A Modest Opinion – Viva La Revolution

Wednesday 7 July 2010 - Filed under A Modest Opinion

As I’m sure most of you have come to realize there are quite a few things that I am an expert on. These include, but are not limited to: superheroes; global warming; living on the Moon; the HST; and how to say, “where’s the washroom” in almost every language. (Seriously, who really knows how to speak ancient Mayan besides Mel Gibson?) However, one thing you may not know I’m an expert in is revolution (I’ve seen Les Mis at least three times). So, with the recent wave of protest taking place in Toronto because of the G20, I feel it is my responsibility to shed a little light on what makes a successful revolution.

Now, most people will, wrongly, assume that the first step in organizing a revolution is to decide what exactly it is you’d like to revolutionize. But let’s be honest, most of the cool stuff to protest against was protested against ages ago (I blame it all on the ‘60s). Nope, the first step in any good revolution is deciding what sort of mask you’re going to wear.

There are a lot of different mask choices to wade through, you’ve got your bandanas worn cowboy style, the classic balaclava, you could go with just a superhero eye cover, or even that mask from V for Vendetta (though the V for Vendetta mask is usually worn by people protesting Scientology, so you have to be careful when choosing that one). I know what you’re thinking … most of the cool old school revolutionaries didn’t wear a mask, but that’s just because they actually had causes to stand behind and weren’t just looking for an excuse to kick in the window of a Starbucks.

Step two to a successful revolution is figuring out just the right mix for your Molotov cocktail. This is quite important because you want to make sure that it’s strong enough to start a cop car on fire, but not so strong that it will actually blow up the cop car. Because if there’s one thing that is going to get your point across it’s the image of a cop car burning. Nothing changes the world faster than just starting a bunch of cop cars on fire. Absolutely nothing. Furthermore you need to make sure there’s enough accelerant that the cop cars quickly burst into flames, but enough fuel that it keeps burning long enough for the news crews to show up. Trust me, there’s nothing quite as embarrassing as standing next to a burnt out cop car in a superhero mask.

Look I’m not a strong advocate of violence when it comes to revolution, but as Martin Luther King Jr. proved, peaceful protest just doesn’t work. (It inevitably leads to you getting assassinated.) And as Bloody Sunday proved, the cops are just going to beat you up anyway, so you might as well go in fighting. So you’re going to want to train in some sort of hand-to-hand combat. You may also want to practice being beat up by a police baton, ‘cause cops love to carry those things.

The last step to a revolution is to make sure you don’t get caught. Whereas most ignorant people would believe that the strongest way to get your point across is to become a martyr for your cause, actually it is literally impossible to organize a revolution from behind bars (plus, you’ll probably have to return to your data processing job on Monday – revolution doesn’t pay the bills like it use to).

So there you have it, I guarantee that if you follow these steps you will have the most successful revolution in recorded history. Kids will even start wearing shirts with your face on them, regardless of whether they know what you were fighting for or not.

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Originally run in The Flying Shingle (05/07/2010)

2010-07-07  »  admin