Happy 2008, asshole:

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[I]’m not going to this event after all. “Things Have Changed” as the Prophet Bob said, and i’m a flexible reasonable taking-account-of-circumstances kinda guy.

After all of your Fight the Power histrionics here — calling me, Tom Coyner, colontos, and any other voice of reason bootlicking cowards — after all of your prattle about your Rights, you chickened out! I am surprised to learn that you’re just a poseur, Dave, especially after you waved the bloody shirt of your “principles” so enthusiastically and denounced the rest of us sumbitches so vehemently. What a phony.

It may come as a shock to you, but some people in the world choose to devote their lives to other pursuits than merely acquiring money.

It may come as a shock to you, Mr. Burgeson, that some people in the world choose to hold a job and raise a family instead of posing as a wry hipster. Different strokes for different folks.

What happened, you ask? Factors have come up on this that i had not noticed in advance, but prove crucial (for me). On Thursday was the launch of the National Assembly election campaign season, making partisan-political concerns much more acute and bringing the strict new campaign-period laws into play. Unlike the above-discussed visa-rules, these ones might have some legitimacy and might get enforced. This had snuck up on me, hadn’t realized the tabboo-time was starting yet; go ahead call me dumb-not-paying-attention, i been busy.

And then i check around a bit and yup, our dear Canal Project has indeed become a political-party-aligned issue, with the liberal-left opposition parties embracing the anti-Canal movement and the GNP lining up in support of Disaster-in-the-Making just to show support for Their President. Ooooops. I certainly would not want to take a public action that aligns me with one Korean political party and against another — especially not, at this time, with leftists and against the GNP. Hey, almost all my friendly-associates in Korean politics / government are GNP-types…

And so then this rally might even be declared illegal if it is seen as supporting oppo candidates, and the police could move in to shut it down, there would be old-style disorder {sigh}.

I had accepted the organizer’s invitation to attend this rally (lending my incredibly-influential white skin to the cause! ) on the basis that it was non-partisan, totally-enviornment-preservation-oriented, peaceful and legal — but that prospect Has Changed, and thus so has my decision — i sent my regrets this morning.

So therefore i and will content myself with expressing my non-partisan opposition to the Canal Project on the internet, maybe in print-media essays, in my public speeches, whatever — at least until after election season is over and within reasonable contexts…

You might correctly guess that i feel a bit frustrated by this self-imposed stiffling after all the above; it’s kinda bitterly comic, and go ahead call me naieve again — following Korean partisan-political news isn’t my main gig, the Mountains are.

Some of my international-resident buddies are going to be there anyway, not likely to care about the partisan-
party-political angles as much as i have to… Tho i can no longer invite or recommened anyone else to go, i support anyone who does as a friend — not the sort to stab fellow expats in the back, ever. I’ll stand together with them on this issue later on — it’s sure to go on for years — and on Monday morning i’ll be there to bail my close buddies out of jail if need be — and we certainly won’t be calling Brendon

It may come as a shock to you, but some people in the world choose to devote their lives to other pursuits than merely acquiring money. You would look a lot more intelligent if you could just respect that rather than insistently ridiculing people just because they have made different life choices than you have.

I’m one of the softest touches around — and even help hippies.

Then from where comes your umbrage about “donate”, a concept you introduced to this spat and no one else ever even implied?

And of course You choose — no one, certainly not i, ever said or implied otherwise. Uhm, again, the well-known-by-regular-readers probability that you would NOT choose to take the case was the very basis of the minor JEST i was attempting to make in that original line, just to close off my post with something light. Someone less knee-jerk-virtrolic than yourself might have noticed the big fat after that statement.

Don’t conflate disapproval of “progressives” sitting around in their Mom’s basement grousing about The Man with approval of shithead frat boys. That’s the mistake Dave Mason makes.

Before I started up my first year in college in Berkeley, I spent the summer in a nearby frat house because they offered cheap rooms there to let. But there were still a lot of brothers there, many of them rich Republican kids from SoCal, and the amount of drug use and general debauchery I saw them indulge in was staggering. I remember one guy named Simon who one night did no less that 12 different drugs at the same time. So what I am saying is that while your hang-ups with progressives are cute, perhaps you do not need to be lecturing people about returning to reality.

I remember when I first saw Dubya on TV, he had the same glib but somehow devious frat-boy swagger that I remembered from my fraternity summer, and I already knew at that moment we were all going to be in a lot of trouble. His whole “compassionate conservative” routine did not fool me one bit, despite my inability to get a grip on reality, as you put it, Mr. Carr.