tldr; just a lib complaining about direct action. This is the most baffling column from the NYT, surpassing all of Friedman’s or Dowd’s brain diarrheas

https://archive.is/hPWPv

Don’t take it personally, but I don’t want to go to your protest. This isn’t a commentary about your particular movement or about the anti-Israel rallies this past academic year. I don’t care how foolish or noble the cause. When it comes to gathering in large groups and yelling, you can count me out. I did try it once. My first and last protest was freshman year of college when some women I liked were organizing a pro-choice rally. The cause was solid, it seemed like a decent way to solidify the friendships and I enjoy using magic markers.

But standing on the campus green of our overwhelmingly liberal university brandishing a broken hanger struck me as not only futile but ridiculous. The only mind that was changed by that protest was mine — about participating in protests. After 40 minutes or so, I left to go to the bathroom. Later, I signed up to escort patients at a local abortion clinic. There are better ways, I realized, to effect change.

Temperamentally, I just wasn’t up to it. It’s not only that I don’t like standing outdoors in the sun for long periods or that I always need to pee. But I’d rather read about strikers in “Germinal” than march on a picket line. My full gratitude then, to The New York Times for giving me a get-out-of-jail-free card by forbidding your journalists from participating in political protests while encouraging us to report on them.

I’ve never been much of a tribalist or a joiner, and have no use for conformity of thought or dress. Unless it’s Halloween or a costume party, I don’t like playing dress-up. Nor do I want to be part of a group where people might think I accidentally left my pussy hat at home. When I see a bunch of white kids wearing kaffiyehs I can’t help wonder whatever happened to the whole anti-cultural appropriation thing. When someone drones on about “solidarity,” all I hear is, “Get in line.” When there’s no room for dissent from the dissent, there’s no room for me. Color me an anti-fan of performative politics, particularly if it means I’d be part of the show that features bigots posing as bleeding hearts. Plus, all that earnestness! It brings out my ironic and impish side, inclined to correct typos on signage or foment some kind of peripheral debate. Every time someone at one of those encampments cried out “Free Palestine” I’d be tempted to yell “From Hamas!” I’d surely get kicked out of the group that wants to kick other people out. They don’t want troublemakers.

Protests are about operating in unison and I find that creepy. Back in the early 90s, I visited college friends in Washington, D.C. It happened to be the Fourth of July and so we headed to the National Mall to celebrate. I was stunned to find people passionately yelling en masse, “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” What, I wondered, was the alternative? Who’s the other team?

I realize we live in a country born of protest and my attitude may seem vaguely un-American. Watching the rabble-rousers on HBO’s “John Adams” during Covid lockdown, my first grumbly thought was, “Stop whining and pay your taxes!” Reading about the Whiskey Rebellion made me think of drunken MAGA types sloganeering at a Trump rally about the glory of firearms. (I do make a sentimental exception for revolutions set to music, especially when French.) Speaking of history, I can’t say I’d relish hollering alongside people who’ve only studied it on TikTok. But those of us who read about it in, say, books usually come to understand that even factual history is complicated, nuanced and full of boring and endless repetition.

Protests, those books remind us, can end poorly. In 2020, when people were posting black squares on Instagram to show their antiracist cred, I insisted that we watch “To Live” for family movie night. Zhang Yimou’s depiction of the Cultural Revolution provides a terrifying warning to those who think offering children a bullhorn is a good idea. Still, plenty of Boomers view protest through a nostalgic filter. Sure, there was some passionate shouting on the quad about wiping out Jews, they’ll say, but even the righteous antiwar movement had its Hanoi Janes and the Weather Underground. Is painting a Hamas symbol on a Jews’s door worse than settler-colonial oppression? But no matter the context and whether it comes from the right or the left, antisemitism is a bad look.

Maybe the protesters could use a moment of peace and reflection. A chance to take a deep breath and open their minds. Picture, if you will, a meditative room filled with floor pillows, breathwork exercises and a small but well-curated bookshelf in the corner. Perhaps now that we’ve gathered here all kumbaya-like, we can even offer a word for the people who look at the bawlers, the get-ups, the outrage and the zealotry and say to themselves, “No, thank you.” Here’s to the people who doth protest not

  • Yllych [any]@hexbear.net
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    When I see a bunch of white kids wearing kaffiyehs I can’t help wonder whatever happened to the whole anti-cultural appropriation thing. When someone drones on about “solidarity,” all I hear is, “Get in line.” When there’s no room for dissent from the dissent, there’s no room for me. Color me an anti-fan of performative politics, particularly if it means I’d be part of the show that features bigots posing as bleeding hearts. Plus, all that earnestness! It brings out my ironic and impish side, inclined to correct typos on signage or foment some kind of peripheral debate. Every time someone at one of those encampments cried out “Free Palestine” I’d be tempted to yell “From Hamas!” I’d surely get kicked out of the group that wants to kick other people out. They don’t want troublemakers

    Someone could go through this and pick this shit pile apart. But all I can say is: to gutless, spineless, bloodless liberals that think their nuance is anything but the blinders they wear to ignore the charnel house they built and live in, were-gonna-kill-you

  • WIIHAPPYFEW [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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    In 2020, when people were posting black squares on Instagram to show their antiracist cred, I insisted that we watch “To Live” for family movie night. Zhang Yimou’s depiction of the Cultural Revolution provides a terrifying warning to those who think offering children a bullhorn is a good idea.

