Why Massed Demos Don't Work in America

by Paul E. Anna Wednesday, Jul. 21, 2004 at 12:39 AM

The commies are upset that all of their demonstrating doesn't get them anything here in the US. They seem to have more success with these tactics in other countries.

Right wing nuts are sometimes upset that right wing nuts can't seem to stage large demos like the commies do. P. J. O'Rourke jokes that right wingers don't demonstrate as much as commies because they all have jobs.

A large demonstration is supposed to change minds by what is, in essence, a show of force. One side collects and deploys these thousands of bodies in a quasi-military movement and observers are supposed react like good primates to the demonstration of power and change their political views.

Unfortunately for commies, this gimmick only works if the observers feel intimidated. A mass of men may be frightening in muscle-age communities but machine- and information-age observers react differently.

An undisciplined mass of sloppily dressed men, womyn, the differently gendered, and victims of color is not calculated to impress. Those who see these demos on TV screens are removed from the scene and unlikely to be frightened.

And the commies of America have given up the gun. They have deliberately disarmed themselves. Commies are overrepresented in the 60% of American households that have no firearms. (All stats are from Guns in America: National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms May 1997.)

Whereas right wingers are heavily armed. They are (greatly) overrepresented among the 10 million Americans who own 50% of US guns.

The effect of this is that armed individuals are unlikely to respond to the "argument" represented by a massed demonstration. Since those with arms are capable of "putting the street under fire" whenever the need arises, unarmed commie mobs do not evoke a primate dominance-subordinance reaction in this country as they do in other countries.

Original: Why Massed Demos Don't Work in America