so, i'm walking home from class minding my own business, when suddenly my senses are assaulted on Ho Plaza - by two sets of people, the first being sets of gigantic posters saying "Animal Holocaust - To Animals, All People are Nazis".
Edging carefully by this enormous display, I hear someone (who I later found out to be named "Ryan") talking into a microphone so loudly that it felt like the stone walls were reverberating. The subject? The glorious hero - Christopher Columbus.
Let me favor you with an excerpt (And I assure you, I am not joking, nor making this up.)
Ryan: When I was in high school, my global studies teacher tried to tell me that Columbus' navigator was Black, and therefore we should celebrate the great contributions of Black people to the discovery of the New World. To which I replied, "Well, Columbus was headed for the Indies, and he ended up in the Bahamas, so I think we can take that as further proof that affirmative action doesn't work!"
He also went on to refer to the indigenous population as "so-called Native Americans" at which point I was so torn between speechless rage, a helpless urge to laugh hysterically, and the violent desire to throttle him, that I walked on, sputtering to myself. I'm sure I looked like a crazy person.
Some people just shouldn't be allowed in the gene pool. It's funny, because ideally of course I believe in freedom of speech, and freedom of assembly, and all that...but despite it all, the urge to just prevent people from saying asinine and dangerous things still runs strong within me. I will continue to defend people's rights to say whatever, but I'm left feeling sort of confused.
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