Reply #262: Thanks for the reminder that DISSENT IS NOT POPULAR!

[TahitiNut]

After all, if it were popular it wouldn't be dissent, would it?

There are many ways it's not popular and you're showing one of those ways: a sense of fashion and the unreasonable demand for an assured result. Golly! If it doesn't 'work' then why bother?

Here's why. To mobilize folks in a dissent or protest, there MUST be some that are more extreme than others. There's NEVER been a movement - civil rights, slavery, Viet Nam, whatever - where even a majority acted in some uniform and coordinated way. It's ALWAYS been factions and varying degrees of 'extremism.' I'm even reminded of ACTUP! and their efforts on behalf of LGBT rights and liberties. They weren't the only ones and they sure weren't blessed by all the members of the LGBT community ... but they helped and continue to do so.

One of the reasons the (neo)conservative 'movement' - the staggering and lurching to the fascist right that's been going on for nearly 30 years - has been 'successful' is because NONE of them attacked others on the right for being 'too extreme' or 'ineffective' or whatever. They saved ALL their attacks and aimed them at the left.

We, on the other hand, get constantly bloodied and bruised by people purportedly "on our side" but who, for one reason or another, seem to find it more convenient to dismiss and demean the activities of liberals than act in their own preferred way to further the effort.

Lead, follow, or get out of the way.