Why aren't we in the streets?

[hudebnik]

There are apparently people in Europe wondering why Americans aren't filling the streets with protests already; they would be doing that if their governments were taking a tenth of the outrageous actions ours is taking.

There are several answers. First, we did that, the day after he was inaugurated the first time. It produced a wonderful feeling of community, but had no effect whatsoever on DJT or his behavior. He loves opposition: the more opposition he faces, the greater the triumph when he crushes it.

Which leads to the second reason. We've got four (or more!) years of this ahead of us. He's going to do outrageous, sadistic, illegal things every single day for the next four years, as he did the first time; no one person can afford to spend every single day for four years protesting in the streets, and if the protests in the streets are distributed across all the outrageous, sadistic, illegal things he does, each one will look pitifully small, as though most people were fine with it.

We'll oppose and expose his outrageous, sadistic, illegal actions, but no one person can even keep track of all of them, much less take to the streets in protest of every one of them.

Comments

[cellio]

Yeah. The opposition will have to be less visible, because of the spread and the fatigue and also to deny him the visible outraged enemies. "Underground" opposition is harder to rally and won't be seen until years after the fact, but what else can we do? Each of us has to choose our own most important battles from the vast menu of choices and do what we can. It feels inadequate but also inevitable.

[metahacker]

I also imagine the brutal responses to, say, the BLM marches bear on some minds.

[hudebnik]

True: Trump has made no secret of his desire to use US military for domestic peacekeeping, with or without the permission of the city or state where the protests are happening. US military are not, for the most part, trained in law enforcement, de-escalation, distinguishing guilty from innocent individuals, etc.; they're trained to face an enemy and kill as many of them as possible.

Not that US police forces do spectacularly well at that stuff either, but at least it's part of their job description.