Sobek
Disgusting Scalie
Long but worth the read. A couple excerpts:
"The crowds remained dignified while getting thrashed. Their resolution was powerful to observe, and useless against an opponent with training and the instruments of force. For the naive protestors who believed that their good intentions were sufficient to stay firmly planted in Ottawa, they got a lesson in the rules of power. In the zero-sum nature of conflict, impersonal violence beats unarmed conviction – and because the demonstrators maintained their pacifism, their chants to “Hold the line!” sounded like movie dialogue."
"The resignations may have felt like victories but were actually defeats, since the vacated positions are now being replaced with regime loyalists. Protests work well when they align with the aims of the regime, at which point any violence and lawlessness will be excused, as with the Black Lives Matter riots of 2020. When demonstrations contradict the regime’s agenda they only serve as a brief pressure release for discontentment, after which you are expected to go home."
A good point. Complete peaceful and non-confrontational responses only really work when the enemy can be hurt by them. Gandhi is the ultimate example of this: His peaceful resistance only worked because he was dealing with the British, and he successfully trapped them in a moral conundrum where they could crush him but to do so they would have to violate their own stiff upper lip and claim of moral superiority to the uncivilized Indians. Had Gandhi tried it against Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan he would have been shot first time around and that would have been the end of it.
