fandomhigh | Damn the Man Club, Wednesday 5pm

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!club: damn the man

Damn the Man Club, Wednesday 5pm

Canceling a club meeting on it's very first night didn't seem like a good plan. So even though Blair didn't feel up to it, he was sitting on a desk in the computer lab.

"Okay, welcome to Damn the Man Club. I think we should start out by introducing ourselves and what who we think is The Man." Blair smiled and started. "I'm Blair Sandburg and I think The Man is a person or persons in power who value the power more than anything else and use it to keep the little people down."

He waited for everyone to finish and pointed to the whiteboard behind him. "This club is going to be focusing on educating people about The Man and then trying to fight against him with what we have available. Protests, petitions, sit-in's and boycotts are just the some of the ways we can make a difference. But I want to hear what ideas you guys have or any instances where you think we should step in and do something."

[OCD up!]

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"But if the person in charge doesn't act like The Man then maybe it's okay." Blair smiled at Nadia and tried to not look like he was sore.

"But power corrupts. So the person in charge has to be very, very careful not to let his power get to his head, thereby giving the people reason to label him 'the Man'."

"Which is why people in power should surround themselves with people who can call them on any 'Man' like behavior."

"But the person in power might grow to resent that, making him more likely to desire to keep the 'little people' he's surrounded himself with down."

"Then the surrounding people should overthrow The Man or at least videotape him being mannish and force him to watch it over and over till he gets scared straight."

"Have you ever seen a political coup, Blair? Usually the leader doesn't just get tied to a chair and forced to watch what he himself does. And being scared straight is rarely a peaceful process."

"You planning a coup here, Nadia? Because I'm thinking you should try to do a nice peaceful one."

Nadia shook her head. "No. Just merely pointing things out. And I've never heard of a true, peaceful coup."

"Me either, but there's always a first time. Bet you didn't hear about a zombie attack before you came here either."

"Honestly? A peaceful coup would surprise me more."

"You're so disallusioned."

"I'm from South America."

Blair nodded. "Maybe Fandom can show you a peaceful coup. Know anyone we can take over?"

Nadia shut her eyes and shook her head. "You're missing the point. It's fundamental human nature to fight for what you want and believe in. Whether it's with a protest, like what you've been doing once a week, or with physical violence. And when you're not getting what you want and you're still not getting what you want and someone is in the way of you getting what you want, you get angry, and when you get angry you get stupid and sometimes you get violent even when you didn't mean to. And I know that you, personally, are not above that, Blair. I've seen it myself."

Blair wondered for a moment if this was the coup. "I never said that I was above that, but I'm saying it doesn't have to be your only response. If you practice peace as your first response you're far less likely to resort to violence than if you never practice it all."

"But when a coup occurs, it's a take-over, one without the consent of the individual in power. It happens because the person has been abusing that power, which is something that they will want to keep doing. So they aren't going to let go easily. They're going to argue, and, yes, FIGHT for what they want, just as the people who are trying to take over will. And because the two sides will be locked into struggling against each other, they will have to try to prove their power with everything that they have at their disposal, including might. But both sides build up the demonstration of their might, until both sides are using violent means, and they lose track of the people in the middle who don't want anything except to just go on with their lives, and in the end, it's dark, dirty, violent, and people get hurt."

"There are other ways to fight that aren't physical. If neither side thought violence was an option, neither side would escalate to that." Blair shrugged. "Of course that means creating a world in which physical violence didn't exsist and I don't know that that's even possible."

"I doubt it. Besides, what good is that hypothetical when we have to deal with real world terms?"

"If we don't have a dream, what are we fighting for?"

"We can have a dream, but it should be one based on reality and what we really can accomplish. Saying 'well, it'd be better if violence never existed' doesn't solve anything."

"That's why we don't just say that. We try to promote it, we try to change it, we try to make the world better."

"But violence DOES exist, Blair. You can't just pretend that it doesn't."

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Damn the Man Club, Wednesday 5pm

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