Easter is not my holiday, but I recognize its importance to Christians and respect their right to celebrate it in peace and with dignity. But then, others disagree.
This is exactly where they should be protesting and the exact time. Don’t let these people know peace. Keep your foot on their necks https://t.co/ASrkgx11JB
— Erica Ifill (@wickdchiq) March 31, 2024
Whether it’s closing highways, seizing the college chancellor’s office or cutting up a painting, there is a common theme throughout these actions: Their conception of morality is more important than yours, than anyone else’s, and they are, at least in their mushy minds, the righteous. That means doing anything, doing any disruption, doing any harm, is not merely justified, but the epitome of morality. These are the people who tell themselves they are on the right side of history, as if history gives a damn what they say, which means that whatever they do, it must be the good and moral thing.
Essentially, wrapping oneself in shallow platitudes of virtue empowers them to ignore all other norms of human behavior. To argue that they aren’t the paragons of virtue is to invite a pointless response comparing their view of righteousness. How can we compare the destruction of a masterwork with the deaths of Gazan children, they will shriek. What the painting has to do with Gaza isn’t acknowledged as a real point. Anything that forces normies to confront their outrage is fair game, and we just don’t get it.
2/4 Activists rose to sing "Dona Nobis Pacem" (grant us peace in Latin), to echo the words of Christ, "blessed are the peacemakers." However, security slammed the activists to the ground, cathedral refuse to pause the service, continuing to stay silent on the humanitarian crisis pic.twitter.com/ejmeGrZ7KP
— Extinction Rebellion NYC 🌎 (@XR_NYC) March 31, 2024
To the activists, there is a humanitarian crisis, and what can’t be explained is why they couldn’t just pause Easter services to elevate their cause above whatever it is they do in that cathedral. After all, aren’t they more righteous, more important, the center of everyone’s universe because they have decided for themselves that their cause matters more than anything?
We are witnessing the demise of norms, lines beyond which “decent” people will not go. We see it in politics, where Trump is disinhibited from anything remotely resembling acceptable behavior, We see it on the streets, where the unduly passionate are certain that whatever they do is for a higher purpose, and god history will vindicate their offensive behavior.
Norms allow us to co-exist. Norms allow us to go about our day without fear that some random nutjob will wreak havoc on our life for whatever purpose they deem more important than our being left alone. But those are the old norms that allowed us to live and let live, to do onto others as we would have them do unto us. Those aren’t the new norms, where we use the words they tell us to use and support the side they tell us to support, and are complicit in awfulness if we don’t do as we’re told.
To point out that this is unsustainable is too obvious to need to be said, and yet we don’t seem to have a way to convey to the activists that they are not the righteous, but the offensive crazies. To tell them is pointless. They are absolutely certain they are right and we are wrong, that their purpose is so much more moral, more existential, that no argument, no reasoning, nothing, can dissuade them from their cause.
There were only a handful of activists disrupting the Easter service at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, but it only takes a handful to spoil the service. There are usually only a pair of activists in a museum throwing soup on a painting, but that’s enough to make it happen. When we talk about the tyranny of the minority, this is part of what we’re talking about. The few willing to behave in outrageous ways, secure in the certainty of their righteousness, will cause misery to the many who abide the norms of decent behavior.
The normies cannot win the battle against the activists because they are constrained by norms. No one in the audience at the Easter service will leap up and beat the daylights out of these disrupters because that would be wrong and uncalled for, and so the activists can disrupt with relative impunity. The normies are put to the test in their cars as activists block highways, tempting fate with their illegal conduct to see whether they can compel the normies to be violent. If it happens, it may cost a few lives or limbs, a price the righteous are willing to pay to prove that the normies are really the evil ones and they deserve their mantle of righteousness.
This situation cannot continue, and yet without norms, there is no way to prevent it from continuing.
