was averted because a bunch of hippies wrote generic slogans on poster board and walked around in a public area. The only memorable protests seem to be ones like Kent State and Tiananmen Square, and those only because they ended in tragedy.
That has been the only benefit to America that I can think of from this latest war with Iraq. Before it happened we got a few solid months of getting to see people do the dumbest things to voice their protest over the war. Everything from people going on hunger strikes to women lying around naked in parks. And some of the pictures I saw of those women could probably be used as very slow working weapons of mass destruction too. Simply show them to the Iraqi men, who would then be unable to work because they woke up in the middle of the night screaming in horror at the nightmares of fat middle aged soccer moms in their birthday suits. A few short years of showing these pictures to Iraqi men on a daily basis and the nation’s birth rate and productivity will have sunk to record lows. Many of the men will have gouged their eyes out as well, and since I doubt that females get much in the way of education over there nobody will be available to do all of the oil drilling and such. So I guess maybe I am wrong about the whole protesting thing, maybe it is useful. Not for preventing wars, but for winning them.

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