Extreme Protest and Donald Trump

[workerbee]

In a world now marked by "extreme vetting", do traditional forms of protest still have any value?  Are Donald Trump and his sycophants even likely to notice?

Should we therefore expect, and perhaps encourage, more militant resistance -- extreme protest -- and what forms might that take?

[Sid]

That went off topic quickly. Rants moved to the void.

The topic isn't Trump-in-general it is about the nature and future of political protests. /admin

I see two ways traditional protests still have value:
1. Although Trump doesn't give a fuck what the general public thinks he is clearly and regularly rattled by the comments of Hollywood celebrities (who do care what the public thinks). As long as the public keeps voicing their opinion the celebs will keep parroting it and Trump will keep hearing it. Whether that will have any effect I don't know, but I do know that not protesting will certainly not have any effect.
2. They are a counter to the apathy and ennui and that led to the nominations of two such clearly unsuitable candidates for the elections in the first place. It's a good thing for democracy-in-the-long-run when people off their backsides and out into the streets.

As for "militant resistance", I wouldn't like to predict that but I would be surprised if there were not more demonstrations, sit-ins, etc.; more police violence against demonstrators; and more violence against police over the next four years than the last.

[Philidor]

I would suggest it isn't extreme, it isn't focused, it lacks numbers, and the people at the top putting out the content and urging the troops on are the neoliberal New Dems, who in many instances espouse the same policies as Trump. At least, such is my take on it.

It isn't extreme, because no one's giving their lives to form human barricades in front of tanks, or setting themselves on fire. That's extreme. What happening is that small groups of people are yelling slogans, spending a night in jail, and getting out and going home. And patting themselves on the back for their courage.

It isn't focused. Instead of going after actual instances of voter registration fraud that have been confirmed, Dem foot soldiers are being urged to scream about Putin and Trump engineering the latter's election--say-so offered up by the CIA (the same wonderful people who claimed Iraq had WMD), which is crackpot nonsense. And that's typical: instead of being aimed at vulnerable targets, said foot soldiers are being aimed at ones where they can't affect change, building up their sense of frustration. I personally believe this deliberate--an attempt to create a rightwing Dem Tea Party equivalent to the rightwing GOP Tea Party, running only on anger that appears at the ballot box.

Great protest marches bring out tens of thousands of people. Think: Martin Luther King. I think that the apathy the two main political have spent generations drilling into their ground troops has led to turnouts that are a joke. And really, the New Dems don't want extreme protest. They don't want to break the federal government, or make people realize they could actually do that. They just want to make people steaming angry for four more years.

Are extreme protests possible in the US? I doubt it. King and his tens of thousands of marching followers protested lynchings and segregation at every level of American life. Protesting Trump choosing a really terrible cabinet secretary by screaming on FB in capital letters is if nothing else symptomatic of how far the nation has regressed into make-believe. For truly extreme protests on a massive scale to take place---well, just my opinion, mind, but I think most of our lower and middle class would have to wake up one day to realize just how badly they'd been suckered out of their dreams for at least half a century, bit by bit, and take unanimous action under third party political leadership with a focused intent to govern. Ain't gonna happen.

[Aaron.Walkhouse]

Just wait. ‌ Trump is obviously headed towards more radical policies and actions,
prodded on by his "alt-right" [racist] and "religious right" [antichristian] friends.
As the results hurt more and more people the inevitable results will grow at the
same pace. ‌ Even now, the escalations are starting to feed off each other.

For example, at the demonstration which successfully fought off another of
Milo Yiannopoulos' speaking engagements, one of his followers went there clearly
intending to provoke violence and he worked hard until he got what he wanted:

---

Amid the Chaos in Berkeley, a Grinning Face, Covered in Blood
…
While images of Brock’s bloody face, and clips of other
Yiannopoulos fans being assaulted with flag poles, bike locks and
pepper spray, did ensure that the radical minority of aggressive
protesters dominated the news coverage, accounts of his own
behavior prior to the attack suggest that Brock might have come
to campus looking for trouble.

That seems clear from two video clips of Brock taunting peaceful
student protesters early in the evening, recorded by a reporter for
the Berkeley student newspaper, Malini Ramaiyer.
…

---

As provocation is the whole point behind Yiannopoulos going there,
I'm sure he wasn't disappointed in the result.

Fantastic [and false] stories of voter fraud and a fictional plot by the
Democrats to "wage war for Amerika" don't help the republicans at all;
as it simply proves that some of them have left reality behind and are
fighting demons of their own imaginations or, at best, trying to fool the
gullible into taking all the risk and get arrested or hurt for their causes.