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Destruction of the norms is the point. It is all about destroying ALL of the norms, and replacing them with their own. They say this explicitly – go find the interviews of the mostly peaceful protesters in Portland. They want to tear down the entire society, to the ground. And when they are done, they will stand there in the rubble, with not even a shovel in their hands, and say “Let’s begin to rebuild it the way it should be.”
They are sure this is the right way because it is what they have been taught in school, from nursery school up. Systemic racism, systemic sexism, systemic discrimination against the underprivileged. So, they have to keep hammering at the system, By Whatever Means Necessary, to get it to fall and crumble into dust. One hammer blow at a time.
They need to take at least one course where they go to Caracas, or Dachau, and a gulag in China or Russia, to see the real ultimate result of creating a society based on their “scientific methods”. Especially the ones who say “Keep your foot on their necks.” She wants to be head of the ministry of re-education.
And I know you hate to see me say it, but Progressivism IS a religion. This sort of conviction and determination and willingness to destroy stuff only appears in religions that will not tolerate dissent or disagreement, of any amount, from heretics or apostates or atheists or agnostics or deniers. If it talks like a religion, acts like a religion, loves like a religion, hates like a religion, and fights like a religion, it IS a religion.
They want to tear down the entire society, to the ground. And when they are done, they will stand there in the rubble, with not even a shovel in their hands, and say “Let’s begin to rebuild it the way it should be.”
This would not be a problem except for one glaring issue. When you ask them “What should it be?” they have absolutely no answer. Even the negative examples you list had a vision, even if it was only put themselves in power and reap the rewards thereof. These people genuinely have absolutely no clue what kind of society they want to build. Of course it doesn’t help that every issue they supposedly stand for are all mutually exclusive and cannot exist together.
“No one in the audience at the Easter service will leap up and beat the daylights out of these disrupters because that would be wrong and uncalled for, and so the activists can disrupt with relative impunity.”
Protesters like these are like children who confuse “can’t” and “don’t want to” when their parents deal with them. They think Joe Public can’t harm them, when the truth is Joe doesn’t want to. I think those days are drawing to an end. It looked like several parishioners helped hustle the performance artists out of the sanctuary.
Excellent piece.
2 observations.
It was a short jump from bothering people in restaurants and protesting at politicians’ homes to the actions you mention.
It strikes me that the less mass appeal a cause has, the more likely its proponents are to engage in this type of activity.
“We burn it all to the ground and you rebuild it in our image.”
I’ll wager most of these knuckleheads have never been near a country, city, or even a neighborhood in which the norms are “an eye for an eye.” I have – multiple times and places.
The interesting part is that, in my experience, pockets of civilization can flip to bloody anarchy almost at the drop of a hat and under the most unexpected of circumstances. Any one of these “protestors” who thinks they will see it coming and either get out of the way or take charge are truly deluded.
And I went down to the demonstration
To get my fair share of abuse
Singing, “We’re gonna vent our frustration
If we don’t we’re gonna blow a fifty-amp fuse”
Sing it to me, honey
You can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
But if you try sometimes, well, you just might find
You get what you need
But … isn’t f**king up the (usually considered to be subhuman) Other, frequently because G*d “told us to do it” the actual human tribal “norm?” Things like “the Golden Rule” and “live and let live” are actually counter to the normal “norm.” (bearing in mind that the State is the god for many people)
In other words, the world is just reverting to what it usually is like after a brief shining moment of Otherwise. If someone isn’t In The Tribe, then he’s … fair game.
See further examples at what our chimpanzee cousins do to Others. Primate nuts don’t fall all that far from the tree.
It’s remarkable the protesters haven’t been targeted by other protesters, given that they made it clear they were there for the “climate” shtick of yesterday, and that “free Palestine” was nothing but a parting comment. Wokeists are never going to get all the protesters into line until they send protesters to disrupt the protesters who are not properly directing their disruptions in furtherance of the fad du jour.
If they want to protest in a church service I can think of a lovely little one in Kansas where the members are all about the right to protest in other peoples venues and events.