The Mad Rants of a Raving Genius

As pretty much everyone undoubtedly knows, there’s a bit of a problem in Burma. A problem that has existed for 19 years. So why is it that people have only decided to speak out against it (and by “it,” I mean the military junta controlling the country) recently? If it’s been going on for so long, why haven’t people protested before? Well, I suppose that there may have been protests at some point in the past (I would have been mucking around in a sea of amniotic fluid when the junta was established), but if it’s that big of a deal, people should have been protesting non-stop. I mean, do you think people protesting the genocide in Darfur are ever going to let up? They’ll probably wait for a couple years after the genocide has stopped to quit handing out T-shirts and leaflets.

Anyways, this whole deal reminds me of a Maddox post about Christopher Reeve, calling him out for not supporting cures for paraplegia until after he became one. He has a point, however rudely (should there be a c before that?) he presents it. The same, I think, goes for the situation in Burma. It’s been happening for 19 years. But no one noticed until the Burmese government pulled a fast one and raised the price of diesel 500%, which eventually raised the ire of Buddhist monks. When Buddhist monks get pissed, you know something’s going down.

I won’t deny the situation is bad. The military junta has limited pretty much every form of free speech, including cutting Internet access and forbidding journalists to report on protests. But this is not a new thing. The Burmese government has been brutal since the 1970s, when the military government first came into existence. Ironically, the current military government staged a coup to unseat the original military government in the name of democracy. Then they annulled the 1990 elections and began beating everyone up. Hurray for informative Wikipedia articles.

What’s my point here? My point is that people are too quick to latch on to a cause. I hate to sound cynical, but I think people do it more to feel like they’re doing something good instead of actually caring. If people really did care about Burma, they wouldn’t have just now started protesting. It’s exactly like Maddox said. If a person really cared about a disease, they’d support it before they got it. When you get breast cancer and only then decide to buy pink ribbons and donate money, it makes you look selfish. You aren’t doing it for anyone else; you’re doing it for you.

Supporting causes is all well and good, but when it becomes a trend (hey, Joe’s supporting a cure for prostate cancer, so I will too!), the effect is cheapened. Besides, I think the Buddhist monks have a little more weight to throw around.