Trump’s recent call for protests basically went unheeded. See Trump Protest Fizzles Out: ‘More Reporters Here Than Trump Supporters’ .
Trump’s political career seems largely devoid of an attack on the systemic dysfunction we face. The only evidence that comes to mind of Trump even comprehending what he is up, against, were his efforts to get Republicans elected to Congress. He has worked for both MAGA and non-MAGA types.
I originally proposed Voter’s Revenge to both the Trump and Bernie Sanders campaign. (Well, I tried to. Who knows if anybody but a clueless volunteer read my appeal, in either camp?)
While I have little hope that Trump will ever evolve into anything like the change agent that a more astute version of him could aspire to, I decided to write an email to the NY Young Republican Club, asking them to analyze a Voters’ Revenge blog post. (The NYYRC organized, or otherwise sponsored a couple of NYC demonstrations on Trump’s behalf.)
Here it is:
Would somebody there who is astute with respect to political strategy critique my blog post “A Motivational Overview of Voter’s Revenge” @ https://www.votersrevenge.info/?p=120
BTW, I participated in the 2nd largest anti-war march against GW Bush’s Iraq invasion. No Republican came to speak with us, and only 1 or 2 Democrats. Most left town, IIRC. Bi-partisan cowardice, I guess you could call it.
I came away convinced that ubiquitous and frequent public demonstrations (which could entail simply holding up signs near intersections with stop lights, e.g.) had to be superior to large public demonstrations. Sure, IF you could make humongous public demonstrations a weekly occurrence, then you’d probably be better off. (Though, even that is arguable. Activists need to recruit, recruit, recruit to grow their numbers, and just how are you going to recruit your neighbors in CA or NJ, when your only street presence is in Washington, D.C.?)
I also attended a demonstration in Trenton, NJ when GW Bush came to visit. Same problem. Pretty much everybody there is of like mind, and you can’t reach out to the “unwashed masses”, who are basically absent, anyway. Even if they weren’t absent, the police had corralled us into some sort of “free speech zone” (don’t think they called it that. That terminology was used for protests in NYC during a Republican convention, IIRC. But, same idea.) The best we could have done is try to recruit from the unwashed masses along the periphery of our free speech zone.
That is hardly productive. From my point of view, one of the MAJOR purposes, if not THE major purpose, of ubiquitous, frequent demonstrations is Recruitment. On a similar level of importance is educating the public. The LEAST important reason for shotgun type demonstrations is to immediately influence a public figure. When the activists grow their numbers sufficiently, and FOCUS their efforts on removing bad public officials from office (especially during primaries), THEN we will see real world changes, indicating that their activism had paid off in the longer run.
In the Voters’ Revenge scheme of things, these sorts of actions are the preferred “punishment” dealt out to public officials by Voters’ Revenge posses, when their redlines are violated. In particular, “voteslinger” posses.
For public officials who don’t stand for election (like Tony Fauci, until recently; he’s now out of the government), public shaming is about all you can do, directly. This is purview of “wrangler” posses. However, both voteslinger and wrangler posses can exert political pressure on elected officials to help ease the likes of Tony Fauci out of office. The redline conditions for such posses would demand that legislators and executives publicly condemn Fauci, and call for his immediate resignation. The elected officials who don’t bend the knee will then have to face the consequences to their own political careers.
The scenario I sketched out for facilitating the resignation of the likes of a Tony Fauci from office shows a more systemic approach to the systemic dysfunction we suffer from.
The brilliant Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai, a candidate for Senator in Massachussetts who apparently had a sure win stolen from him, has been fairly eloquent about the priority of movements to drive reform, taking what he calls a systems theoretic point of view. However, he’s sparse on details.
Apparently, a solid realization of a systems approach to political systems has been developed by political game theorist Bueno de Mesquita. His effectiveness (as compared to other analysts working for the CIA) is described in the NY Times article Can Game Theory Predict When Iran Will Get the Bomb?
In a more open society than Iran’s, such as ours, individuals have more agency, and constitutional rights to petition the government for redress of grievances. They also have 1st Amendment rights that should allow them to engage fellow citizens in reform efforts against the government, itself. Thus, I take it as a given that a detailed, game theoretic analysis along the line of de Mesquita would also model the behavior of citizen activists. Or would, if only they were more effective.
Well, that is the purpose of Voter’s Revenge – to develop populist, political muscle.