In order to achieve change, you have to convince a majority of the need for change.
I saw a comment online that gave me pause, because it represented a mentality that over the centuries, has resulted in misery for the human population. Some radical postulated that "centrists" never get anything done, and if you want social change, you have to rely on the radicals and fringe groups to achieve that social change.
A nice theory, but it has a lot of flaws. To begin with, there are a plurality of extremists who are at odds with one another. Actually, they both want the same thing - a totalitarian takeover of the government. One wants to send trans people to death camps, the other wants to enact guaranteed annual income - or some such nonsense. Both want to force their minority views onto the majority of the population.
So when you make this statement that radicals are necessary for "change" you have to ask, "which ones?" Because in every major social upheaval, there have been radicals on either side, pushing in opposite directions, and the side that won was the side that got the centrists to align more closely with their agenda.
Take the Civil Rights movement. The comment I refer to used that as an example. Advances in Civil Rights would not have occurred without the protests and sit-ins and marches. And yes, there is a lot of truth to that. But it wasn't that bigoted Southern Sheriffs saw this going on and said, "Oh, I see now! I was so wrong to discriminate! Let's change things, OK?"
That didn't happen. The peaceful protests, broadcast on television, showed the country and the world what life was like for blacks in the South - and even the North. I digress, but I read postings online from "people" who claim the South is racist, which might have been true in 1965,but today, you find racism in every State of the Union. Progress, I guess. There are more racists in South Boston than in South Carolina, it seems. Go look at the footage of "Southie" protesters protesting "bussing" in the 1970s, and it is the same sort of folks who protested "integration" in Alabama in the 1950s. Racism knows no geological boundaries. But I digress - or did I? It may come in handy later on.
So we had two "radical" agendas back then - Governor George Wallace "standing in the schoolroom door" claiming "Segregation, now, segregation forever!" And on the other side, Dr. Martin Luther King, peacefully protesting and making more of a point through non-violence than the Klan did with violence.
America watched, in horror, at the indignities and outright murder committed against marchers and freedom riders. Middle-class and middle-of-the-road America was convinced that change was necessary - and that drove the votes on both sides of the aisle to enact LBJ's "Great Society" programs.
As an aside, it was also the Russians, oddly enough. During the "Kitchen Debates" between Nixon and Khrushchev, the premier used the "whataboutism" argument against Nixon. If America was so great, why are blacks treated so poorly? In Soviet Russia, everyone is treated the same - poorly - regardless of race or creed! That latter statement wasn't necessarily true, as many ethnic minorities in the Soviet Union were indeed treated poorly - but their plight wasn't broadcast on the evening news. That is the advantage of a fascist state - you control the media narrative.
So in a way, both Dr. King and the Russians shamed us into it. And maybe the resurgence of racism and far-right thinking is tied, in part, to the demise of the Soviet Union. We no longer have to posture ourselves as the "good guys" - only as the "slightly better" guys, and it seems sometimes we fail even at that.
It was radicals on both sides who publicized the civil rights issue - but only one side was able to persuade the majority to act. The extremists never had enough votes, by themselves, to make real change.
The image above is a bullshit meme that decries centrism as being "morally indefensible." And it would be, if it were true. But no one seriously ever thought there was a "compromise" between the KKK and Civil Rights. For the vast majority of Americans, if they were aware of the abuses of racism, it was a back-burner issue for them - something that happened elsewhere, not to them or their friends. Where the peaceful protests of the Civil Rights movement succeeded was in convincing the middle that this wasn't just a problem for other people, but for everyone.
The same is true of the Vietnam War - it ended not because a few radicals (who, with college deferments, were largely never in risk of actually serving) protested, but because the middle-of-the-road Americas got fed up with an endless war that didn't seem winnable, no matter how much we bombed (and we bombed) and how many were killed. It was Nixon who ended the war, not on humanitarian grounds or because college students were protesting, but because it was costing a lot of money and there was no end in sight.
One of the most famous protests against the war - during the 1968 Democratic Convention - turned the middle-class away from the anti-war movement. Claiming it was "my way or the highway!" the protesters unwittingly elected Richard Nixon - the guy they least wanted to run America. Those protests didn't help end the war - they arguably extended it by five years or more.
It was only when there was a consensus of a majority of Americans that the war was unwinnable (without starting World War III or bankrupting the country) that the war ended - not with a bang, but a whimper.
And once the majority view shifted, change happened - maybe not all the change the radicals wanted, but some of it, anyway. Today, mainstream Republicans run away from racists and antisemites. Even George Wallace had a change of heart and realized racism was a dead-end political strategy. The most recent example of this, is a bogus organization calling itself the "College Republicans United" (which is not affiliated with College Republicans) tried to put on an event with two "White Supremacists" named Fuentes and Sanchez. I am not making this up!
They booked the event at a hotel, claiming it was an "awards ceremony" for graduating seniors. The fact you have to deceive people to book the event hall is a sign you are doing something odious. They even snookered the local Republican Party into "endorsing" the event - the party officials falsely believing it was a real College Republicans event, and not some racist, antisemitic hate-fest. Republican officials were horrified their names were being associated with the event and ran away as fast as possible.
(I digress again, but if your name is Fuentes or Snachez the only way you are being invited to the White Supremacy Club is through the servants' entrance. These guys are delusional if they think that White Supremacists are going to embrace Hispanics. They might make use of these tokens, but eventually they will be spent.)
