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Broken Clock News
Just because the guy's a moonbat doesn't mean he can't be right:
If you [radical protestors] haven't left yet, here's my wish: Break a leg. Literally. We could afford you in Seattle in 1999; in fact, you pretty much made the scene there. But in New York, a small army of Republican Party apparatchiks, Fox News television producers, and Wall Street Journal editorialists are waiting for you, and they're a lot more sophisticated than you will ever be. They want you to smash windows and intimidate public safety officers here near the epicenter of Ground Zero; in fact, they'll be looking right over your shoulder, rolling videotape. On prime time that night, your bandanna'd visage will be on fourteen million televisions in Florida, Ohio, and every other swing state, and your crude epithets will settle into the brains of every undecided retiree or unemployed steel worker.
The old protest movements in the 60s were just as fractious, just as theatrical, and just exactly as ineffective, actually prolonging that what they sought to end. Thirty-six years ago the Democratic mainstream fought the protestors while the Democratic fringe tried to come to terms with them. The Republicans simply held up pictures of half-naked grinning hippies and asked, "are these the people you want in charge?" It worked then, and it'll work now.
What's worse is the inevitability of it all. Chaotic protestors with no coherent message engaging in street theater, stunts, and riotous violence because they're too young and stupid to actually understand did nothing to help bring an end to Vietnam. They'll do nothing to end this administration, quite the opposite. But precisely because they're young and stupid and willing to be manipulated they'll do it all over again anyway, because it's fun to have your picture in the paper, fun to break stuff "for a good cause", and fun to shock your parents by waving your painted boobs on TV. The fact that it is ultimately counterproductive will quite literally never ocurr to them.
And that is why they will fail.
Via Countercolumn.
That's the problem. I am all for protesting and getting your voice heard by "the masses"®. But I am also not a fan of destructive protests. Breaking, hurting, throwing, etc.. in the name of _____. Civil disobedience, non-peaceful protests are nothing but fodder for the people they are protesting against.
Posted by: Joshua on August 30, 2004 11:15 AMBut nothing can be done to prevent it, Josh. Just like Yasser Arafat has no hope of reining in the terrorists he's carefully brainwashed into becoming human bombs for the last 30 years, the left has no hope of keeping their protests from becoming destructive, now that they have spent the last 30 years patiently eliminating reason and logic from all their arguments and replacing them with emotion and idealism.
Actually, the main problem of the radical protest movements, going all the way back to at least to the 1850s, is that they *always* replace logic and reason with emotion and idealism. Sometimes they're right anyway (slavery, Vietnam), but their tactics *always* alienate and hinder their cause.
Posted by: Scott on August 30, 2004 02:31 PMOne of the other reasons I think that people will protest and go a bit apeshit is that the IQ of any group seems to drop in proportion to the number of people present. That's probably due to the following chain of events:
1 - the protestors start out nice and peaceful
2 - some dumbasses are along for the ride, just because they like to break stuff and fight against the man
3 - the regular folks start to feel ignored if they just stand there and chant, so they slowly get more riled up
4 - the aforementioned dumbasses start to do what they want, get attention, and cheers.
5 - this encourages the marginal dumbasses to start participating
6 - the 'man' then comes down on them and everyone in the general area, which now aggravates the crowd
7 - all hell breaks loose.