I am concerned with the public’s temper rather than the policy trimmings of the elites. And the public never takes yes for an answer. Does anyone suppose that OWS protesters were satisfied with regulations ordained from the top of the political establishment? Or that Black Lives Matter militants have been mollified by police reforms, any more than Tea Partiers were by the sequester?
Protests triumph or peter out – but the public is never satisfied. I can’t think of a single instance of an insurgency disbanding because of policy concessions.
The post is nominally a response to Noah Smith’s critique, but it is a wide-ranging discourse on human nature and our current condition.
I would claim that the anti-war movement of my youth was able to take yes for an answer. That is, when the Vietnam War ended, the protest movement ended as well.
In fact, a standard view of the 1960’s and 1970’s is that over time the radicals and protesters became “co-opted” and joined the elites. Some people expect history to repeat itself. Gurri himself writes,
The generation of elites that was young when industrial giants roamed the earth is now failing, literally and physically. Its enjoyment of the large corner offices within the pyramid will soon go the way of all flesh. Many expressions of extreme political despair coming from the elites can be ascribed to a panic of mortality. Young people are displacing old. The latter have had their day. Of the young, an analyst should say as little as possible, other than to wish them the best of luck.
We have seen on the left a meme of “pass the baton” to the younger generation. Perhaps that is sometimes the right thing to do. But when I hear the strains of “Tomorrow belongs to me” coming from today’s smug anti-capitalist social justice activists, I believe that one must put up some resistance.
Protest isn’t mainly about change, it’s a social activity. So in some respects it’s all the better for the protesters if nothing changes: they can keep their social schedules filled.
I, too, grew up in the Vietnam era, was drafted, and was confronted with the decision to align with my rebellious peers or to accept my conscription. While a reluctant warrior in what I perceived as the ill-defined and ill-executed nature of the military action in Southeast Asia, one that had dragged on for lack of a clear and focused objective, I was not aligned politically or spiritually with the war protesters of the day, most of whom came across to me as shallow and conformist, propelled more by youthful romanticism than independent and serious thought. The loyalties of those whom I considered serious ranged from devout pacifism to outright support for the Communist North Vietnamese. There was another element I found troubling and put me at odds with the protesters: The worst exhibited a passion to use the war to recast America, a nation they could not abide and one which I revere. There are things for which I am grateful and for which I am willing to fight and I was prepared to accept my country’s call. I was not unusual in this regard. In fact, two thirds of those who served—and 73 percent of those who died—were actually volunteers.
I would claim that the anti-war movement of my youth was able to take yes for an answer. That is, when the Vietnam War ended, the protest movement ended as well.
A more cynical person would say, “when the draft ended, the protest movement ended as well.” It certainly got a lot less demonstrative.
I think that’s right. Another example, a little different, is that a later anti-war movement dissipated after Barack Obama was elected.
Most so-called protest movements these days aren’t really spontaneous or bottom-up (“grassroots”); they’re media shows, managed by groups like the Ruckus Society to gain sympathy from people whose attention span is one sound bite. This is why sensible people have permanently stopped listening to the Hollywood media.
The Occupy Wall Street crowd wasn’t very smart. They said they were going to occupy Wall Street but they ended up occupying a park instead. Some people with masks showed up, some people beat drums, other people brought refreshments. A fun time was had by all.
Maybe that was the idea? Everyone got to be really indignant, be a part of something, and win moral currency (among some quarters at least) by seeming like they were doing something altruistic, but at little cost. That’s the main point of constructing one’s political ideology and acting on it: to seem as altruistic as possible and purchase as much moral currency as possible but at minimal cost, sometimes zero cost, when you just end up having a picnic in the park.
Gurri talks about “the public’s action-hero aspirations” and no doubt Macron sees himself in those terms.
This is Macron: “I own the choices that are made, I hate the habit of explaining the rationale of a decision. There’s a time for deliberation and a time for decision. They cannot mix.”
Macron says that he alone can save Europe. Macron says he makes no apology for the verticality of power. Macron says he’s like the Roman god Jupiter.
But the French election was a run-off, narrowed down from a crowd. A communist, a fascist, a socialist, a Gaullist, and him.
It’s not the public’s fault that they ended up with someone so arrogant and Olympian.