That is the reality in the South today - at least in Georgia. Sure, we have "Our Miss Margie" - who is so odious that even the hard-core Nazis have taken a pass on her. Most of our elected officials make it crystal clear that racism and antisemitism are no longer on the table. Embracing these ideas loses elections - the centrists will vote you out of office if you did. And indeed, on January 7th, the day after the insurrection, Georgia elected not one, but two Democratic Senators to the US Senate - giving the Democrats a majority. Either party embraces extremes at their own peril.
Democrats lose elections when the GOP tags the Democratic Candidate as being beholden to extremists. And the deal is sealed when extremists refuse to vote unless their extremist candidate is on the ballot.
Of course, while antisemitism and racism are no longer on the menu, going after "trans" people and drag queens, and eventually even the gays, seems still to be a popular sport with the GOP. The vast majority of Americans are in favor of gay marriage and indeed, it is likely that almost everyone in the country has a gay friend or family member or coworker (whether they realize it or not). The transgender "community" (I hate that word, it means nothing) hasn't done a good job of selling itself. When your "trans heroes" are Bruce Jenner and Bradley Manning, well, you've sort of have a dirty halo.
And yes, I "dead-named" them - so what? That is one reason why the whole "trans" thing hasn't had any traction. They aren't asking for acceptance, but demanding that they be called by certain names and pronouns, as if being called by the wrong name was akin to being splashed with acid or something. It is a pretty stupid hill to die on.
Then you have idiots like this person who showed up at a White House event and then flashed their boobies (are you happy now? I used a gender-less pronoun! Such real progress!). This only convinced the majority of Americans that these trans folks were mentally ill. And indeed, the trans people you read about - the attention-seekers - tend to be a little bit "off." As I noted before, you may have met a trans person and never realized it - most want to just be left the hell alone to live their lives.
Until the trans "activists" can convince the majority (or indeed, a super-majority) of their cause, not much will change. Until then, it seems like they are going the route of the 1968 Democratic Convention rioters - or indeed any kind of rioter of that era or even today. The middle-of-the-road will be convinced of your cause if you show you are s real victim of injustice. They will not be convinced by fear, violence, and intimidation. Making "demands" rarely accomplishes much.
Of course, one could argue that a lot of the bad press is due to "false flag" operations or because of hangers-on who just want to riot and steal. Many of the BLM protests, for example, were derailed when rioters showed up with the idea of causing mayhem and destruction - and thievery. It derailed the whole movement - that and the leaders of the movement being caught buying mansions with the funds they raised.
And the opponents of any movement will be quick to point out these issues. It is why J. Edgar Hoover tried to discredit Dr. King by poking into his persona life and trying to blackmail him. Talk about glass houses! How come no one did the same to Hoover? Oh, right, the mafia did.
The issues many of these young people are pushing today aren't getting traction as middle-of-the-road Americans (who are the majority of citizens) haven't been convinced and the few efforts to convince them, have backfired. I say "few efforts" because, like Comrade Bernie Sanders, leftists seem to mostly live in an echo chamber, where they repeat the same slogans to themselves, over and over again. You have to leave Vermont and persuade someone other than a "Bernie Bro" of the righteousness of your cause.
Issues like "Guaranteed Basic Income" and "Student Loan Forgiveness" don't really resonate with the majority of Americans - even among the young and the Left. The idea of "loan forgiveness" is so sloppy that it isn't funny. No one has an answer, for example, as to how that would work going forward - do we forgive loans on an annual basis for the next generations of students? Sort of unfair to forgive old loans but not the new ones, isn't it? And what about people who paid their's back? Do they get a rebate? And (unlike President Biden's ill-fated plan) shouldn't there be some sort of "needs" test for this? Are we giving loan forgiveness across the board, even to millionaires? And yes, forgiving PPP loans was a bad idea as well - two wrongs don't make a right.
Not only that, it doesn't address the basic issue - why has the cost of college skyrocketed by many times the rate of inflation? Solve that riddle, the student loan thing solves itself.
Similarly, "guaranteed basic income" sounds sweet to a 20-year-old who wants a free $1200 a month. But it is predicated on abolishing all other forms of assistance, from Social Security to Food Stamps. Many Seniors would not go along with ditching a $3500-a-month SS check in favor of Andrew Wang's paltry $1200. And it's not like you can just "get a job" at age 90, either. But you can - or should - at age 20.
Yes, revolutions do occur throughout history. And extremists of all stripes like to posit that it was a tiny minority that enacted major social change. Right-wingers call themselves the "3%'ers" as they erroneously claim that only 3% of the population of Colonial America actually fought or supported the revolution. If that was really true, we would have lost. The reality was, most Colonials were fed up with Britain's attempts to control the colonies, and the more they tried to maintain their grip on power, the more people were convinced that the revolutionary cause was just.
Similarly, the Russian Revolution may have been lead by a relatively small cadre of activists, but it was the general discontent with the Czar that sealed the deal. If everyone was happy with the status quo, it would have never gotten off the ground. It didn't hurt matters any that Russia was in the middle of losing in World War I.
Attempting to force extremist views on the general population will always backfire. And the nouveau Communists and the neo-Nazis don't seem to get this. Americans aren't ready to elect a dictator, no matter how much of a fuss Fox News makes over transgender beer. And no, we are not so desperate as to need a Communist takeover, either.
Rather than despising centrists, maybe they need to court them! One does attract more flies with honey than vinegar. Assuming you want flies, of course.
