Activist's Eye for the Apathetic Guy

Note: Originally written Oct. 2010

Troubled at how often you find yourself utterly ignorant when it comes to political issues? Understandably, it’s hardly on your radar during college if it’s not your major; after all, who has time for bantering about policy when more important issues (Nordstrom’s or Saks, Jerusalem’s or Maggiano’s, cond-wait, I have restraint) swamp you every solitary day? You know from your high school experience that everyone who is remotely intelligent is a liberal, but knowing from facts and logic what you believe is so overrated. 

Never fear! I, your trusty leftist analyst, will give you the tools necessary to make yourself sound like a normal, intellectually average progressive without ever having to do any independent thinking or research. Impossible, you say? With this five ye---err, five-step plan of terms, I’ll take you from political ignorance to political ignorance-mashed-up-and-repackaged-as-intelligence in no time!

1. Occupation: Never mind the fact that war, for some unknown reason, usually involves this term, use this word as a pretext to term every military action as criminal enterprises, regardless of rationale. If any movement, especially any taking up arms against the Great Sa-I mean, America, support it by self-critically claiming that democratic society must be in the wrong.
a. Recommended phrases: “Like, the US Occupation of Iraq, and like, killing civilians and stuff…” “The Israelis are occupying Palestinian land! Occupation is a crime!”

2. Diversity: Sprinkling your non-fragment sentences with this word makes you the paragon of tolerance. Be cautious not to extend your defense of terrible ideas like conservatism, the Religious Right, or traditional marriage advocates; use this word only for the beneficence of NAMBLA or child-marriage advocates in the Arabian peninsula. Focus on race as a primary indicator of diversity; never, never assume that diversity could be more than just the color of one’s skin.
a. Recommended phrases: “I think that…diversity just leads to all of us just understanding each other and coming together, like, community, you know?” “We need to be encouraging more diversity and stuff.”

3. Oil: In the world of your professors, oil flows like healing waters from the neocon (see #4) Fountain of Youth and splatters all over us. This word is best coupled with words like “Bush” or “Cheney” to reach a desired effect of showing every red-state American to be an imperialistic resource-hungry fascist. 
a. Recommended phrases: “I feel that the only reason we went into Iraq was because of oil, like Halliburton and, and America’s need for oil to furnish our, like 15 cars. “No blood for Oil!”

4. Neocon: This is a trump card in your hands. Going back and actually studying the history of the term “neoconservative” as it was initially used would find that it initially meant Reagan-era converts to conservatism, but remember, all that is unnecessary. Label any person to the right of Howard Zinn as a neocon; let your face scrunch up on the first syllable as a testament to your hatred (NEEEocons). Listen to your professors, and equate this word with any member of the Right. If you are an “anti-Zionist” leftie, using neocon as a euphemism for “Jew warmonger” works as well. 
a. Recommended phrases: “I feel that…the neocons in the Bush administration, um, took us to war, and like, holy war, and stuff.” “Like, weren’t neocons, like, pushing us to war?”

5. Corporations: Be it global poverty, terrorism, or that migraine you had last Thursday morning, corporations are the perfect scapegoat, a word to show your prof that you are an erudite “Hello, my name is Speak-Truth-to-Power” progressive. Be sure to use a hushed, almost esoteric tone when you whisper it; cast away all your inhibitions, forget that most of your clothing and products come from these dastardly villains of global capitalism, and shriek with righteous indignation at the wicked corporations.
a. Recommended Phrases: “The corporations run our world, they like keep poor countries poor and stuff while we buy their clothes.” “Corporations have, like, way too much power, man.”

With these tools, you can now learn the art of combining these terms to make your points sound even more like t a single-digit IQ bastardization of a Korbel prof; for example, combining corporations with oil, or occupation with neocons, can make your Birkenstock cheer in jubilation (“Please, please wash me now?”). And don’t hesitate to bring in more words, like “hate”, “teabagger”, or “fascist” into your Bay Area vocabulary. Now go, go forth and show your professors, your school, your Nation (magazine, of course) that you too, can be a beacon of hope for worldwide progressivism.