Great protests are happening right now: some of the greatest in a generation.
Partisan media outlets who claim this is not so are obviously not trustworthy.

[Sid]

What about "mock ins"?

He's clearly miffed that the judiciary just pissed all over him, and I don't expect it will be the last time.

Will he stick around for four years once he realises that he doesn't have the totally unfettered power he thinks he does?

What if protestors, instead of violently clashing with police, all started Baldwinning him? It wouldn't just be one guy on one TV show only seen in America, it would be thousands of people on primetime news all around the world.

He/the police can legitimately use force against force but what can they do against lampoonists?

He has big ego and a thin skin. I could see him storming out of the white house with a petulant "you obviously don't want a great country so fuck you"

[Philidor]

There is no precedent for a US President giving up the office unless caught in criminal wrongdoing, much less for being shamed into doing so. (We aren't a culture that includes shame in its ethos. Guilt, yes. Shame, no. Maybe we should move to Japan. I can't abide some aspects of the mainstream culture, but they do have politicians and highly placed corporate officials who have resigned out of shame.) Do you think there is a high-level politician out there--by definition, a person who loves power over others, is completely ruthless, and only appears to care what anybody without money says--who would slink from the Oval Office because of laughter? I think you're joking, here. Hell, if the entire media of the world were to do nothing but turn out 24/7 lampoons of Trump, he'd cling to power. Just as all his predecessors did (save one who would have been indited had he stayed on criminal charges), despite the truly terrible numbers some of them received in office, as well as the parodies and insider biographers that torn each one of them a new asshole. Or three.

And let's face it: most people out there don't understand what mockery is, much less how to write it. What they want to do, and read, is insults. No matter how nonsensical the claim, they'll buy anything said about Trump. (There's a good story about the low journalistic standards being adhered to on that right here.) And want to throw their outrage at him. They have neither the skill set nor interest in niceties, and that suits the New Dem leadership well, because any controlled humorous response would slam them for many of the same things they blame on Trump.

But let's assume a large portion of the US citizenry actually can create satire and appreciate it, and want to aim it all at Trump. I suspect his response to mockery will be what it almost always has been among the ruling elite: turning a blind eye to it, and enjoying the trappings of power and wealth instead. If you're going to be parodied in the media owned by companies in turn owned by backers of the opposition party, you can always drink solace in $100 brandy from a $1000 set of cut crystal snifters, and quietly ramp up surveillance of those who diss you using the powers your predecessor gave you right before leaving office through executive order.

I seem to recall quite a few thin-skinned people in high office--hell, Obama's mentor, Rahm Emanuel, famously yelled at those liberals who dared complain about Obama reversing the platform he espoused as soon as he got into office to "just shut the fuck up." And he's screamed at union heads who refused to support him in his Chicago mayoral races, threatened to go after those who mocked him, etc. Yet he's still in office. I could be wrong, but I don't think having a short fuse means you run from the thing you've always coveted. It instead means exercising new, more exotic tools for getting even.

Incidentally, if any (or all) of this seems cynical, please bear in mind we're discussing politicians and CEOs. There truly are at least a few enlightened, intelligent, humane people in their world, but I have to think realistically that if you're ambitious enough to fight your way to the top of the mountain-sized dung heap that is your party's elected federal officials or corporate ladder in this country, you're going to lose your sense of smell along the way. Translation: the drive to succeed beats out ethics every time, and you sell whatever you count your soul to be over and over and over. Just my point of view, of course.

[joew771]

I thought this thread was supposed to be about political protests in general. I fact that's what Sid said in the second post. In red letters even! Red letters! But of course it turned into a Trump thread. Since Sid contradicted himself in the very same post.

As far as protests go, we in this country have the right to peaceful protest, as long as we get the correct permits that is. LOL. And those I'm sure will be peaceful for the most part, because those people follow the laws for protesting.

There won't be many unlawful protests unless something extraordinary happens. But we will have to see. It's only been a few weeks since Trump has become president. But that's not what this thread is about, I forgot.

[contrail]

In a world now marked by "extreme vetting", do traditional forms of protest still have any value?  Are Donald Trump and his sycophants even likely to notice?

Should we therefore expect, and perhaps encourage, more militant resistance -- extreme protest -- and what forms might that take?

I think traditional forms of protest still have value as it makes it easier and safer for the managment and protesters. Sadly, Donald Trump and his cronies will only realize or pay attention when people die and his name is dragged in via social media.