Why it is your duty to stop supporting the government →
the danger of “feel-good” protests →
liberals can be infuriating →
why the most committed people might be the quietest
Remember all those comforting lullabies from before about how the U.S. had imminent plans to withdraw its troops from Iraq?
So where is everybody?
The Iraq war drags on and is being quietly expanded, and that other war here at home continues to chew up Americans at a steady pace.
The outraged?
Are they really all sitting around the television hoping that Patrick Fitzgerald will put everything right?
For that matter — where am I?
Don’t I know that Dick Cheney’s trying to get torture legalized by Congress?
Don’t I see the next invasion on the horizon?
Haven’t I noticed the growing militarization of our own police, and how the eyes of our national intelligence apparatus are increasingly turning back on those of us inside the borders?
Yeah… I know. But I’m not going to talk about all of that here.
This blog is for people who’ve already heard the news and are ready to take the next step.
If you don’t think things have already gone too far, I’m not going to spend a lot of time trying to convince you otherwise.
I’ve far from given up. I’ve just moved on to another phase of life.
I know that virtually everything the federal government does is going to be horrible.
Why remain in a perpetual state of lather?
Why be in reactive mode through the course of an entire existence?
There is life to be lived — live aside from politics, even if that life must often be lived in spite of the worst efforts of politicians and bureaucrats.
And there is freedom to be won.
Not just talked about, but snatched directly from the jaws of the vicious total-control beast.
…outrage must have a purpose.
And that purpose is eventually to do something productive with your righteous anger.
And that’s what I’m doing these days.
And that’s what I hope (and believe) thousands of other freedom lovers are doing.
If we’ve stopped waving our arms and shouting, it’s not because we’ve given up.
It’s because we’ve moved on to the next stage of opposition to tyranny.
And that next stage is, of necessity, much, much quieter.
Of course, this can be a bluff, or an excuse.
Why aren’t you raising a ruckus about these outrages?
Because I’ve moved on to the next, more serious, more hush-hush stage of opposition!
Uh huh. Sure you have.
But it seems even more common to confuse being noisy with being productive.
Some of the government’s most dependable supporters have radical bumper-stickers on their cars and laugh loudest when The Daily Show comes on.
Myself, I never feel like I’m doing enough.
But I keep doing what I am doing, I try to honestly evaluate what matters and what’s just blowing smoke, and I try to keep my eye on what my next step is going to be and prepare myself to take it.
We may be tempted to petulance in our civil disobedience, conscientious objection, and even just our petitioning and protest, and I think we would be wise to be on guard against this temptation.
Petulance paints the relationship between the protester and the target of the protest as like that of an unruly child to a parent.
Petulant tactics can take the form of making “demands” with nothing much to back them up but the demand itself.
Or they can take the form of protest methods that seem taken from the playbook of a two-year-old — grown-up versions of “I’ll hold my breath until I die if you don’t give me what I want” or “I’m going to stomp my feet and scream if I don’t get my way.”
By taking the form of a tantrum, petulant protests increase bystander sympathy for the parentish figure and reduce sympathy for the childish figure, while at the same time reinforcing the idea that the parentish figure ought naturally to be making the decisions.
In other words, petulant tactics bolster the authority of the target of the protest.
Wise parents do not give in to temper tantrums, and similarly, targets of petulant protests appear wise and sympathetic when they do not give in or when they defuse the protest by conciliating in token and condescending ways.
This makes it less likely that the goals of the protesters (to the extent that they depend on action by the protest target) will be met.
Petulance is not an act of assertiveness, but a symptom of submissiveness.
Petulant tactics can reinforce protesters’ feelings of inferiority and powerlessness, and thereby discourage them from taking the necessary bold, confident, and effective steps to create change.
Inferior and powerless people whine, make toothless demands, and throw tantrums. Equal and confident people look each other in the eye, state their cases calmly and forthrightly, and do what they feel they have to do without making a big hullabaloo.
Petulant protesters, by reinforcing the feelings of social superiority in their targets, can make those targets less inclined to negotiate or to listen.*
Defenders of petulant protest tactics might argue that because their targets are not like wise parents at all, but like foolish ones, petulant tactics are best since in such cases the squeaky wheel gets the grease.
Also, some protesters may be forced into positions of powerless inferiority and then have no recourse but to use petulant tactics that are appropriate to such a position — for instance, the Irish prisoners who used tactics like hunger strikes or smearing the walls of their cells with feces.
But even if there are situations in which petulant tactics are called for, I think such tactics are frequently used, especially today, at times and in ways that are counterproductive.
In many such cases, switching to tactics that are dignified and that assert the social and ethical equality of the protesters and the protest target would be more effective — both at winning the immediate goals of the protesters and (what ought to be among the long-term goals of anyone working for a better world) at fostering more healthy relationships among people and between people and institutions.
For example, the lunch counter sit-ins during the American civil rights movement were done in a dignified way: polite, well-disciplined black Americans sat at “whites-only” lunch counters, and stayed there in patient expectation of being treated in a reciprocally dignified manner although they were refused service.
