Civil Disobedience
It seems appropriate that we would use this day, the 202nd birthday of Henry David Thoreau, to remark on the dramatic rise of protests in the United States. As reported here, the largest protests in American history are happening now, and that we should expect them to get bigger.
Thoreau believed that true patriots were not those who kept quiet and blindly followed their administration, but rather those who followed the dictates of their own consciences. Thoreau was driven by the fact that he couldn’t stand James Knox Polk, who, elected in 1845, declared war on Mexico, rattled his saber at Britain over the ownership of Oregon, and, most importantly, was a staunch supporter of slavery. Polk dismissed the abolitionists as “naive and sentimental,” and organized massive efforts to round up runaway slaves and return them to their owners, normally resulting in their torture, often to death.
In Thoreau’s iconic essay, “Civil Disobedience,” he wrote that a real American was not one who respectfully shut up, but one who thought for himself and stood up for what he deems just. “All machines have friction,” he wrote, “But when an injustice becomes too great, one should let his life be a counter-friction to stop the machine.” (emphasis mine) See video below.
It’s hard to imagine that Thoreau would be anything but thrilled to see that the U.S. now has protests the size of the one above (The March for Our Lives in 2018), which was actually fairly small in comparison to The Women’s March on January 21, 2017, which took place the day after the inauguration of President Donald Trump. It was the largest single-day protest in U.S. history, with approximately 4 million participants.
Craig,
The US population is a little over 332 million. Approximately 170,000,000 million females.
The 2019 national celebration of Women’s Day marches across the nation attracted crowds of approximately 1,4 million participants, marching for a wide disparity of reasons, and not all the crowd being participants. (best estimates put the participants at 30%). The rest being friends, family, curious onlookers, those attracted to the festival activities etc.
Of those marchers, probably less than 10% were hardcore activists. Most supported a variety of non partisan, apolitical causes concerning Women.
A better example is the 2017 Women’s Day march. These marches drew a nation wide participation of maybe 2-3 million, of whom at least 40% were actively protesting against the new President.
So what conclusion can be drawn from these statistics and events ?
A reasonable assumption would be that at least 1% of the population really disliked President Trump being elected! (Although not all of the participants are voters).
Another reasonable assumption is some activists really like organizing ‘protest’ events.
It’s also a reasonable assumption that since 2017 and the massively hysterical fear/media campaign against the President, the number of protesters has at least halved with support for the President actually increasing among working class, black and Hispanic females.
I realize these ‘reasonable’ conclusions are not the sort of information that brings comfort to the “Never Trumpers”, but it’s their own fault ! Since the President was elected the leftist media and “Never Trumpers’ have cried “Wolf” too many times.
The “millions” who claimed they would emigrate (including so many Hollywood liberals id Trump was elected, never actually left. The idea that trump was unstable and would start numerous Wars, (including Nuclear) hasn’t occurred, in fact to the contrary, Trump’s foreign policy is surprisingly effective without actually involving any significant deployment of US military troops.
Trump would ruin the economy in first year ! Again, his critics were proved wrong, the economy is booming with unemployment at an all-time low and modest wages growth in line with productivity increases.
He would never renegotiate NAFTA without disaster. He renegotiated NAFTA on favorable terms to the US. He would emasculate and ruin NATO. his policies on NATO were incredibly effective,today NATO is stronger and more self-reliant than anytime in history, but the US taxpayer is no longer footing the bills.
Oh, yeah, then for two-years there were all the scandals !
The President was going to be impeached and imprisoned over Stormy Daniels ! Despite all the hoo-haa, the result is Stormy Daniels is bankrupted from having to pay damages to Trump and her porn-Lawyer looks like going prison !
Of course for two-years the Democrats and leftist media were hysterical about “Russian collusion” and the Mueller Inquiry, which despite all the hysteria and wild hype died out with a whimper, and now appears the only ramifications will be for a coterie of corrupt FBI, Intelligence and Democrat party officials who are now the subject of investigation.
The US public have shaken their collective heads and become inured to the scandal and hysteria.
In 2020 the US voter won’t care about President trump’s odd personality or manners, the election will be fought on policies and what the US voter feels is about his well being and prosperity.
So far, only Trump seems to being talking to voters about them and their needs and aspirations, unless the Democrats can stop lying to the electorate and themselves about matters the average person doesn’t care about, they will lose very badly.
It will be very hard to counter the policy achievements of this President. He has another 18 moths to continue scoring “runs on the board”. As long as the economy remains strong, he will win. A victory over China and Iran is possible, and would prove him invulnerable.
Domestically, the Democrats lack of coherent policy on illegal migration is a gift to the President.
He also has the DoI I-G report to look forward to with every expectation of the appeal court striking down charges against General Flynn and charges being laid against former FBI, CIA and Democrat committee members including Hillary Clinton.
The Epstein situation doesn’t really touch the President, who was a peripheral social acquaintance, but for many senior Democrats including the Clinton’s it must be very embarrassing.
The fact that Bill and Hillary used Epstein’s private Jet more than 30 times and received more than $30 million form this weasel, will be embarrassing. (although, I personally think they had no knowledge of his sordid activities).
If the Democrats hope to win in 2020, they will have to drop the anti-trump rhetoric and prove to the voters their policies will improve the prosperity of ordinary Americans. The must prove the have real, not vague or symbolic , programs of how to solve real issues of concern with solutions that can withstand tough analysis and scrutiny.
In other words, the must learn to play in the President’s sandbox.