    SHUT THE FUCK UP matt-jokerfied

    FUCKING RICH WHITE SUBURBAN PIECE OF SHIT

    oh wait she’s also the NYT’s head transphobe too lmao fucking retire already asshole

  • EmoThugInMyPhase [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    When I see a bunch of white kids wearing kaffiyehs I can’t help wonder whatever happened to the whole anti-cultural appropriation thing.

    White liberalism is still clinging on to this lol

      • micnd90 [he/him,any]@hexbear.netOP
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        Writer’s bio:

        I’m interested in how ideas spread throughout culture and society and in how they evolve. I’ve written about everything from literature to theater, Nikki Haley to Joe Biden, the Cultural Revolution to Colleen Hoover, “American Dirt” to Robert Caro, cashless retail to gun control. I write from the perspective of a lifelong liberal. It’s from this place that I often write about illiberal progressive orthodoxies, in particular around identity, language, morality, gender ideology, class and free speech.

        Most recently, I was the editor of The New York Times Book Review, but I’ve been working since I was 14, and my varied experiences — as a cashier in a supermarket and a sales clerk in retail, a waitress in New York, a wine server in French Catalonia, a librarian and high school teacher in Chiang Mai, Thailand, an ice cream scooper in Paris, a caterer in college — informs everything I do. I studied history at Brown University.

        She’s a gigakaren coasting on privilege all her life. It is an absolute parody.

        • BurgerPunk [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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          I’m interested in how ideas spread

          important-high-level-ideas iDeAs

          I write from the perspective of a lifelong liberal.

          shocked-pikachu

           I often write about illiberal progressive orthodoxies

          jesse-wtf oh, you mean you’re literally just important-high-level-ideas but from a higher social class, so you get to to have a make work job for failchildren at the NY Times.

        • TreadOnMe [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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          You see, I am a liberal in terms of I have money, property, and connections so I should never have sacrifice anything for anybody else’s liberation. You know a ‘classical liberal’.

        • DragonBallZinn [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          Facebook CHUDs are seething rn that we are probably more efficient at owning the libs than they will ever be, and all we needed to do is refuse to suck off fascists 24/7 and have real convictions.

        • 0% chance she actually did any of those to earn a living

          I don’t doubt she held those positions, the same way a bored retiree becomes a cashier - something to pass the time with that she could quit whenever she felt like without consequence

          • micnd90 [he/him,any]@hexbear.netOP
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            Why yes, I work for Teach for America for 2 years

            Why yes, I volunteer for the Peace Corps

            It is a gross bourgeoisie work-study scheme to cosplay as poor people and satiate their savior complex.

            Okay, maybe a person with a humble background can teach English in Thailand, or work as wine server in Spain. But one does not become ice cream server in Paris, English teacher in Thailand, waiter in NYC, wine server in Catalonia, and graduate from Ivy League school with major in history, and then become NYT columnist simultaneously in one lifetime without coasting on privilege and parent’s money.

  • PKMKII [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    Protests, those books remind us, can end poorly. In 2020, when people were posting black squares on Instagram to show their antiracist cred, I insisted that we watch “To Live” for family movie night.

    I’m sure her kids really loved getting veto’d out of Frozen for that.

    Zhang Yimou’s depiction of the Cultural Revolution provides a terrifying warning to those who think offering children a bullhorn is a good idea.

    Yea, reducing the Cultural Revolution down to “the kids didn’t know their place,” very nuanced, big brained take. I’m sure she’s just as critical of the “student-led protests” in Hong Kong because, you know, the youth can’t be trusted.

    And, surprise surprise, this is the same columnist who penned a screed about how the anti-choice right is just as damaging to women as the transgender activists on the left.

    EDIT: I just realized, she made her kids watch a movie so they’d learn the lesson of, kids can’t be trusted to have any power or responsibility because they’ll 1984 everything? JFC what a way to implicitly tell your kids you think they’re untrustworthy little shits.

  • Tommasi [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    When someone drones on about “solidarity,” all I hear is, “Get in line.”

    What a baby-brain. It’s cool that you want me to stand up to genocide, but please consider how special and individual I am before you talk to me.

  • Ishmael [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    Speaking of history, I can’t say I’d relish hollering alongside people who’ve only studied it on TikTok.

    Never seen a more perfect example of the kind of smug self-superior liberal in my life

  • ChaosMaterialist [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    I realize we live in a country born of protest and my attitude may seem vaguely un-American. Watching the rabble-rousers on HBO’s “John Adams” during Covid lockdown, my first grumbly thought was, “Stop whining and pay your taxes!”

    Loyalist reactionary confirmed very-intelligent

  • culpritus [any]@hexbear.net
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    Every time someone at one of those encampments cried out “Free Palestine” I’d be tempted to yell “From Hamas!” I’d surely get kicked out of the group that wants to kick other people out. They don’t want troublemakers.

    Calling yourself a troublemaker for being tempted to regurgitate genocide talking points at a protest.

    Really brave! improve-society illegal-to-say