Protesting Past Each Other
So yesterday I wandered through a neighborhood that I only visit about once a week. A few weeks ago a few Trump supporters had set up shop street-side. Signs, a place you could pull over and register to vote, just generally expressing their support for the president in the upcoming election. By yesterday it had turned into a full fledged scene. Trump supporters on one side of the street, judging by signs, “BLM” supporters on the other side. Lots of noise, lots of hubbub, traffic slowed if not stopped. I just want to make a few observations on something like that.
Masks have become virtue signaling. This is true on both sides. The Trump supporters were without and the BLM supporters wore garish, obvious ones that all sent a political message of some sort. Sorry, but that is just stupid. Masks are about limiting the spread of a disease, they are not about your politics on either side of the street.
The lefties were the ones pushing the boundaries. The Trump supporters were obeying all traffic laws, no loudspeakers, just going about their business. The BLM supporters were screaming, had loud music playing and someone or the other would step into traffic and stop it every few minutes. Traffic would not have it and they got chased back to the curb really quickly. So which group was scoring more points with the passers by? I’ll return to this in a minute.
The media makes things worse. News helicopters hovered overhead sporadically. Every time they were there the scene escalated, and as soon as they left it deescalated. So, was this about make a point or putting on a show?
In the whole scene, a couple hundred people, there was only one African-American. One side of the street was very clearly talking about race, and yet the crowd was virtually of one color. That does not add up to this observer.
So this brings me to the two points I really want to make.
The two groups were clearly opposed to each other, and yet they were talking about entirely different things. I know there is a presumption among many that the president is a racist. But those supporting him at this scene never said a word about race. Not a word. There were signs about the economy and jobs, “MAGA” of course, words about China, but nothing about race. The other side of the street was all about race and bad cops.
There were two conversations going on, one of each side of the street, that had literally nothing to do with each other. One could have walked down the middle of the street and supported both sides if the sides would have allowed it. But they most assuredly would not permit that. To be honest, I don’t think the Trump supporters cared, if you engaged with them, they engaged with you. Otherwise they waved their signs and talked to each other. But the other side of the street deemed you enemy if your dared say anything positive about Trump or his supporters.
The whole scene was clearly talking politics, but was actually about anything but. People were not the least bit interested in making a point, making things change or changing people’s minds. They were about “expressing themselves.” That makes me very sad on many levels.
The self-absorption in the entire exercise is frightening. The fact that people are willing to disrupt already severely limited commerce for the sake of “expressing their feelings” indicates an unhealthy level of self-regard. That people lack other, healthier, emotional outlets is about coronavirus – and being stuck inside all day with media fanning the flames. And that is the last level of sadness – media is clearly clueless about their own roll in creating the mess we are in. That is self-regard clothed in self-ignorance. That is just stunningly awful.
Nothing was accomplished. That is a bit of overstatement because there was a lot of emotional release and catharsis going on, but politically speaking, which was the clothes this scene was wearing, nothing happened. Nobody changed their minds, and a lot of people got irritated that they could not go about their business. Which means that if anybody was losing in the scene, it was the lefties. By pushing the boundaries, as noted above, they were creating the highest levels of irritation.
But largely people were just trying to ignore the whole pile of garbage. I wish the media would.
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