I disagree. Protest can, and frequently does, change something very important…minds. Nothing substantial can or will happen until then.
Please don’t infer that I’m defending any of this as “right”. Quite the contrary. My point is to approach the subject of protest with open eyes. You can line a thousand people on a beach with signs and megaphones to confront the tide. The tide is still coming in, so wear appropriate footwear.
Protest has limitations but also capabilities. I do not see, for example, the current US regime as an inexorable tide that cannot be influenced or reversed. I do not see a bunch of people in the local park bellowing slogans as in itself effecting that change. But we are herd animals. The point of protest is to overcome the herd tendency to rationalize and normalize injustice. The value in the protest isn’t the slogans or the megaphones per se, it is that it reassures everyone present that they are not alone in facing the risks of opposition. It also is a recognition that we are part of the 99% and the regime is part of the 1%. It gives people courage and hope. And I do not think it is false courage and hope, unless the protest is implying that the struggle for justice ever ends. It doesn’t.
From my experience, until you have a sufficient number of people all under an equal level of discomfort or peril you will never mobilize a viable resistance to effect change.
In general, unless someone can identify with a cause on a gut level, they will likely dismiss it based on their cognitive bias.
I’m not condoning this cycle, but I’m not in a position to change the self-interest motivating humanity.
As you mentioned earlier, we resemble sheep. Every 4 years we go to the polls to elect a new shepard.
Attachment is stronger than ideology. Protests in America these days are largely tribal. The need to belong and be identified as part of a group far outstrips any ideology that might be lurking in the shadows.
Grievance has replaced common sense and compromise. Any asshole can point to a problem. I’m waiting for someone with a potential solution before I grab a sign and head out in the street…
That number appears to be about 3.5% of the citizenry.
That we aren’t there yet tells me the “gut level identification” hasn’t happened for enough people. It’s spreading, but it’s kind of alarming to me that the utterly ghastly shit show that is this regime has not activated enough people, even a full year in, with people being “disappeared” without due process and being mistreated and even tortured in the process.
I have long said that our salvation will probably be the complete incompetence and lack of a coherent plan, of this regime. What if Trump were not the lazy senile slob that he is? What if he were less vainglorious like Mussolini and more of the orator and leader, at least in perception, that Hitler was? It beggars belief that it’s only when he’s literally burning it all down as fast as possible that anyone notices or even worries much.
I have two living siblings. The 78 year old just wants to tune out and live his last few years, and wishes I’d take a chill pill and stop talking about what’s happening, so I have. The 83 year old is basically MAGA, and I’m afraid to inquire after how rabid he is, but he’s the last person in the family still retaining his fundamentalist fervor and given half a chance will prattle about the evils of “wokeness”. Both of them get their news from conservative media even if the 78 year old doesn’t fully trust it. So yeah I get the point you’re making about tribalism and that fully a third of the country is all in on bigotry and various forms of revanchism and magical thinking.
My biggest fear is that there will be a “blue wave” in ‘26 and ‘28 but that it will be for naught and even if we win both houses and the Presidency it will just within a few years, maybe even just four, be right back where we are now, maybe with someone more capable and ruthless and not afraid of the sight of blood. In some ways I doubt we are ready to take a different direction than either party has taken in recent memory – in recognition of what we were doing pre-Trump clearly wasn’t working.
On the other hand … a lot of the frustration and anger is really about economic hardship and loss of hope for a better life. Maybe a lot of that tribalism falls away if the people who currently feel excluded, feel more included. Right now a third of the population feels no common cause with the other two thirds. But … it’s a volatile, chaotic situation and could go any number of ways.
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