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In Reply to: Re: What's the point? posted by Beijing Man on August 22, 2008 at 15:26:27:
I appreciate your candor, and hope you will appreciate mine.
Will it please you to know I did unfurl some banners in front of countless cameras and international reporters, in key locations but not in Tianamen Square? Will it please you to know that I didn't mention that because I did what I did for me and my own conscience and I am not asking anything of anyone?
If you want to talk about being cult-like, you are putting words in my mouth, rushing to judgement, and justifying your name-calling and belittlement after you clearly insulted me for not measuring up. And you are having me explain myself while you dart me with accusations. Reminds me of my time in TF. It is you who is seeing me through cult eyes and taking what I say to extremes, not me who is coming with the extremities, I'm afraid.
Please re-read my post. I didn't ask anyone to turn off their TV. I was giving an example of how even doing the minimum to live on your principles can be effective to bringing awareness. I didn't come here to ask anything of anyone except to bring awareness. If watching the Olympics works for you I am not going to tell you you're doing anything wrong. I left the cult a long time ago, stopped thinking in imperatives and assumed it was safe not to be accused of those I never uttered.
It is disingenuous of you to say that just because I posted about China in one post therefore I singled out China. Your gripe is that you were just dying to talk about US politics but couldn't, so instead of adding to the discussion you just cut me down. On the other hand, I do accept your explanation that you weren't sure about being free to expand into other subjects touching on politics.
And you try to pin the tit-for-tat comparison game on me when I didn't even bring it up? It was you saying that if I want to talk about China then the US is much worse.
Aside from that, I do appreciate your points that "whether one person is harmed or a thousand, it matters little to the individuals who are harmed, so the numbers game is unappealing when it comes to human rights." And yes, the US and other countries have a long way to go about a lot of things.
Maybe your world is different and you don't work with marketing. Where I live, advertizing agencies are constantly gauging the market, doing surveys, checking what channels are being watched or ignored, and public opinion does bring about very effective change. Radical changes were effected on a major section of the food industry within a year of a published report showing that a certain vegetable was environmentally unfriendly. Consumers simply refused to buy or switched brands, and the industry had to recreate itself.
