By DoYle Srader
The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull only got made because Raiders of the Lost Ark grossed almost $400 million, and you keep taking to the streets because you rerun and rerun a movie in your mind that’s a mashup of Gandhi, MLK and Lech Walesa. But making a sequel because it worked last time and you can’t think of anything better is a recipe for bankruptcy. And just like Hollywood making their zillionth MCU sequel, protesters have been going back out on the streets over and over again and not learning anything.
I have not turned out for any of the street protests, and that won’t change. I don’t care if they’re called 50501, No Kings, Abracadabra or I Can’t Believe It’s Not Working. My politics align almost perfectly with most of the protesters, but I do not waste my life on things that do not work. You might be tempted to call that defeatist, but it’s a bit more like diagnosing before prescribing. I hope sick people get better, but homeopathy is an utter waste of resources, and if that dashes someone’s well-meaning hopes, then put them right here in front of me so I can dash them into smithereens.
In normal times, officeholders want their community to bustle and thrive, because that consolidates their power. Street protests put pressure on those leaders for the same reason a compound fracture of the femur would inconvenience Galen Rupp. But Donald Trump’s reinvention of the presidency, his appeal to his base of voters, has nothing in common with what came before.
He promised his followers that their enemies would hate everything he did. He won their loyalty by picking fight after fight. Near the top of the list of reasons people voted for him was that they felt unheard and forgotten, and they wanted someone who would fight for them. Street protests play right into his hands. Put simply, you are taking the bait.
There’s a curious little wrinkle in the research on the use of fear appeals to persuade people. If you describe a problem in terms that seem moderately scary, and then immediately offer a solution, then your hearers probably will engage in danger control, which is to say that they’ll give your solution a try.
But if you use sky-high fear appeals and neglect the solution, your hearers probably will replace danger control with fear control, which means they’ll do things that make them feel less scared. TSA screening is a good way to think of this: a lot of genuine threats slip through it, but its visibility makes people feel safer.
The street protests are fear control. Some pretty understandable and hard-to-manage emotions propel you out into the street. You feel desperate to do something. It helps if that something gives you a potent dose of togetherness, and it helps even more if you get to be loud together. Probably it’s pretty cathartic and you feel better afterward. But what does it do about the very outrages you’re protesting? Nothing.
Troubled romantic couples sometimes do the dizzyingly irrational move of trying to have more sex, or even pop out another child together, thinking it must help them salvage their relationship. Their feelings drive them toward it, and there’s togetherness and catharsis involved. But does it address the underlying problem? Nope. Just as likely to turn up the stressors and make matters worse.
I am not a defeatist. I think the response that will accomplish something is slow, requires a lot of careful planning, unfolds behind the scenes and doesn’t make a very vivid mental movie. We need people to bend their ingenuity toward addressing the very neglected problems that made the majority of 2024 voters willing to vote for Trump. Taking on Trump’s appeal is not mostly about better messaging, and I teach messaging for a living.
It is essentially and fundamentally about the wrenching hard work of putting away insults, no longer calling Trump voters stupid or damaged or racist, and inventing solutions that foster hope. It’s not about banging on walls so feebly that you don’t leave a mark, but instead building something better.
Or you can go protest again.
Y’all have fun with that.