If they had chosen a petulant mode of protest, they might have then begun chanting, or yelling at the staff, or maybe vandalizing the lunch counters.
Instead, they stuck with the quiet dignity approach, and let the white racists monopolize the petulant tactics (violence, verbal abuse, spitting on or pouring catsup over the protesters, that sort of thing).
The dignified mode arguably was a more effective tactic for ending lunch counter segregation (the immediate goal of the protests), but was certainly a more effective strategy for discrediting racism and Jim Crow and in increasing sympathy for the civil rights movement.
This example is more cut-and-dried than most, since the battle against Jim Crow was so centered on asserting dignity and equality — but I think most other individual and grassroots political actions would also benefit from transcending the petulant and taking a forthright, dignified, confident posture.
How do we defend ourselves against this temptation to use the petulant mode at times when it is unnecessary and counter-productive?
First, acknowledge that the temptation exists, and that it springs from internalized feelings of social and ethical inferiority with respect to the protest target.
We go into petulant mode for much the same reason a child does — because we despair of being listened to or heeded any other way and we are too powerless, inarticulate, or uncreative to use more effective methods of meeting our goals.
Second, make an effort to examine protest tactics that we come across or that are proposed to us with an eye to discerning to what extent they use the petulant mode.
Share your observations with others; compare notes.
Evaluate protests not only in terms of how they might meet immediate goals but in what impressions they create or reinforce about the relationship between the protesters, the protest targets, and bystanders.
Third, reimagine our relationships with the targets of our protests in such a way as to suspend or dispel the internalized feeling of inferiority.
If you felt yourself to be the social and ethical equal of the people who are the target of your protest (as you perhaps already consider yourself to be, on a rational level), how would you convey your protest to them and how would you expect them to respond?
Fourth, know that petulance is usually meant to intensify or amplify a protest that feels too small, unnoticed, or insufficient.
When you feel the petulant temptation, see if maybe you can amplify your protest in some other fashion.
If not, consider that maybe a quiet, dignified, under-the-radar protest might nonetheless be more effective in the long run than a loud, annoying, attention-getting, petulant one.
Fifth, be honest with yourself and others about what you are doing and what goals you can reasonably expect to accomplish.
Petulant protest often is accompanied with bluster and exaggeration, which can lead to discouragement when reality sets in.
By taking care in this way, we can increase the effectiveness of our actions, reduce the risk of discouragement and burnout, become more appealing and convincing to potential sympathizers, and contribute to a better world in the long run.
* Gandhi, on this point, counseled:
“Non-cooperation is not a movement of brag, bluster, or bluff.
It is a test of our sincerity.
It requires solid and silent self-sacrifice.
It challenges our honesty and our capacity for national work.
It is a movement that aims at translating ideas into action… ¶ A non-cooperationist strives to compel attention and to set an example not by his violence but by his unobtrusive humility.
He allows his solid action to speak for his creed.
His strength lies in his reliance upon the correctness of his position.
And the conviction of it grows most in his opponent when he least interposes his speech between his action and his opponent.
Speech, especially when it is haughty, betrays want of confidence and it makes one’s opponent skeptical about the reality of the act itself.”
When I originally wrote up these observations, I used Gandhi’s hunger
strikes as an example of a variety of petulant protest that may have been an effective one.
After reviewing some of what Gandhi wrote about the tactic, though, I’m not sure it qualifies.
When he was on hunger strikes, he often compared himself to a parent, and those he was trying to influence to children.
He viewed hunger strikes (sometimes, anyway) as a form of penance he would undertake because he had failed to discipline his (metaphorical) children well; the “children” would then, because of their esteem for him, repent and get straight (at least if the strike worked as planned).
This is a little odd, and bears some resemblance to the petulant mode I’m trying to describe, but isn’t quite the same.
James C. Scott, in a paper in the Copenhagen Papers series (“Everyday Forms of Resistance,” ), looked at tax resistance as one of the varieties of behind-the-scenes peasant resistance to exploitation.
In particular, he investigated resistance to mandatory tithing of rice yields in Malaysia.
This tithe was a traditional Islamic zakāt that had been made mandatory and brought under the control of the central government in 1960, in the course of which the government also added an invasive bureaucracy that “mandated the registration of acreage and yields in order to enforce its collection.”
Says Scott:
Opposition to the new tithe was so unanimous and vehement in the villages where I conducted research that it was a comparatively simple matter to learn about the techniques of evasion.
They take essentially four forms. Some cultivators, particularly small-holders and tenants, simply refuse to register their cultivated acreage with the tithe agent.
Others underreport their acreage and/or crop and may take the bolder step of delivering less rice than even their false declarations would require.
Finally, the grain handed over is of the very poorest quality — it may be spoiled by moisture, have sprouted, be mixed with straw and stones so that the recoverable milled grain is far less than its nominal weight would suggest.
Scott says that the government, in one local sample, got only one-fifth of the grain that it would have if people had complied with the tithe law.
But though this was a largely successful tax strike, it was also a quiet one:
There have been no tithe riots, no tithe demonstrations, no petitions, no violent confrontations, no protests of any kind.
