![[mic drop]](http://guildedage.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/gach24pg23-copy.jpg "[mic drop]")
Annotated 24-23
So by 2017, I was out on the streets carrying the sort of signs I’d once gently mocked, and I did so for the next couple of years before deciding I was more temperamentally suited to get-out-the-vote efforts and election work (which might be just as risky in 2020, because I don’t think we’re going to be rid of the ‘rona by November). The experience left its mark.
I’m not ashamed of change or even of self-contradiction: you can’t write good conflicts if you don’t have ideas in your head that clash with each other. I can still see something absurd about it, and I can inhabit Annunziata’s headspace long enough to see the implied threat of a gathered, shouting throng, whether or not they’re carrying weapons (though it’s no accident that everyone, even Frigg, is protesting in civvies, their weapons left at home).
But that’s all kind of the point. “We gather peacefully today, and your response determines whether and how we gather tomorrow.” Phil, I think, understood that better than I did in 2013.
He also understood how such protest could move the needle. Syr’Nj may be briefly embarrassed to be too closely associated with this crowd, but she quickly adapts, using the urgency of their protest to bolster her own voice and authority. The hard work of governing is still necessary, but protest can be the fire that fuels it.
“We gather peacefully today, and your response determines whether and how we gather tomorrow.”
Is that really the message you intend to convey by protesting? An implied threat? Do it our way or else? No judgement, just curious.
In my experience, the way to change someone’s mind isn’t by rubbing their nose in your (presumably contrary to theirs) point of view, or even worse, threatening a tantrum (violence) if you don’t get your way. It’s to convince them that your own point of view is superior in such a way that they thought it was their idea in the first place.
To be fair, the implied threat could just be to ward off a hostile response. And it would be far worse to escalate to armed threats immediately, as that definitely carries the threat of a coup.
Implied threats rarely ward off hostile responses. What they tend to ward off is venues for reasoned debate, as a result of the implied threat and – I love that I get to borrow this brilliant term that I only recently discovered in the same day – “conspiranoia” that springs up in response to it.
Because nothing says “come talk to us about these problems you’re rabble-rousing about” like armed guards patrolling a gathering site to keep hypothetical militants away, after all.
Granted, to my knowledge, the number of unarmed protestors that have ever picked up weapons and affected change with them after being ignored is less than the historical number of protests that have been dispersed by police… it’s hard to see what the authorities are worried about, when it comes to nonviolent protest.
It’s not always necessary to change someone’s mind. Sometimes you just need to change their behavior.
People are also more likely to change their minds with a certain amount of motivation.
“Power concedes nothing without a demand.”
Sounds bad that way but you must understand that the important factor is the number of people. If 3 nutjobs threateningly announce such a thing unless their demands that the flatness of Earth is taught in schools, you do little but increase security. If it, on the other hand, involves a significant number of the population under your charge, it means that /you/ fucked up to the point all these people had to get out of their way (at great personal cost) to tell you this. In other words, you do deserve the ultimatum, given that you already allowed to let things to become this bad.
It all really depends on the situation you are in. There are such occasions that, yes, a veiled violence threat is indeed needed, even if the fact that is veiled is supposed to show that no one wants that, only that the prostesters are ready for if it ever comes to that.
But, more often than not, even more so with politiks involved, all you have to show to the other side is how they will be better off with what you propose than what the status quo is. That’s actually how change really happens, politiks adapt to the new reality where what was changed is the new status quo and compromises are made for it to happen.
I’m blinking at the claim that defining any threat of violence as a “tantrum” goes with “no judgement.”
I did not, in fact, define any threat of violence as a tantrum, Beroli. I did however mix several metaphors in there together, which may have led to your confusion.
I posed the question in honest curiosity, and without judgement. I understand the idea of raising awareness with a protest, which works to a point. But I also see a growing proliferation of ever more violent protest groups. History is replete with examples of why this doesn’t work, yet people still keep trying. I figure it’s either because a lot of people either don’t read much history, are too lazy to come up with a proper plan, or both.
You: “a tantrum (violence)”
You: I did not, in fact, define any threat of violence as a tantrum, Beroli.
No, I’m not confused. You, however, seem to be under the impression that saying, “No judgement” followed by an unambiguously expressed negative judgment is something other than obvious. Have fun with the claims of superiority you are probably already starting to write a denial that you’ve been making packaged with another repetition of same.
Ahahaha, no claims of superiority. But you did bring a smile to my face, so it’s not a day wasted.
Protests definitely imply a threat, though maybe not of violence as Syr’Nj implies.
Most protests imply a strike (“if we don’t like it, shut it down!”), a mild inconvenience, or a change in voting patterns. They also get news attention, which in turn gives sympathetic politicians political clout to bring their issues to the forefront… like Syr’Nj shows.
I hear that you want to point out its better to convince someone that they already agree, and on this we’re agreed. One way to do that isn’t to talk to the person at all, but to imply that a group of people they identify with or respect care about a subject. Like, we support the protest in the comic because we see the main characters we respect and the townsfolk (which we probably feel some kinship towards) are participants rather than their goal of “create a public-private partnership to ensure adequate availability of key contractors”.
As I’m not visibly a member of your social group (lol, your tag is literally Oldguy) nor a person you respect, I don’t expect to convince you with my contrary point of view. But, hey! You don’t post on internet comment threads to convince people but to articulate points, am-I-right?
Whole idea of voting was originally invented as a cheaper alternative to settling policy disputes by violence. In a civil war, the side with more soldiers would probably win, so in an election the side with more voters gets what they wanted, while the weaker faction gets “not being subjugated or massacred” as a consolation prize.
” It’s to convince them that your own point of view is superior in such a way that they thought it was their idea in the first place.”
I don’t think any protest can do that. A calm, quiet conversation has a (small but real) chance of convincing somebody of your idea, but if things go far enough that a large number of people are protesting, it’s very clearly because there is a disagreement, and that disagreement is being stated, most times rather bluntly.
Now, of course that does give _some_ politicians, who can reasonably claim not to be responsible for the situation, the chance to side with the protests in an attempt to win the protesters’ (and their sympathizers’) votes, and of course it supports politicians who have been arguing in the same direction, in that it elevates the visibility of the issue at hand, and it lets other concerned people know that others feel the same way. But it is not a tool to subtly convince anyone of anything.
Only if protests become so large that they start to have significant economical or PR impact can they actually get governments to change direction, but out of necessity, not out of conviction.
There always has to be some kind of threat. Think about it:
Protestors: Hey! Authority! We want X!
Authority: No.
Protestors: But we really want it!
Authority: And I care because?
You need an answer to that last question, or nothing will change. The answer doesn’t necessarily have to be violence, and violence is nearly always the most expensive option, so you should avoid it if you can, but if the authority in question really doesn’t give a rat’s ass whether you live or die then it may well be the only thing they’ll listen to.
I have to wonder about the look Bedard and Iwatani are exchanging in the last panel. Is it something like a growing consensus that she’ll need to eventually be brought into the fold?
To me, just that they see through the whole setup unlike the two clowns in the front and think “Oh, she is a sly one!”
So of course, she has potential to be an useful ally.
Or a formidable enemy. Either way, someone to be kept close.
There may be a side of “yep, Annunziata and Pardo are really stupid, each in their own way”.
Knowing the content of future chapters, I can now see that the Iwatani-Bedard alignement was already well engaged.