Tag Archives: Movements

Keep on Bloviating Against Protests!

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We have long had a recurring pattern. Every single time we have protest actions, the bloviators mobilize to train their word processors on the protests. They hyperventilate and opine in the form of their considered and blistering critiques. Most start by lamenting that in <their day> they used to protest, so it’s not that they don’t support <proper> protesting, but while <their> protests were righteously motivated and properly executed, this current one crosses unacceptable lines.

Whatever the current protest might be, and however it may unfold, the bloviators always criticize it for crossing lines of proper protest decorum. Critics express concerns about malevolent actors in the movement. They denounce the protest for causing inconvenience to others. They raise issues over fairness to counter-protestors, about damage whether intentional or incidental, about the exact tone and wording of the rhetoric expressed. They share their sage, less inflamed, assessment that the demands of the protestors won’t have a worthwhile impact on the issue. They council that the protestors really ought to be doing something more worthwhile than protesting if they really want to see actual change.

But here’s the thing. As much as I just bloviated against the bloviators, we need them. They need to keep doing exactly what they always do – armchair bloviate. They are an essential part of an effective and sustainable protest mechanism for making progress on important social issues.

The bloviators serve the protests by reacting. That is precisely the goal of protests; to garner attention and get some reaction, any reaction. They often don’t expect their demands to be met immediately, and they certainly do not expect to solve the larger problems they are protesting about. They are just looking for some attention, some recognition of their issue in the hopes of starting a larger dialog, raising awareness, and forcing some due consideration an honest effort to address it.

When no one will listen, eventually you have to shout to get any attention. In attacking the methods and behavior of the protests and protestors, the bloviators help spread awareness of the important issues driving them. Even bad attention is some attention. Negative blowback ultimately becomes preferable, and in fact more logical and productive, than total apathy, lip service, and inaction.

And there is another way that the bloviators are essential to sustaining an effective tradition of protesting for social change. They fight to constrain the boundaries of what gets attention. By doing so, they make it easier for the next protest movement to garner some attention without going too far. Without them, if the boundaries did not get reset, every subsequent protest action would have to become more extreme than the last.

Imagine we did not have the bloviators. Without them lamenting how this new protest is somehow going too far, the threshold of disruption required to garner some attention would keep increasing. So in a way, they reset the disruption threshold so that we can react with concern and hand-wringing to the next protest, without those protesters having to go farther than the last to get any attention at all. If not for the bloviators constraining those thresholds, important and essential protests would be progressively forced become to extreme to continue to be allowed in our culture.

So bloviators, you keep wringing your hands and lamenting and armchair critiquing every protest. You play an essential part in our delicate balance of protest actions. Without you raising attention to them and resetting boundaries for the next one, we could not continue to live in a country in which essential protesting is both allowed and effective.

Make Nice or Make War

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When it comes to advocating for social change, some people prefer to Make Nice while others prefer to Make War. The Make Nice people tend to look for common ground upon which compromise can be found to achieve incremental changes. The Make War people are willing to take a confrontational stance in order to achieve more profound change more quickly.

Although these two camps of advocates are on the same side of their mutual issues, they incessantly squabble over tactics. They undermine each others efforts, effectively becoming adversaries when they should be allies. Their infighting sometimes causes more harm to their shared cause than their actual adversaries do.

The Make Nice folks accuse their Make War allies of being radical and unrealistic. They argue that a confrontational approach undermines their more serious and responsible efforts to reach compromise and achieve incremental change.

The Make War folks lament that their Make Nice allies are too timid and conciliatory. They argue that settling for minor concessions that do not achieve a minimal threshold does more damage than holding out for real meaningful change.

Much of this infighting is really over bargaining tactics. Both camps would love to get as much as they can. But the Make Nice folks insist that you catch more flies with honey and that you should ask for a fair and reasonable price and trust the other side to be reasonable. They fear that if they ask for too much the other party will just walk away and you’ll end up with nothing.

The Make War folks start with the assumption that the other side does not wish to be reasonable and will only give up what they are forced to give up. They feel that rather than asking nicely for $10 and getting only $2, a good haggler demands $100 and reluctantly settles for $20. They fear that if your demands are too modest you’ll end up settling for far too little.

We see these dynamics play out in almost every arena. We watched this conflict rage during the racial struggles of the 60’s. We see it today in the Presidential race with the Make War Bernie camp pushing for “aspirational” change while the Make Nice Hillary camp advocates for “incremental” change. We see this in the fight for gun control with Make War crowd fighting for sweeping gun restrictions while the Make Nice camp advocates for  “sensible” regulations. We see this in the secular movement with Make Nice secularists calling for “respect and cooperation” with religious groups while Make War atheists condemn religion more strongly.

In any particular situation, one or the other approach may be a better strategy but its hard to know which even in hindsight. What is certain in my mind at least is that the best results are achieved when these two camps work together rather than at cross-purposes.

In almost every movement, the Make Nice camps tend to dismiss and discredit their own Make War camps. This is unfortunate because it would be much smarter to use the Make War folks as bad cops in their persuasive effort in order to achieve far greater incremental change than would be possible without the pressure of their more radical fringe. Rather than delegitimize their Make War militants, the Make Nice camp should support them and use them. Yes, they should argue, that used car is really worth $10,000 but if you work with me I’ll convince my stubborn branch manager to let it go for $1,500.

GoodCopBadCopMake Nice incremental advocates, don’t discredit your Make War brethren and thereby waste the leverage they afford you. Appreciate that they are an asset not a liability and use them to your advantage. Radicals, appreciate that your role is bad cop and pursue it with relish but also appreciate that it ultimately takes Make Nice folks to close the deal. When a better compromise is achieved then either camp could have negotiated alone, realize that it was only possible because both camps were strong and worked with each other rather than against each other.