Why protest, indeed, when quieter stratagems have achieved the same results at minimal risk?
…it is the safer course for resisters to leave the tithe system standing in name while they dismantle it in practice… without affording the state an easily discernible target.
There is no organization to be banned, no conspiratorial leaders to round up or buy off, no rioters to haul before the courts — only the generalized non-compliance by thousands of peasants.
Scott says that there are three factors that aid this mode of resistance:
“a palpable ‘climate of opinion’ ” — that is, a widespread belief that the tithe is unjust and that resistance is proper
“a shared knowledge of the available techniques of evasion”
“economic interest” — that is, the fact that it is personally economically advantageous to resist paying the tithe
(He refines this in another work to: “the conjunction of a folk culture that encourages some forms of resistance, a set of habits and practices that are part of the practical heritage of the peasantry, and a shared material interest in thwarting appropriation [that] can produce a form of tacit coordination that mimics or substitutes for formal organization.”)
Also important is the political context.
The authorities could, Scott says, crack down on evasion, though this would be costly and difficult.
But it would also hurt political support for the ruling party among the peasantry.
Scott says that once tax resistance “has become a customary practice it generates its own expectations about what is permissible [and] raises the political and administrative costs for any regime that subsequently decides it will enforce the rules in earnest.
For everyday resisters there is safety in numbers and successful resistance builds its own momentum.”
He also notes, in another context, that “the social historian could profitably examine the role of petty tax resistance in producing, over time, the ‘fiscal crisis of the state’ which frequently presages radical political change.
Here too, without intending it, the small self-serving acts of thousands of petty producers may deprive a regime of the wherewithal to maintain its ruling coalition and prevail against its enemies.”
…a vast range of what counts — or should count — as peasant resistance involved no overt protest and requires little or no organization.
This look at what Scott calls “everyday resistance” is in reaction to our normal tendency to concentrate on more organized, visible, acute uprisings and to consider other forms to be inchoate, immature forms of real rebellion.
Because the duration of and the number of participants in such everyday resistance may be greater than of more well-recognized revolts, their effect on the balance of power between the ruling class and the exploited class may be proportionally greater as well.
By itself, the peasantry’s most common and durable weapon is an everyday resistance that stops short of the more dangerous forms of overt protest and confrontation.
Because members of the exploited class lack access to the legislative and administrative levers of power, they take their political stand instead at the point of enforcement.
As Thoreau put it:
Scott gives a pleasant oceanographical metaphor about this sort of resistance:
Everyday resistance does not throw up the manifestos, demonstrations, or pitched battles that normally compel attention.
It makes no headlines.
But just as millions of anthozoan polyps create, willy-nilly, a coral reef, so do thousands of individual acts of insubordination and evasion create a political and economic barrier reef of their own.
There is rarely any dramatic confrontation, any movement that is particularly newsworthy.
And whenever, to pursue the simile, the ship of state runs aground on such a reef, attention is typically directed to the shipwreck (for example, a fiscal crisis) itself and not to the vast aggregation of petty acts that made it possible.
The paper goes into more detail about the Malaysian resistance, and shows how effectively the peasants essentially set their own tax rate rather than complying with the official one.
When improvements in irrigation allowed the rice farmers to plant two crops instead of one during the course of a year, which officially subjected them to twice the tax, they instead “simply compensated by paying less than half of what they paid earlier on a single crop.”
Collectively, they reduced a nominal 10% tax to an actual 1.5% one.
Scott then looks at the French tithe resisters in the light of this.
He notes some overt, acute resistance (“In , the residents of one commune refused to pay the wine tithe and threatened to throw the collector into the Rhône.
In , another village, led by its curé, stoned the monks and their tithe agent when they came to collect the grain.
In , peasants wearing disguises sacked the granary of the tithe collector, and no witnesses could be found to testify against them.”), but is more interested in the “everyday resistance,” finding that in France the techniques “were far more elaborate and varied.”
These techniques included:
introducing novel crops or growing marginal ones that were not covered by existing tithe laws
growing taxable crops alongside or interspersed with non-taxable ones and then claiming the whole field as exempt
opening new, hidden plots of land to planting without declaring them
planting tax-exempt “gardens,” “orchards,” or “meadows” that were functionally equivalent to taxable fields
harvesting and hiding a portion of the crop before the tax collector arrived
assembling sheaves in such a way as to conceal valuable grain in the non-taxable base
taking advantage of the rounding-off process in counting the grain to make large portions of the harvest effectively exempt
Much of this is simply clever loophole-hunting, aided by a culture of tax disgust that celebrates and spreads it.
Each technique alone was a petty nuisance to the tax-gatherers, but in the aggregate they took a huge bite out of their cut — one complained “of thirty sacks, it is plausible that they pay only one.”
This individual, canny, shoulder-shrugging, “who, me?” resistance was made possible by “a generalized, often unspoken complicity… the French sources frequently refer to ‘tacit consent,’ ‘unanimity,’ the refusal to give testimony, and conspiracies of silence.”