(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . The Mystery of the Uninformed Activist [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-12-19 Everybody likes a spectacle. If there is an extravaganza to see, people will travel from near and far to see it. Although, I’ve never been very impressed by the people who travel from near. Far seems harder. But people want to see a show, and history teaches us that the more hysterical, the more twisted, and frankly, the more gruesome, the better. Back when executions were public, tens of thousands of people would put on their Sunday best and toddle down to the center of town to watch a good hanging, or burning, or crushing by heavy stone. In more recent times, after some meddling do-gooders decided that watching the local witch being drawn and quartered might not be the healthiest way for school children to spend their time, we’ve had to redirect our blood-lust to things like NFL football, Reddit videos of street fights, and of course, the modern political or social “cause”. As soon as some issue or event goes viral, or somehow captures the national attention, there are suddenly thousands or even millions of people tweeting, posting, protesting, chanting and demanding that some government, person or some group do something or stop doing something NOW! And while engagement, protest, expression, etc, are all great in concept, I’ve been struck by how many people angrily and uncompromisingly demanding things have absolutely no idea what they are actually talking about I noticed this phenomenon this week as people were all over social media and the streets were furiously insisting that the presidents of Harvard, MIT and Penn RESIGN IMMEDIATELY for their testimony on anti-semitism before Congress. Don’t get me wrong. Their testimony was horrifying. “Does calling for genocide (meaning intentional mass murder) against jewish students violate your policy against bullying and intimidation” is hardly a trick question. As a person who spent a good bit of time as a Jew on a college campus, I was shocked at their bone-headed insensitivity. In other words, I have no brief for the university Presidents. However, I was troubled by how many protesters who were interviewed could not tell reporters what the university presidents actually said. Some said “They are anti-semites!” without being able to recount the specifics. others got it completely wrong and remembered that the presidents said “We don’t want Jews on our campus” or “They endorsed Hamas”, which just didn’t happen. Some didn’t even venture a guess and merely repeated some chant like “Ho Ho Ho Ho, President Gay has got to go”, which, to be fair does rhyme, but isn’t really very insightful. Similarly, we’ve watched thousands of young people sporting Palestinian colors furiously chanting “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free”.But you can spend hours on Youtube watching chanters being interviewed and having no idea which river and which sea they are chanting about. In fact, a Berkley professor named Ron Hassner hired a polling company to explore this. Only 47% of protesters answering could name the Jordan River or the Mediterranean sea. Some alternate guesses included the Euphrates, the Caribbean and the Dead Sea. Apparently, nobody named the Mississippi, or Darby Creek, which I suppose is a bit of a victory for humanity. Things got even trickier when some of the protesters were asked what should happen to Israel, or even the Jews who lived there. “Um” was the most common response, followed by “I’m just here to support the Palestinians” or the refreshingly candid, “I haven’t really thought about that”. I have personally faced this phenomenon. A few years ago I was accused of something that was totally and provably false. And now that I’ve settled the defamation suit against the newspaper that printed the accusation, I’ll be writing more about that. But the point is, as soon as the story was printed, I became, for a period of time, the cool cause of the day. People who I had never met and knew absolutely nothing about the details of the situation were suddenly zealous soldiers in the Twitter war about me or eager signers of letters demanding that I do something, or not, or whatever it said. It didn’t really matter. Certainly a good percentage of protesters do understand the issues they are protesting. They are well-informed and thoughtful. I don’t want to paint with too broad of a brush. And anyone who has ever seen my paintings might say it’s best that I don’t paint at all. But the level of uninformed zealotry is troubling. None of this is new. Did all of those people chanting about the glories of Ho Chi Minh actually understand his governing philosophy for Viet Nam, or did they just wish to avoid getting their tuchus shot off in a rice paddy? And how many of those demanding that Nixon resign over Watergate knew what the Watergate was, where it is located and what happened there? All of this is why I’m instinctively skeptical of anything that becomes the latest political fad. I may agree with those taking to the streets, but I first want to make sure I understand why they are taking to the streets. Is this legit, or is this a mob? Do I understand the subtleties and the arguments of the other side? In other words, in the words of Bob Dylan, I want to “know my song well before I start singing”. Or, as Dylan would sing it in a concert today: “Unk, blah, scuttle, shrump blumma”. Having seen first-hand how certain issues can, for at least a while, become causes, and how causes can lead to the pitchforks coming out, and the rhyming chants to start, I’ve learned that thoughtful engagement really is preferable to guttural shrieks of uninformed rage. That said, let the NFL Commissioner just TRY to ban the Tush Push! I’ll be out in the streets screaming “Goodell, Goodell, Go Straight to Hell!!” so fast it will make your head spin. 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