(Suppose you threw a tantrum and nobody came?)
~-~-~-~-~-~
Protest.
What a selfish little word. It’s a noun, and a verb, and an adjective, and it’s acceptable to accent either syllable. Selfish. Someone should protest, and air their protest in a protest march.
And protest, of course, is what almost nearly happened this weekend, in pretty much nowhere across the United States, where hundreds of thousands of protestors didn’t actually show up to pout and hold their breath until the “Donald Trump Regime” was removed from power.
This is Antifa. Defined by Wikipedia as “a political movement of autonomous, self-styled anti-fascist groups,” Antifa had promised an anti-Trump demonstration of historic proportions, all over the nation, and they vowed to never, ever, ever stop until Trump was deposed.
The reality was a bit underwhelming. In Manhattan, 300 people showed up. 300 people. There were more people than that buying dolls in the American Girl store on Fifth Avenue.
And so, around six o’clock, the never, ever, ever stop Antifans went home. They packed their placards and descended on a nearby diner, where they complained about the portions.
Of course, protest is nothing new. It’s been a part of humanity since, well, humanity. Think back to the book of Genesis, when Jacob out-hirsuted Esau and inherited the whole spread (el Ponderosa) from Isaac, starring Lorne Green as Abu Bin Cartwright. Esau protested…a lot…and then sulked off and fathered the Middle East.
In the fifth century BC, according some seriously old scholars, a Greek playwright wrought a play called Lysistrata. The play’s author, Aristophanes, divined a plot about a woman who tried to convince other Greek women not to have sex, as a way to protest the Peloponnesian War, and to get on the cover of Cosmo. As a result, extremely tense, frustrated Greek guys quickly ended the war, killing every Pelopon or ‘ponette they could catch. Sadly, it was only after the massacre that Aristophanes explained his play was just a comedy. But the concept of no-sex strikes had caught on, and have been effective all over the world since, except in the Clinton White House.
In 1517, a German professor of theology named Martin Luther protested what he considered “abuses” in the Roman Catholic Church, like indulgences, and the Spanish Inquisition. Basically, an indulgence is a bribe…a cash payment to the Church, for which one could be absolved from sin. Martin’s argument was that indulgences were not at all what scripture meant by “paying for your sins.” At one point, Herr Luther nailed 95 such complaints to the door of a church, possibly due to irritation after his doctor put him on a diet of worms. Martin Luther’s protests led to the Protestant Reformation, which led to televangelism, which led to Jerry Falwell. Not that Martin saw that coming.
For the record, there’s another dictionary definition of indulgence. (see “Clinton White House”)
On the night of 16 December, 1773, Boston brewmeister Samuel Adams convinced a bunch of barhopping guys calling themselves the Sons of Liberty to dress up like Mohawk Indians, which is a pretty good weekend on its own merit. But next, Sammy talked the feisty faux Native Americans into boarding three British ships in the Boston harbor. (Today, of course, New England harbor security is much tighter.) Once on board, the costumed Sons tossed nearly 350 chests of tea overboard because, you know, that’s what barhopping guys wearing costumes do. Nearly forty-five tons of tea ended up in the harbor, resulting in millions of lobsters swimming with a British accent.
On 14 July, 1789, after attending a matinee performance of Les Mis, thousands of disgruntled Frenchmen stormed a prison called the Bastille. The French protesters beheaded the warden, took over the prison, and set up free classes to teach waiters how to be rude and condescending to foreign customers.
In May of 1930, a guy in India named Mahatma Gandhi, who was the spitting image of actor Ben Kingsley, gathered thousands of protesters and set off on the “Salt March,” a 23-day, 240-mile journey to the coast of India to collect their own salt. As a result of this protest, over 60,000 went to jail. I know…not exactly Crime of the Century material, but the on-site British Empire didn’t allow people to just run around eating untaxed salt, because, you know, that’s what border-hopping guys with guns do.
Another protestor named Martin Luther made history in August, 1963, in what is one of the most famous speeches ever. Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech was delivered to a crowd of some 200,000 civil rights protestors at the Lincoln Memorial, an event which many scholars think led directly to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and President John Kennedy’s decision to have some more sex with Marilyn Monroe.
In the Spring of 1989, over a million Chinese protesters, most of them students, gathered in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, to complain about the three remaining American products that were still being made in America. During the protests, several hundred people died, as if it were a normal weekend in Chicago.
The lesser-known “Singing Revolution” of 1989 involved over 2 million Baltic citizens who dreamed of independence for Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. The protestors held hands, turned to face their oppressors in Russia, and sang. Oddly enough, the Kremlin was minimally moved. Meanwhile, while bravely running across a nearby airport runway, Hillary Clinton bravely claimed she was shot and bravely killed three times.
And the proud protestor tradition continues, though, these days, it seems a little damp. The Antifa accounting department is trying to get a refund for about two million unused banners, and the sinister Donald Trump Regime has regained control of the Bastille. It seems that nothing can stop this tyrant who clearly stole the US election by winning the election.
But hope lives on. This coming week, on the eighth of November – the one-year anniversary of Donald Trump’s election-night victory – hundreds of millions of liberals (in other words, about seven people) plan to gather in anti-Trump solidarity and … and I am not good enough to make this stuff up … and “scream helplessly at the sky.”
Take that, Esau.