Chaotek Thoughts

I don’t know why it is, but it seems like all small-town people hate the source of their existence. What I mean is that small town locals seem to be bitter or angry towards the people or things that without which the town would likely dry-up. An example is a tourist town, where the locals complain about the tourists in front of tourists. … or a college town where the locals seem to hate the college students. … or a factory town where everyone complains about the primary employer. … or the suburb which complains about the city where all of the suburban-ites work. … or a military base town where the locals complain about the soldiers stationed there.

Now this isn’t to say that this is a universal sentiment, as those in the service and retail industries tend to be very polite and professional as their occupations require as much. However it’s the locals generally caught outside of work, who seem to be exceptionally bitter towards the source of income for the town.

I just don’t notice this same effect in larger cities. In fact quite the opposite, large cities seem to take more pride in their local attractions. For example local sports teams, even when they are quite bad, enjoy a great deal of local support. Major businesses are more catered to, as are destination locations like theme parks. Sure, there is always going to be a person who doesn’t like the local major employer or attraction, however it doesn’t come across to me as a majority opinion. When you compare large cities with small towns, you would expect the ratio of vocal ungrateful people to grateful people to be roughly the same, but I don’t get the same impression as an outsider in large cities like I do in small towns.

I’m in San Francisco on business and I found out that at the base of the building I am at, was going the end point of the Torch Relay. Great, I thought–something cool to do at lunch. So we took a late lunch and the group headed down to the Embarcadero right in front of the Ferry Building. There were pro-Tibet protestors, pro-China supporters, anarchists, and general spectators like myself. It was actually pretty entertaining. The anarchists were funny, all dressed in black with bandanas covering their faces. Some were quite prepared, even wetting the bandanas in preparation for tear gas. They shouted a lot about the corrupt military industrial complex, evils of McDonalds, faked moon landings, and the war on terror/Iraq–all with little conviction or education The pro-Tibet protestors generally seemed to fall into two categories: peaceful demonstrators and complete idiots. The peaceful demonstrators, especially Team Tibet, were very organized and orderly. Idiot protestors were just chaos incarnate. My favorite was a sign stating that the US would have boycotted Nazi Olympics, so why would we cater to the Chinese? Uh, didn’t the US attend the 1936 Berlin Olympics?

Anyways, the relay was supposed to start at 1pm. At the beginning, the police were pretty strict about keeping people behind barricades. But as the minutes passed, the police force just seemed to evaporate. People started marching up and down the street. Before too long, it was pretty obvious that the relay wasn’t going to come this route–there was no order. On the news, the Mayor and police explained that they “spontaneously” decided to change the relay route because of the crowds. They said that there were too many protestors, and that the crowd was too large at the beginning of the route rather than spread evenly along the route. What a crock of shit! For one, they had previously decided that there would be no protest permits necessary, so the protesters could be anywhere they wanted. Also, the route had previously been cut repeatedly, and just that morning it was announced that the route would be cut in half again. Duh, the people are going to want to be near the beginning because it might get cut down even more. Before 1pm, for the most part the crowds were reasonable and kept behind the fences except when they were crossing the street in crosswalks. It wasn’t until the police had abandoned the task of controlling the crowd, because they knew that the relay wasn’t coming this route anyways, did the streets get taken over. By then, the decision had long since been made. And you can’t tell me that they didn’t have at least 5 alternate routes for the relay, despite the claim that the route and decision was spontaneous.

The final result: the torch relay was a regular Communist China exhibition, secretive and dodging free speech. The protesters felt somewhat victorious, they got a lot of publicity anyways. The Chinese got a mostly Tibet-less Torch Relay, as if the trick will make people forget their human rights record. Thousands of Olympic supporters, Chinese nationals, tourists and spectators got screwed out of a chance to see and photograph the Olympic torch. Oh, and free speech got a kick to the nuts–though the Patriot Act mostly killed the First Amendment anyways. And now the IOC is suggesting that the International Torch Relay may be cut for future Olympics…