This was exactly the same way I felt walking by the protest in front of the courthouse today. I’m thinking to myself: “what does this performative bullshit really get us?” but also thinking “at least people are saying SOMETHING”, and here I am just being an onlooker. But the cynical part of me is looking back at past “big” movements and how for all the noise, they ultimately did fuck all. The other thing I noticed is that the messaging is all over the place “hands of Social Security”, Ukraine flags? “make america decent again”, “F-Elon”, for a casual onlooker you’d not really nail down a coherent narrative from just looking at the random assortment of signs, there’s no clear messaging, just vagaries.
I was in a nearby store and one woman actually asked the cashier what the protest was about, “Trump”, he said,“you know, about the constitution and stuff,” I held my tongue because I am sure she was a MAGA type and could tell she was waiting to offload on the cashier, but he was just this young guy and not terribly confrontational. It just pains me, because the anger, resentment and disillusion is there, but there is no focus to harness that because (as others in this thread have pointed out) the milquetoast liberal, whishy-washy idea of how to respond to these types of crises.
The poster who talks about the vanguard party and recruiting people is spot on, and I’m ashamed to say that my own efforts on that front have been dismal too due to apathy. It’s easy to get discouraged when the task at hand is so damn big, and seemingly unfathomably immense to undertake (especially with the current state of the left in the US).
This was exactly the same way I felt walking by the protest in front of the courthouse today. I’m thinking to myself: “what does this performative bullshit really get us?” but also thinking “at least people are saying SOMETHING”, and here I am just being an onlooker. But the cynical part of me is looking back at past “big” movements and how for all the noise, they ultimately did fuck all. The other thing I noticed is that the messaging is all over the place “hands of Social Security”, Ukraine flags? “make america decent again”, “F-Elon”, for a casual onlooker you’d not really nail down a coherent narrative from just looking at the random assortment of signs, there’s no clear messaging, just vagaries.
I was in a nearby store and one woman actually asked the cashier what the protest was about, “Trump”, he said,“you know, about the constitution and stuff,” I held my tongue because I am sure she was a MAGA type and could tell she was waiting to offload on the cashier, but he was just this young guy and not terribly confrontational. It just pains me, because the anger, resentment and disillusion is there, but there is no focus to harness that because (as others in this thread have pointed out) the milquetoast liberal, whishy-washy idea of how to respond to these types of crises.
The poster who talks about the vanguard party and recruiting people is spot on, and I’m ashamed to say that my own efforts on that front have been dismal too due to apathy. It’s easy to get discouraged when the task at hand is so damn big, and seemingly unfathomably immense to undertake (especially with the current state of the left in the US).