Some of you may recall -- who am I kidding? of course you don't remember -- how back in Jan. 2007 I criticized the way liberals do protest rallies. Lame and disorganized.
And I was not a fan in any way of the Rally to Restore Lameness organized by Jon Stewart. If Seinfeld was a show about nothing, then that was a protest rally about nothing. Likewise it was supposed to be funny. But the joke was on liberal losers for being so lame and self-conscious and afraid to commit to anything that could possibly be labelled extreme or uncool in retrospect.
An effective protest should be explicitly threatening. (Yeah, I know, I could end up on Glenn Beck's chalkboard 20 years from now for talking wild-eyed anarchist lunacy like that.) The threat could be of violence. Or it could be of massive work disruptions or civil disobedience. A threat not to vote for somebody is usually a lame threat, because in most cases the voters protesting are written off by the other side's politicians as unwinnable, just like the public sector unions protesting now are written off by Republicans, who don't seek to win them over, but rather destroy them as an organized group.
(Actually Jones argues that conservatives don't know how to protest either. But I don't think it's in their nature to threaten the existing order from the street. If they're p.o.'d about the country then they start forming an escape plan, or organizing militias and hoarding guns and supplies....)
By Eileen Jones
February 27, 2011 | The eXiled
February 27, 2011 | The eXiled
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