G20

[Sketter]

Anyone from Toronto or the Toronto area where the G20 is happening?

 

Watching on the news about a protest gone mildly violent in Toronto.

[Aileron]

Well, plenty of people around here are from Canada.

 

These protests hardly qualify as news though. Its just the typical crowd doing the typical things for the typical excuses.

 

I mean first off, they only are aggressive when they are in a group. The reason they riot now is because they have been storing up their anger for years. That is because individually, they are too weak to stand up for themselves or even think for themselves for that matter. Heck, most of them probably know but do not understand* who the G20 is or what they stand for. Their most likely motivation for attending the protest is because their college professor told them to go (or their friends told them to go after themselves being told to attend by a college professor).

 

Ofcourse, put them in a group and it is their one chance to act out. They are big badasses now. They can beat up on an inanimate and completely stationary parked car!

 

 

*clarification: Many of them are well-versed in G20 trivia. As in which nations are members, who the VIPs are, etc., all of which is information I myself do not know/care about. What is important about understanding the G20 is that it is the New World Order having a strategy meeting. Whatever the issue, whether it is unemployment, Global Warming, world hunger, cute furry animals dying, etc., the very act of trying to hold the G20 responsible for a problem implies a desire to bestow upon G20 the power to solve said problem. Ofcourse, the G20 cannot give power to itself, and a bunch of angry college students do not have any authority to bestow power either. Thus, the entire thing is an exercise in futility. If the protesters were really concerned about an issue (and they aren't...see first paragraph), they would facilitate it much better by not disrupting the meeting and calling their congressman/parliament representative instead.

 

 

Now here is a thought we can actually debate:

 

Any *legitimate* modern government has an obligation to uphold and defend its Constitution. Canada's Constitution, as well as the US Constitution states that the people vote for a Parliament/Congress, and Parliament/Congress appoints ambassadors, like G20 representatives. By protesting outside the G20 summit, these people are going directly to the ambassadors, which is essentially an attempt to cut Parliament/Congress out of the loop. Wouldn't this action qualify as an attempt to undermine the Constitution? If so, than wouldn't the government have the obligation to encourage these protesters to use their Parliamentary/Congressional channels?

 

Local officials and police in charge of security for this type of thing typically try to stay out of the politics of this sort of thing and remain neutral on the public face. A reporter asks them a question and their response is 'no comment'. That actually is the wrong answer. The government should have an official policy of encouraging citizens to use the proper channel. In reality, the Mayor and the Chief of Police of Toronto should be encouraging the protesters to go home and call their parliament representatives. However, right now if either of them made any public comments that carried such a message, it would end their careers.