But this was for a lawful protest that didn’t bother anyone and was done with the cooperation of the police and authorities.
And let me be blunt — the Women’s March accomplished nothing. It was a polite march on a weekend afternoon that made everyone feel better but had no agenda, no demands, and led to no action whatsoever.
As a student of history, I consider such marches worse than useless. I’m not criticizing the motives or the good hearts of the protestors — it’s their tactics. State-sanctioned marches with no demands that inconvenience no one — they give people the illusion of doing something, they allow everyone bask in the perception of a job well done, but are completely ignored by “leaders” when it comes to changing their actions. If you demand nothing, anyone can give it to you for free.
When Trump refuses to leave — which I believe is a near certainty, unless his poor lifestyle choices finally catch up with him — these won’t be polite demonstrations with police protection for the demonstrators.
There will be demonstrations where the police are in opposition to the demonstrators, who will be gathering “illegally” despite the Constitution. There will be mass arrests like in 2004 — Americans didn’t seem to give a shit about the largest political mass arrests in US history back then and I’m quite sure that the powers-that-be noticed that.
3% of Americans own an average of 17 guns each. An American who owns 17 guns — who did he vote for in 2016, do you think? (And why, exactly, does a person own 17 guns? What does he fantasize about doing with those guns, if it isn’t killing the rest of us? I use the pronoun “he” where I generally never would, because my guess is that 99% of these “super gun owners” are men.)
They’ll be out in force, using those guns on demonstrators, and the police will mostly do nothing. In fact, I fully expect the police to participate in violence against the demonstrators in some areas.
Many, many Americans won’t have the tenacity to stand up for their country. It will be…exciting to see what happens.
Since I’m prognosticating (again) let me lay out the the scenarios in what I perceive is decreasing order of likeliness:
- Trump loses, refuse to accept the results, there is civil disobedience and violence, eventually he leaves.
- Trump more or less legitimately wins. Perhaps he starts a war to do this — Americans always love it when their country is killing people.
- Trump blatantly cheats and “wins” the election. There is civil disobedience and violence, but he keeps the stolen presidency.
- Trump loses, refuse to accept the results, there is civil disobedience and violence, there is a long period of uncertainty.
- Trump loses, refuse to accept the results, there is civil disobedience and violence, eventually he takes control anyway.
- Trump blatantly cheats and “wins” the election. There is civil disobedience and violence and eventually he is forced to step down.
- Trump loses, and concedes that he lost.
I put in the last case for completeness. It’s inconceivable to me that Trump would ever concede anything to anyone.
