Liberal Protesters Still Can't Find the Sweet Spot

Yet still expect sweet rewards.

What happened in LA a few weeks back, and the No Kings business, has been mostly eclipsed in the 24-hour news cycle. For some reason, folks find matters like the future legality of youth gender care, the prospect of World War III, and the disposition of P Diddy to be of more pressing interest than some street demonstrations that had no appreciable effect whatsoever. Go figure.

Still, far be it from me to miss a teachable moment, even if I’m a bit late to the dance.

I find myself in a somewhat awkward position here. Generally, when I’m giving my fellow liberals a tongue lashing, it’s because they’ve failed to notice something important that I, naturally, have noticed.

Examples here, here, and here.

This case is a bit different though. This time, the left is well aware of what I have to tell them. They were all over social media with it for weeks. The think pieces abounded. Donald Trump, they knew, was baiting them.

With his harsh posturing in the face of what were, by most accounts, quite meager riots in Los Angeles, Trump laid a trap. The left knew it. They saw it. They read the play perfectly. And armed with full awareness that they were being tricked, they decided, en masse, to…walk straight into it.

How has a movement this self-destructive survived for this long?

Too Hot

It’s like, I’m a brook trout. I’m out for my daily swim. I clock a big, juicy worm dancing in the stream before me. I’m interested, naturally. But I can also see the shiny, metallic end of a hook peeking out from behind it. Congratulating myself on having spotted the danger, I chow down. After all, don’t I deserve a little treat?

Leftist thought leaders honestly appeared to believe that Trump’s antics justified their playing straight into his hands. This was another Reichstag moment. A page ripped straight from the authoritarian playbook. Trump was provoking the left into providing him with justification for even harsher crackdowns.

So shit, guys, better provide him with it!

We’ll burn some Waymo cars and loot the Apple store, because this will somehow help undocumented immigrants avoid deportation, and if you question this wisdom, you’re an obvious racist who hates brown people.

Observing the lefty social media reaction to LA was like watching somebody chug antifreeze, trying desperately to tell them it was poisonous, then watching them stop for just long enough to tell me to fuck off before downing the rest of the bottle.

What in the actual hell has happened to progressivism? How do you study decades of successful protest movements, anoint yourselves heirs to a legacy of social progress, then do the exact opposite of everything your heroes did and expect the same result? What ate progressives’ brains?

There’s a weird nihilism afoot. Point out to the left that their behavior is stupid and counterproductive, and you get some variant of, “well nothing would convince the bad people anyway.”

Just playing along here, but if that’s true, why do it? It makes people hate you, and by your own admission, achieves nothing, what’s in it for you?

Please tell me. Because I have lost sight.

A worryingly large portion of the left appears to have concluded that, so long as the motive is pure, any disruption or destruction is justifiable.

Worried about the climate? Chuck some soup on a priceless piece of art. That’ll show those oil companies.

Worried about Gaza? Occupy a building that has nothing whatsoever to do with the conflict. That’ll be sure to end it.

Worried about [insert cause here]? Why not block off a road so that ordinary people can’t get to work? It’ll be excellent. It’s past time we stuck it to those…*consults internet footage*...hard-working, responsible, and by all appearances, totally innocent citizens.

And while this crap is admittedly only one side of the leftist protest coin, the other is just as useless.

Too Cold

If one face of progressive agitation is the masked, black-clad antifa goon hurling a brick through the window of a Kroger’s for some reason, the other is the graying, Tevas and Patagonia-wearing Rachel Maddow stan who only buys organic, rides a bicycle whenever possible, and canceled their New York Times subscription because the op-ed page was getting “too right wing.”

These folks will block off a whole, entire Saturday to attend the march, post smiling pictures of themselves being super peaceful to their socials (not Twitter though), be back at their desks on Monday, and wonder sadly why their totally vanilla-bean, well-behaved love-fest wasn’t a front page story in the Sunday papers.

Guys, sorry, but you’re not getting it. It’s because you’re boring.

The Times didn’t put you above the fold for the same reason they didn’t put my kid’s field trip to the zoo above the fold: it wasn’t news. It didn’t impact anything, and was never going to.

The polite protest set - much like the Waymo molotovers, actually - has a really hard time understanding that public demonstration is supposed to be a means to an end. The end can be any number of things - changed policy, public outcry, awakening, shaking the tree of power, whatever - but it must be something.

If the only outcome is, “Well, that was fun, now back to the status quo,” what really should we expect to be the legacy of such a revolution?

The trouble is, they regard the demonstration itself as a kind of victory. So of course, the dailies should all be covering it.

Just look how many people took to the streets. Look how many made their voices heard. How could CNN not spend two days covering this?

I don’t want to dunk too hard on these folks. They really are good people, whose hearts are in the right place. And I certainly prefer their impulse toward peace and order over the guys who think tipping over grocery store shelves is how you stick it to The Man.

But like the masked rabble-rousers, the kombucha crew have also taken the wrong lessons from history. The sad truth is that the best-remembered non-violent protests in our history, the ones from which they’re taking their cues - Selma, Kent State, et al - weren’t resonant for their size, they were resonant because of the powerful dichotomy of non-violence vs force.

Remaining non-violent when faced with real risk is defiance. Remaining non-violent when nobody cares enough to to bother you looks more like obedience.

Real, non-disparaging question: what message do you think was sent to Donald Trump by the No Kings protests? What do you think his takeaway from it was? That a bunch of liberals hate him? Cause - can’t be sure, guys - but I think he knew that already.

What he needed to learn from you, he didn’t learn on that Saturday. He learned it two days later on Monday, when you all showed back up to keep living your lives as normal.

If the cops are protecting and waving to you, you’re definitionally ignorable. That can be okay actually. Showing that dissent exists is better than not showing it. Just don’t expect much in the way of results without more dedicated action, especially in a climate where savage hatred of opposition politicians is the day-to-day norm.

If the cops are cracking your skulls, you might at least regard yourself as a threat. Although…if they’re doing that because you’re enacting wanton destruction and theft, you might expect a similarly small number of new adherents to your cause.

Median Americans loathe both weakness and disorder in equal measure. Your cute placard won’t sway them any more than your chucking a brick through a 7-11 window. Neither act is persuasive, neither act means anything, and neither will alter the American trajectory beyond observers deciding which they find more sympathetic.

The contemporary left has two speeds: pointlessly destructive, and just pointless. Neither is getting us anywhere.