The only thing worse than being uninformed, is being informed and not caring

I was watching c-span the other day, and they were letting groups who were scheduled protesters at the National Republican Convention, have a few minutes to explain why they were protesting. This guy who was wearing this brown ugly suit, that didn' fit stood up (at least dress like you are addressing the nation, don't come off like a wacky hippie). He started discussing how much money was spent on just campaigning. He was talking about the money people spend just promoting themselves, while people went without healthcare and how hypocritical it was.

He was right. The things he was bringing up are importent facts. He went on and on and on. He got to be so annoying that I went from being interested, and wanting to be involved -- to being annoyed and not really caring anymore. He got so preachy, I changed the channel. Maybe I am a bad person, or I am just lazy. But, I find something to be wrong when I went from caring, to being annoyed. This man just totally fucked up what his objective was, which was to inform, and hopefully have people care.

Personally I don't like activists. I don't like information being preached to me, that isn't informing. Activists sometimes do way more harm for their cause, than good. This is just my opinion, I am probably warped.

The probelm isn't that all activists are annoying, it's that nice people make lousy activists. Nobody has ever achieved anything major in politics by being polite, and that's the sad and unfortunate truth.

Especially in these days of hundreds of TV channels, radio stations, newspapers, magazines, e-zines, web-publications, newsletters, periodicals and pamphlets it is impossible to get one's message through the backgrounds noise without some kind of irritability factor. If you want an example from a completely different field, the footage of skeletal children in Ethiopia with flies crawling all over their faces are the shock factor that is used to stir people's numbed-down sensibilities into doing something about it.

It's very unfortunate that you were put off the message by the way this man was expressing it, but at least you are now aware of a problem, something that perhaps one day when you hear a better speaker will reawaken your enthusiasm.