It's No Kings Day 2.0 today. I had planned to trot down the street on my lunch break, like I did during the summer edition, but we had at least one more person working here, that day and my wife was attending. The whole town was busier, because it's a summer resort.
I will guarantee that my employer thinks that the little gathering up there at Pickering Corner is silly and pointless. It's just the local hippies playing in imitation of the (hopefully) huge rallies in major cities. Like most conservatives, he wouldn't stick his neck out for anything when he can just vote for hatchet men to chop the necks that other people have stuck out on behalf of the disadvantaged. It's conservative gospel that there are no such people as the disadvantaged, only the lazy. Don't have money? They're always looking for ditch diggers. You should have gone to trade school. Lots of jobs out there. This might not reflect his personal thinking, but it's the broth in which he has simmered for his entire life.
I'm pretty cynical. I could easily rationalize skipping public protest entirely. Such spectacles do turn off some people, even as they inspire others. Nothing in the world inspires a unanimous response, positive or negative. The only time numbers really count is on election day. We've all seen how that turns out. Everything else is just recruiting.
Having built my life around ideals that have definitely cost me thousands of dollars in income never sought, that covers my sacrifice of life and fortune. As an occasional -- and in a certain phase more than occasional -- scumbag, I can't claim much in the way of honor, but my life is driven by ideals, nonetheless. However, if I cut out now, I don't just take a pay cut for myself, I impact my employer's fortune against his own priorities. If he lost business because of my idealistic choice that would be on me for assigning him as collateral damage for the sake of my gesture. It's a matter of consent.
I hope that the action around the country lives up to the hopes of the promoters in the weeks leading up to it. They set a high bar, calling it the biggest single day of protest in US history before it even happened. I hope it doesn't turn out to be a crashing disappointment like the 2024 election was.
As I look out the shop windows I get no sense of abnormality. There aren't a lot of people around since the foliage is past peak. The beer joint beloved of the local mountain bike crowd scheduled a booze cruise on the M/S Mount Washington conflicting with the pro-democracy protest. They obviously consider saving democracy to be an eccentric hobby for a few mostly older people who don't ride with them anyway. The few shoppers who drift through here also reflect no political urgency. It's just a sunny October Saturday.
I did see a few people with signs walking toward the protest venue just before noon. They were already headed back this way not long after 1:00 p.m. I didn't get a chance to step out and even look that way to see whether the center of town was particularly busy. Road traffic isn't. As public visibility goes, Wolfeboro's crowd will barely show up. It's still worth doing, and I'm glad that someone did.
The day isn't over yet. Things could get ugly where opposition is more energetic. Around here, most of the conservatives have learned to just ignore the hippies and keep outvoting them. If you want to understand why so many Democrats keep disappointing their most progressive party members and allies, live in a place like New Hampshire for a while and see what it takes to get elected at all. The messaging -- the education -- has to start a lot earlier and run a lot deeper than just campaign ads to voting age adults. And the information needs to be as factual as predictive philosophy can be. Conservatives hate to experiment. A group can only march as fast as its slowest member if they're going to arrive together. A time trial team hasn't finished until every rider has crossed the line.
No comments:
Post a Comment