[extropy-chat] (POLITICS) Utility of Protest was :Exhibitionism (no, not THAT kind)

[Brett Paatsch]

The Avantguardian wrote:

> I have a question to put to those extropes that were
> alive during the Civil Rights movements of the 60's.
> What happened to the power of protest? Why were the
> civil rights rallies and protests so successful in
> this country while much bigger record setting protests
> on both coasts against the War in Iraq completely
> ineffectual.

Politicians are better at counting votes and working at
wedges in modern times than they were in the 1960's.

If you know that a million marching people are not the
right million (because your watching the polls which you
have confidence in and your database of demographics 
which you have confidence in) and that you can split
them with appeals to various different interests you can
treat it as just so much temporary noise and the bleating of
cattle, and like a very manageable problem.

In short, the technology of databases and polling favours
politicians who care enough to use it more than citizens
that on average don't care enough. 

This sort of tech wasn't available in the 1960's so it seemed
a lot more dangerous to politicians to disregard sentiments
that could not be so confidently quantified, divided and 
conquered.

For most party political critters the party machines provide
them with the stats that matter and the real contest is not
for the voters but for influence within their party. 

That's it in a nutshell, I think.

But I wasn't really there in the 1960's, I wasn't born until
1966. 

Brett Paatsch