I was recently held up in absolute dead stop traffic. We were sitting on the tarmac with no movement for well over an hour, in the 80 degree sun, before I felt obliged to leave my car and go see if it was because of roadwork or an accident or what.
I joined a small crowd of onlookers after reaching the head, spectating a row of sit-in protesters. One driver had tried to get around but a few protesters moved tactically so that he couldn’t go any further without injuring somebody.
I didn’t wait around, although there were people phoning the police and some tempers beginning to flare. So I head back to my car. The dairy groceries that I picked up on the way back from work had begun to spoil.
I was late home by nearly three hours, so no time to unwind. Just enough to pack away some old leftovers before heading off to sleep and restart cycle all over, -1 hour or so of sleep.
Previously, I had no opinion whatsoever on whether cars=good or cars=bad. But after being held up in traffic, wasting money, wasting gas, losing sleep and perhaps a bit of my sanity I am now totally on board with the Fuck Cars movement. I couldn’t imagine a more convincing strategy to bring people over to your perspective. Excellent thinking. Good job.
The sarcasm isn’t conveyed well, but it is an attempt to highlight to *checks notes anti-car protesters just how poor their strategy is. For example, I’m probably not the only person to have been moved from a neutral position to a strongly opposing position by their antics.
But maybe their goal was never to sway people to their side, like you say? Maybe it is literally being done exclusively for the thrill of the spotlight. Or they’re actually pro-car activists, who are subtly portraying their opposition deliberately poorly in order to sabotage anti-car sentiment?
Yeah. See, the real 1984 is when a guy in a tweed coat beats you up while saying things like “2 plus 2 is 4” and “5 times 9 is 45” because then you learn to hate correct answers.