Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:<\/p>\n
Discussed Mall of America protest with a co-worker. What\u2019s the point. To raise awareness. Of what? That police are killing Black people. Why do I care? You don\u2019t care? Not really, I\u2019m a law-abiding White citizen so I\u2019m in no danger; besides, how does disrupting my Christmas shopping make me care about your pet peeve? It\u2019s not a pet peeve, it\u2019s an important civil rights issue that every American should care about. Oh, so now it\u2019s not raising awareness, now it\u2019s preaching: I can\u2019t simply be aware of your issue, you intend to force me to agree by holding my grandkids\u2019 Christmas presents hostage. That\u2019s not persuasion, that\u2019s coercion, and I resent it.<\/p>\n
Taking people like my co-worker at their word that the protesters are acting in good faith, it occurs to me the MoM protestors are using the Underpants Gnomes Theory of Effecting Social Change.<\/p>\n
1. Enrage people who are trying to finish their Christmas shopping by protesting at the Mall
\n2. ?
\n3. Enraged Christmas Shoppers help protestors achieve the Social Change the protestors desire.<\/p>\nThe protestors haven\u2019t quite figured out Step 2 yet, but they\u2019re certain Step 3 will result. So they blithely launch into Step 1 assuming it\u2019ll all work out in the end. It won\u2019t: enraged Christmas shoppers will actively hate the protesters and all they stand for, will call the cops to have them arrested, and will scoff at hand-wringing newspaper editorials in the Strib and when jail time is imposed, will nod and say \u201cDamned right.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kind of like the Westboro Baptist Church chanting \u201cGod Hates Fags\u201d at military funerals, to protest the legality of homosexuality in America. Step 1 has been achieved, we all know there\u2019s a controversy. And we all know what you want as Step 3 \u2013 outlaw buggery. But you haven\u2019t worked out the details of Step 2 so you haven\u2019t convinced the rest of us to act in your favor. Instead, we form parties of flag-waving motorcycle riders to drown you out. And people who might otherwise have been inclined to discuss the subject reasonably, look at the motorcyclists and say \u201cDamned right.\u201d<\/p>\n
Of course, if the protesters are not acting in good faith; if the protesters are professional agitators or paid union hacks or general thugs, the above analysis does not apply.<\/p>\n
Joe Doakes <\/p><\/blockquote>\n
We live in a place who’s dominant political cultural values “sending messages” over “convincing people”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: Discussed Mall of America protest with a co-worker. What\u2019s the point. To raise awareness. Of what? That police are killing Black people. Why do I care? You don\u2019t care? Not really, I\u2019m a law-abiding White citizen so I\u2019m in no danger; besides, how does disrupting my Christmas shopping make […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,308],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-war","category-entitled-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50069"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50069\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50070,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50069\/revisions\/50070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}