This is really good. Thank you for taking the time to write it.

This adminstration doesn’t give a flying fuck.

But they’ve all been quietly moving into military housing on bases just the same, something officials from past administrations rarely did, if ever.

Last fall it was Miller, Noem, and Rubio; earlier this month it was Pam Bondi, and that NYT article mentions that Hegseth and other highly-placed administration officials also have or are now moving house onto military bases.

It’s interesting what giving a fuck can look like, once you let go of the idea it means a positive fuck. In fact, it almost looks like they’re all hunkering down for an extended hate fuck from The American People.

Outside of that I would argue that a protest planned for a specific time on a specific date with a specific end point is little more than cathartic. There’s personal value in catharsis but not societal value; it feels good but doesn’t create change.

But it does avoid all manner of exclusionary purity tests by making them almost impossible – something that is usually fatal for the left – while robbing the opposition of an easily attackable goal. Imagine if No Kings were riven with all the infighting and clashing of sub-goals other protests have been. That’s why I think it’s genius: it’s an unashamedly large tent, so much so that no one group or ideology retains a right to define, and therefore enforce, any given direction.

But that’s just me, and I think we look at this differently, but I appreciate you taking the time to explain what you meant. I will think about what you said, because you’re coming with nuance I had not considered and it’s a complex issue. Thank you for the reasoned response.

But you do. You care enough to reply at length, sending what I am absolutely sure is your very best. “Loser” lol. It’s all you have. :D

Kisses.

When you got nothing, there’s always the old ad hominem. Thanks for proving me right.

If you don’t want people to point out your bullshit, stop posting it.

So fuck what you think. Way to go Sherlock.

That’s a hell of a long reply for “fuck what you think”, Sherlock. I stand by what I said. No one who organizes protests spends as much time throwing words of discouragement at them as you do.

I simply don’t believe you.

And if you had not posted so many, I would not have found myself replying to three of them. In other words, it’s not because you’re special; it’s because your bullshit is prolific.

If you don’t want people to point out your bullshit, stop posting it.

If Crown Prince Couchfucker had a fart’s chance in hell they’d have already put the the orange shitstain down for his longest nap. He’s only still there because the hate-filled incompetents surrounding him are terrified of when he’s not.

As an aside, one lesson I learned from growing up with and around hard-core racists: there’s always more where that came from. The hatred is not just limited to people of color; that’s only the superficial form. When you dig a little deeper you realize they just hate, hating is what they do, and the racism is only a matter of direction. That’s always just the lily-white tip of the racist iceberg, which is made of loathing through and through. There’s always more where that came from.

And his inner circle are ALL absolutely hard-core racists. They would dirt-nap him in a heartbeat if it served them to do so.

Exactly. They’re just frustrated because it’s too loose for them to make a good target out of.

No. It is a deliberate choice; the article itself is about why. The sub-headline of the above article, emphasis mine:

Anti-authoritarian rallies standing up to Trump have broad objectives and no leaders. Organizers say that is by design

What you are looking at is the dead center of propagandist’s difficulty to categorize and discredit/smear/twist a tightly defined goal, while issuing a broad enough invitation to all: No Kings.

That’s specific enough for me, and it was specific enough for millions more the last time, and I expect it to be specific enough for even millions more than that tomorrow. Personally, I think it’s genius and I would not have it any other way.

But if the anti-authoritarian thought “No Kings” is not enough for you in itself, or you believe that is somehow non-specific in the face of encroaching authoritarianism and a rapidly coalescing fascist government, maybe you should rethink your own strategy.

And Occupy Wall Street did not fail, seeing as how we’re still talking about Occupy fifteen years later not in terms of failure, but of its current relevance. Maybe you didn’t want people to realize you were talking about Occupy?

when the people with the power to make changes are shameless.

There are 330 million of us and a handful of them.

WE are the people with the power to make changes.

Exactly. The professional shitters are here again, lol.

this is coming from an early organizer of 50501 and Indivisible in my city.

Going by your comment history on your month-old account, that is VERY doubtful.

I’ve lived a long time, but I’ve NEVER seen any activist, much less a protest organizer, work as hard as you to throw mud on any idea of protesting, or be so quick to express that thought that it will never do any good.

Activists and protest organizers KNOW the very real power and benefits of organizing and protesting, that’s why they work so hard to make them happen. Your comments read like those of someone who’s never even been to one.

Go to the protests: you’ll see them all.

There’s room for everyone.

“When the going gets tough, Republicans get going . . . to anywhere else.”

Doesn’t matter when you’re there for your community. And once you’ve been, it changes you, even if nothing else seems to come of it.

Once you’ve been to a protest, you are never quite the same: there is a power to seeing people all around you raising their signs and voices to express the same things you believe yourself, and talking with your neighbors, and recognizing you all have far more in common than anyone ever let you believe before.

It’s real, it’s tangible, and it’s why the First Amendment is literally the first: it was so important that it was first on the list of things that the states said, “Without these amendments, we will not ratify the Constitution.” Freedom of speech combined with the right to assemble is so powerful that it is terrifying to people trying to hold onto illegitimate rule, enough to make them send armies into cities and bad actors into online discussions trying to shut them down any way they can.

Once you’ve been to a protest, propaganda, no matter how carefully crafted, will never have quite the same hold on you that it still does on those who have never met their community marching to express the same beliefs: the personal experience proves the lie.

And then when there’s opportunity to do more, you’ve already met the very people making it happen in your own town: win/win all around.

Oh, and you’re wrong, because the administration listens just fine: it makes them crazy. After the last No Kings, the orange chancre was throwing out AI videos shitting on the people of this country and then tore down the East Wing without notice. On Friday, January 30, when people were skipping work and shopping and coming out all over the country spontaneously, without any prior planning like No Kings, just to express the outrage over the ICE murders in Minneapolis, the administration released another huge tranche of Epstein files just to try to get the headlines back.

So yeah, they hear. But honestly, fuck the administration. If it makes you feel better you can whine and cry because they’re not handing you a personally addressed gilded apology letter for all their misdeeds, but I’ll be out there with my community. We’re not waiting on them for anything.

Time is never “up” to protest and effect change even with non-violent means: that is a false limitation based on an arbitrary, non-existent standard set by an internet rando with another agenda of his own, that is itself based on either ignorance (unlikely) or the desire to see real movements delegitimized and written off as groups of “disgruntled hooligans” even as it gives the government full legal authority to come in with armed occupation to “quell the uprising.”

The National Guard got kicked out of both Portland and LA last year BECAUSE those cities could prove that their protests were non-violent. That is literally written into the judges’ orders forbidding NG presence in both states.

If you want to see violence in the street at this point in time, you’re not on the side of the protests. That only serves the overlords.

And here you are with your month old account littering threads with the same old pro-violence chaff we saw in December and January.

This is an excellent comment. Well worth the read. Thank you for taking the time to write it.

Casinos are almost money-printing businesses, people literally come there to throw large sums of cash at the games knowing that the house always has the odds but do it anyway, and this sorry motherfucker actually bankrupted one.

That always blew my mind. I mean, how do you bankrupt a fucking casino?

Well, now he’s showing us. A billion dollars a day without any kind of plan, explicit goal, or exit strategy. Art of the deal, indeed.