House of Eratosthenes

Another “Bush is incompetent and he’s scaring little kids” war protest has made the headlines. Bigger protests and littler protests will make the papers, and other protests will be staged without making the papers. This one is a little bit special, in that it consisted of two people.

“The ways of peace are not bombings and breaking into houses and scaring little children and families,” said Judy Whitehouse, 63, of Phoenix, adding that pulling troops out of Iraq would force Iraqis to work together in building a society.

Linn Russell, 56, of Scottsdale, said the war is being mismanaged and shows President Bush is unqualified.

“I feel he’s a leader who has failed to lead us in moments of crisis and is leading us in the wrong direction politically,” Russell said.

This just goes to show the problem with protests. They are noteworthy in that they manifest an opinion; but since just about everybody anywhere has an opinion, and some opinions directly contradict other opinions, that by itself doesn’t make them noteworthy. There must be something else.

So what is it? Is it the verifiability of the opinion? Does the opinion represent a course of action that, in times past, has turned out to be the right way to go? No, that has never been the case. A generation ago, the idea was to show off what an incredibly large number of people had the opinion, and furthermore, thought it was sufficiently important to brave the elements and make the journey and take part in the protest.

That is supposed to have been what was really remarkable.

Well, now I guess you don’t have to have a lot of people. Two will do. So what is the news story here? From the looks of things in the photograph, the weather is fairly nice. Hell, this looks more like a case of cabin fever than a protest.

Process of elimination says, there can’t be anything noteworthy about this except that the women have an opinion. That is the problem with protests. If you’ve presented a compelling reason for me to pay attention to you just because you have an opinion, then logically, anybody who has a different opinion presents an equally compelling reason for me to pay attention to them, too. The only question remaining is if there is someone somewhere who has an opinion different from the opinion of the protester.

And by protesting, hence, proving there is a need to do the protesting, the protester provides strong evidence that someone somewhere has that different opinion. That’s the whole problem with protests. It’s the Law of Thermodynamics about every reaction having an equal and opposite reaction — and the opposite reaction is intrinsic to the protesting. It’s like the man in the sailboat trying to make it go, by blowing into the sails while he’s standing in it.

By the way, I find it amusing that fifty percent of these protesters have chosen to misrepresent what the United States is supposed to be doing in Iraq — “breaking into houses and scaring little children” — and the other fifty percent of the protesters are insisting the George Bush is incompetent. It seems almost settled that there should be no problem coordinating the message among a protest rally of just two people, so what is the overall message here? Our armed forces are trying to break into houses, and can’t quite figure out how to pick the lock? George Bush is jumping out in front of children and trying to scare them, and the children go on about their business, unstartled, because his scary mask is so lame?

Yeah, I know, I’m being silly. That isn’t my point. The point is I’m being silly simply by taking their message seriously. That doesn’t say anything good about their message.

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The Trouble With ProtestsTuesday, March 21st, 2006

The Trouble With Protests
Tuesday, March 21st, 2006