I've spent the last week
wondering if I should write about what is happening today across the country. And
I think it would be simpler to tell you what is actually going to happen,
as opposed to the narrative that is going to play out among the protestors.
There will be massive demonstrations
in 50 states. Some will be relatively peaceful, the majority will be loud, all
of them will be chaotic and disorganized with no common theme. They will be
covered by all of the major cable news networks. MSNBC and CNN will probably give
it favorable coverage and cheer the protestors on for their bravery.
Fox News will be there and choose
to air the most disorganized and chaotic protest they can find. My guess is
they'll have a wide selection. They will air this footage on what amounts to a
loop in all of their opinion segments for twenty four hours with the chyrons saying
it comes from deep blue states and that they represent the radical left. They
will find a way to tie this to the Democratic Party 'allowing this to happen'
and will never be called on it. This footage will play in the cycles of every
conservative politician.
Our President will tweet about it
using some combination of 'radical left', 'losers' as well as some version of
photoshop ending with the same four words he does every other post. He will use
some version of it at his rallies or his press conferences and no doubt use it
for fundraising. So will the GOP, particularly in the swing districts and some
purple states.
The left will leave the protest
certain that this will lead to the change that starts 'the movement'. That
they've no doubt felt some version of this for the past decade and nothing has
changed will do nothing to dilute that version of that certainty.
The next day, the more conventional
news media will move on to the next crisis, whether the administration causes
it or not. Fox News and Newsmax will continue to air footage on it rather than
deal with whatever failures come out of Washington in the weeks and months to
come.
The average citizen might forget
about it or move on to other things. But those who see the footage of the
protest – particularly white working class voters – will be shocked by it and
some – a small but not statistically insignificant number - if they voted Democratic before will likely
vote Republican in the next election.
I realize that while some details
will be different, the broad strokes of this will in fact play out pretty much
exactly as I say. I'm not necessarily saying it will end up affecting the GOP
in the next election positively this time but I know very well that at the end
of this day, nothing significant will have actually happened.
And that's because of how the
left has increasingly come to view activism during the 21st century
and the era of Trump in particular. I don't deny their ability to organize and
assemble at a mass level across the country is impressive nor do I deny their
skill at achieving spectacle. But that is all they are able to achieve because
they seem to truly think that ninety percent of success is just showing up. That
cliché, however, falls apart because for the left showing up is the only
measure of success they consider important.
Now I'm not saying that their
anger and frustration about so many of the problems facing society aren't
merited or their fear at the Trump administration is unwarranted. My problem is
that for the last decade the left's solution to every new obstruction the right
throws at the minority groups and so many others is to protest before the
cameras and then leave thinking they've accomplished something. So much of the
left's activism for the last decade is based on another cliché 'speaking truth
to power'. They are so focused on that in their demonstrations they don't
actually care whether power listens to them. Much of the time I don't think
they expect that to happen: it's about expressing their feelings and their outrage
about the inequities of the world. That is understandable but absent some kind
of political or economic power, it's meaningless.
The right figured that out long
ago. They spent decades forming think tanks, working within the system to try
and corrupt it, finding ways to infiltrate every level of the government and
convinced their base to go along with it. They had goals and they were willing spend
the time and money to achieve them. And they also understood that was the only
way to make their vision a reality.
Some progressives know this and
they will often go into great detail explaining how the right has spent so much
of their time and energy subverting the system. But they fail to draw an
obvious conclusion: that working within the system is the only way to change
it. As Hunter Bregman made clear in a recent CNN interview and again in one the
New York Times Magazine, whenever he tells his friends on the left about what
they need to do, they seem more concerned about maintaining their ideological
purity than actually solving the problems of today. That this only leads to
Republicans being elected – the party the left acknowledges is actively making
things worse – has done little to change their mind, certainly in the leadup to
and even after the 2024 election.
Bregman points this out about the
most 'significant' achievement during that period: Black Lives Matter. He was
impressed at their ability to assemble one of the largest protest movements in
history but as he correctly points out, it didn't change anything for either
policing or civil rights. And that's because like so many other activist
movements in the last decade, showing up and expressing your outrage was the means
and the end. Like the overwhelming majority of left-leaning activist movements
throughout so much of American history it was about showing how angry you were
about the problem – and arguing that the full force of your assembly and moral
righteousness was the solution.
But societal problems have never
been solved by who has the best moral argument. They can only be solved through
having the political and economic muscle to back it up and the willingness to
work within the system to change it. These things are slow and took time
and energy even without the gridlocked government we have today and I don't
judge the left for being impatient or the desire to do something – or at least
feel like you're doing something.
However on every level so many of
these protest movements are flawed, and that's mainly due the way the left
tends to frame things in extreme terms. They also hurt themselves immensely by
the fact that so much of their dialogue has been based on the concept that America
is not only incapable of change from the dawn of its founding to today but often
argue that the country is a dictatorship. Their argument is that because of the
power of capitalism in every aspect of our lives, the freedoms in our society
are not real freedoms. That they have yet to define what 'real freedom' is has
never been something that they choose to acknowledge. It doesn't help matters
that if America were an actual dictatorship (which despite the efforts of this
administration it still isn't) for merely posting their thoughts on social
media, assembling to protest and sharing their thoughts, the government would
have locked them up or shot them on site a thousand times over before this
point. They will acknowledge that reality in other countries, including Russia
and China, but the fact that they can make this comparison and not be
imprisoned themselves is something many of them will never acknowledge.
What always frustrates me about
the left's outrage and their ability to apparently organize and assemble their
protest movements is that they seem unwilling to do so for anything to actually
achieve their ends. Why instead of organizing 51 protests in 50 states on
one day don't they spend all of that time and energy organized 50 voting
drives in fifty states in one day? Why
don't they spend that time using their social media organizing to form their own
political party, if so many people on the left are on their side? Why don't
they use their ability to organize protest movements in Alabama and Wyoming - states that when it comes time for elections
they argue have too much power – to work on grassroots organizing for a
political candidate there? That would be turning all of this incredible ability
to organize into something constructive with their outrage rather than spend
that same time making sure the cameras see and hear everything you say at a protest.
The day the left is willing to
commit to something like that, I will gladly show up and donate time and money
to help them. Until they realize what appears to be a blatantly obvious fact,
I'm not going to waste my time with the performative activism that they seem to
be spending all of their time and energy on rather than actually solving the
problems they claim to care about. And since right now they seem more focused
on doing the same thing and expecting different results, I'm not going to put
on that particular straitjacket. I know what can be done to change America.
Until they'll acknowledge it, they are just wasting everybody's time – including
their own.
So go ahead. Paint your placards,
make your chants, plan your hashtags. You want to delude yourself that this is
going to make a difference, I know it's a waste of my energy to try and
convince you otherwise. When you're actually interested in doing something constructive,
you know where to find me. The voting booth, where I know I can actually make a
difference.
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