Idiot Protesters

At a golf tournament in Connecticut last Sunday two of the world’s top pros line up their putts on the 18th green with the tournament in the balance. Golf fans lean toward their TV sets. Then climate protesters charge the green, disrupting the moment. Millions of golf fans shout, “Honey, come in here! Brave climate protesters have just made me come to realize how trivial a mere golf contest is when the planet is on fire! Oh thank you, Extinction Rebellion, for opening my eyes!”

Two days earlier at Stonehenge, on the Summer Solstice, what is a sacred day for those who are into this kind of thing, visitors at sunrise find their moment disrupted by climate protesters defacing the formation with orange paint. They scream, “Oh, thank you, Just Stop Oil, for destroying this experience for me so that I can be reminded of the climate change problem that I’ve been well aware of and deeply concerned about for over a decade!”

Six months earlier at the Louvre art lovers are taking in the Mona Lisa when protesters step forward to throw soup at the painting. They then stand in front of da Vinci’s masterpiece, saying: “What is more important? Art or the right to healthy and sustainable food?” Museum goers rush to get on their cell phones to call their friends. “The most incredible thing just happened! I was contemplating the Mona Lisa when protesters threw soup at it and then spouted a non sequitur. Oh, thank you, Food Counter Attack, for drawing the connection between tomato soup and art, which until now I thought was confined to Andy Warhol!”

I could go on. After George Floyd is killed protesters around the country demand that we “defund the police,” eliciting a response among average Americans along the lines of “huh?”, and here in Madison they destroy and deface a statue of… an abolitionist who gave his life to end slavery.

And this spring campus protesters shouted slogans praising Hamas for its brutal terrorist attacks and calling for wiping Israel off the map. Plenty of Americans are appalled at what’s happening in Gaza, but they don’t see terrorists as heroes and about 80% of us support Israel.

Which leads one to ask: do protests work? As a rule I’d say no. Instead of persuading anybody, they turn people off and push them away. In my view, anti-war protesters lengthened the Vietnam War because, while the public turned against the war, they hated the protesters more. Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon didn’t want to be seen as caving to them. Martin Luther King’s peaceful civil rights protests did work to a large extent, but then after he was assassinated (and starting even before then) radicals started to take over, they turned the protests violent and militant, and the backlash elected Nixon and, later, Ronald Reagan.

The problem is that protests attract the true believers, the people who are blind to any nuance, people who see anyone who disagrees with them as wrong, stupid and evil. People who see the world in black and white. And then, when these people are together, they build off one another. Moral certitude is always a debilitating condition. It attacks the ability to reason.

In a June 20th piece, New York Times columnist Pamela Paul shared her views (in perfect agreement with my own) on protests:

“I’ve never been much of a tribalist or a joiner, and have no use for conformity of thought or dress. Unless it’s Halloween or a costume party, I don’t like playing dress-up. Nor do I want to be part of a group where people might think I accidentally left my pussy hat at home. When I see a bunch of white kids wearing kaffiyehs I can’t help wonder whatever happened to the whole anti-cultural appropriation thing. When someone drones on about “solidarity,” all I hear is, “Get in line.” When there’s no room for dissent from the dissent, there’s no room for me.”

Yeah, that about sums it up. The best thing protesters can do for their cause? Stay home and eat their soup.