Protesting a Strongman

As the days countdown to the inevitable, let’s remember that our attention is power and consent.

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Ticktock… the ominous countdown to round 2 is upon us.

As the days count down to what has been widely covered as an attempted takeover of the freedoms inherent in the U.S. system, let’s remember that our attention is on power and consent.

Instead of watching the inauguration and the surrounding media coverage and inevitable drama and corruption, we can simply turn away. Watch something else, bang pots and pans during the ceremony, scream, garden, work, exercise, meditate… we have a lot of options more enticing than rewarding the bread and circuses system set up to scam us.

Our fear is a commodity being weaponized against us, both by the perpetrators and the media making money covering the circus and even more corruptly in some cases, benefiting from the circus directly in other ways as oligarchs-in-waiting, and also by influencers making bank with rage bait.

Rage got us nowhere in his first term, and after selling the idea of Trump as a dictator, Democrats are now patting themselves on the back for handing him power. Rage is a waste of energy and the constant triggering of it leads to a feeling of helplessness, which ultimately only helps a strongman.

Instead, each of us can choose to send a message with the way we use our power, spend our money, and give our attention.

MONEY

Many people are already preparing to not buy anything they don’t need as both a form of protest and simply a matter of personal financial protection for an economy that might well contract under poor leadership. This is a quiet form of protest and not likely to make a direct impact on a wanna-be strongman unless enough people do it, but given our culture of consumerism, that seems unlikely.

Still, big business that pushed the adjudicated rapist back into power needs your money to thrive. It seems foolish to reward them for their choices.

POTS AND PANS

The Serbians protested their then strongman Slobodan Milošević using pots and pans — and some joy and silliness. The students and opposition protested blowing whistles and banging pots, pans and drums to protest election fraud and Milošević.

They were, after years of struggle and strife, ultimately successful.

In 2020, when Serbians again pulled out the pots and pans to protest the Coronavirus pandemic rules — including a former leader of the student protests of the 1990s who again used a wooden spoon to bang a pot, Reuters recalled their previous protests from 1996-1997. The pots and pans are a reliable tool, it seems. They are non-violent, they are not illegal, and almost everyone has them.

Assured knack for civil disobedience

The Irish Times reported in 1997 on both the student protests and the opposition coalition, who showed “an assured knack for civil disobedience”, using whistles, pots and pans and screaming to drown out daily propaganda:

To counter the propaganda broadcast by the state television news at 7.30 every night they have got Belgraders to "drown out" the official version of the day's events by blowing whistles, banging on pots and pans, letting off fireworks and simply screaming at the top of their lungs.

Their creativity was impressive:

New ideas include refusing to pay utility bills and jamming the switchboards of ministries and other government offices by bombarding them with telephone calls.

"The less work these people do, the better it is for the country," said Zoran Djindjic, one of the three leaders of the opposition coalition Zajedno (Together).

This is obviously distilled and oversimplified version of events in order to focus on the methods used, so it’s important to note that the government didn’t automatically cave. It’s not that one protest of pots and pans did it. They were protesting a strongman, after all. In fact, it took years of dedication, creativity and engagement.

Lack of consent

Their message of defiance and dissent was clear, which is important because a would be strongman can’t operate easily or well without the seeming approval of the people, which is why their media will flood the airwaves with supporters while gatekeeping against dissent.