The Perceived Insignificance of White Protest

 Ok, I know what you're thinking. Wednesday I wrote about how straight people are being excluded from movies and now I'm writing about how white people are being excluded from protests? What the fuck kind of Steven Crowder whiny bullshit am I on about? As always, please be patient while I poorly explain my ideas.

It is not uncommon to make fun of conservative and reactionary people, who are predominantly white. It is not only uncommon, but hilarious and deserved. These people objectively suck and their ideas are laughable. Their ideas being laughable is a very important point, as I tend to believe that when someone says "Black people are inferior to whites" there's not really a logical argument to be made against this blatantly wrong idea. You just laugh at how dumb and backwards it is.

And the hypocrisy? Oh lordy the hypocrisy. Personally, I cannot get enough of clips at right-wing protests and rallies where an interviewer acts the anti-abortion activist, "How many children have you adopted?" It's glorious.

And these are just the relatively "normal" protesters. Have you ever seen the real wackos? MAGA shamans and Jesus freaks, those types? We are doomed as a species. Right?

Well, I would like to argue that this type of media, while certainly entertaining (immensely so) does harm to the left and left-leaning people, while emboldening the right.

Let's get the emboldening out of the way first, because it's a bit easier to understand. I don't think I'm blowing any minds here when I claim that "Black people are inferior" is not a logical position to take, and so trying to be logical about arguing against it is generally useless. (A fun activity here is to look at the criticism that Charles Murry receives about the spotty and biased data in The Bell Curve and watch his response to that. It fully displays the impression that he was never intending to follow any sort of research, and had his ideas fully formed before cracking open a single book.) The thing is that there are many types of people, commonly religious, whose beliefs are not even challenged by these things, but instead emboldened by them. "THE LEFT is attempting to silence me because they're afraid of what I have to say," is a much more appealing message than "THE LEFT has given me data that challenges my assumptions and I'm ready to reconsider this issue thoughtfully."

And what's the result of this? I would argue that the religiously minded amongst the right relish in such scorn, being persecuted for their beliefs or whatever, but what about on the left? What does it do to us to see someone who is acting so ridiculous, saying ridiculous things, and generally looking ridiculous to top it off? Look at Ted Cruz (I'm sorry).

It's easy (and enjoyable) to look at this punchable overripe melon of a man and laugh him off, but we forget, this is a person in a position of considerable power in the US government. As we laugh along to John Oliver singing little rhymes about how much we all hate this guy, we forget that he is a threat, and not an abstract one at that, an actual, real threat to vulnerable people.

And how do we change the minds of the wackos? How do we discuss issues with people who value loyalty, overconfidence and bravado, empty displays of masculinty and toughness, and a seemingly mindless devotion to Trump and Q? Well, you don't, right?

This is the idea that I'm trying to get at: Considering them all wackos is just seceding ground. Let's talk numbers. White people in the US are the vast majority, over 75% according the lazy Google search I just did. As we consume this type of media where we start laughing at goofy white people, we have 75% of the US population we are less prepared to discuss and debate with, less amenable to bringing them over to "our side", and less willing to dissuade them from voting red. Because after all, if we started discussing anything with them, they're going to go nuts on us, right? They have guns and Jesus and they don't care about data or research. Better to just avoid it, I guess.

And that's just a broad prejudice against white people. What about actual Trump voters? If we consider them to be a lost cause, that's 50% of the voting population, 75 million people that we just surrender. Now, I will strongly argue and theoretically could have data to back up this position if I were less lazy, that most of US leans left on most issues and that vast swaths are discouraged from voting in various ways, but it doesn't matter does it? Those 75 million people DO vote ARE voting, and we just let them think what they do because we consider them crazy.

Now, I need to repeat myself: They suck. I don't have a lot of respect or sympathy for them, even though I believe that they're just part of a system that has tricked them into thinking that the status quo is the way things should be. But from a viewpoint of just trying to win elections or trying to change minds or trying to persuade people over to our side, thinking of them as a big, dumb, unalterable monolith is doing more damage to us than we think it is. We need to stop sharing and circulating these videos of right-wing dummies looking stupid because it's hurting us, despite how hilarious it is.

Don't laugh. Your country depends on it.