Oh, Protesting, you said…?

 

I have wanted to write about this for a while but why go through it if someone already did? Check out @BlackKnight10k. He basically went to the core of the subject: how to protest. Full disclosure: I am the product of public education. I started in a private university but only lasted one semester. It was stifling, enclosing, boring. Also, too expensive. I dropped out and registered in a public university. Best decision I took (my dad was not in agreement, but by that time I really did not care about anything he had to say). Like he feared I got right in with the wrong crowd. I was immediately drawn to the art, music and poli-sci majors. Trouble started early.

I also took part in many a protest when I was a wee gayling, drunk with knowledge and self-righteousness. We all think we are correct 98% of the time when we are twenty. Oh, that rush. I understand the students who are now protesting the genocide in Palestine. I feel their passion. If the protests would happen in my campus, I would go out with them and get between them and the police. Probably risk arrest, even though that would be really bad for me. I cringe at the shenanigans and the manipulation that some of them suffer, though. Because both things are possible at the same time: you can be right in demonstrating against injustice and blinded by the injustice that's been committed. 

Protestors are also being used by other agents. It comes with the territory. It happened with BLM. It happened when Wall Street was raked through the coals, it happened with the whole ANTIFA movement. There's always de-stabilizing forces at play when passions run deep. And that's something that people do not seem to have learned.

Oh yes. I’m all for protesting. But there's protesting and there's protesting. Chanting 'Genocide Joe' is lame performative political drama that really does not solve anything or advances the narrative or the discussion. If anything, it cheapens the fight.

It also helps the 'other side'. The side that does not care about the plead of the Palestinians. The side that only wants chaos because it's the best to de-stabilize the system. And it also distracts of many other political goals that should not be discarded at this point: the November elections.

This is the perfect opportunity for those nefarious agents to inject themselves in the narrative and create a space that allows for them to spread misinformation and anger. People in the U.S. are not very politically savvy, sadly. For most Americans, politics and Prom Night are very much the same thing. Sadly.

… and lastly, @MuellerSheWrote nails it :

Who knew that social media still worked? That poster on Twitter is correct: Nuance has never been the American way. 

Sad.

XOXO

P.S. keep the eye on the prize: don't forget to vote Democrat.