I have the freedom to, at any time of my choosing, turn this into a blog about why 3.75” action figures were the perfect height for playing with as a kid, so I feel distinctly less pressure to engineer some kind of salient take on the moment.

But let’s talk about the protests in LA, a story so gripping that it’s left some late night hosts literally telling their audiences they didn’t know how to make it funny.¹

(They’ve clearly never read my pitch for Ain’t Love A Kick, a story about two protesters who are kicked by the same police horse and end up in the hospital next to each other and fall in love. It’s 86 minutes long and yes, they do argue in the rain right before the end. You’ll be crying, though that may just be the 4DX theater releasing tear gas.)

THE L.A. PROTESTS

Earlier this week I laid out the major camps’ takes on the protests in the media. And if you look at it, we are almost exactly following the meaningless argument cycle we did in 2020 about protests and the “right” way to protest and what it’s accomplishing. But if you’ve been, as my dad used to say, “down with the cause” for a few years you already had to have all these arguments during Black Lives Matter. Think back! It was a bad time but think back! Remember these?

“If the protesters want to be taken seriously they should protest peacefully!”

OR

“Look at what they’re doing to their own communities!”

OR

“The protests will actually help Trump.”

VERY QUICK: (1) if you think this you’ve never met cops (2) watch this speech you should remember from 2020 (3) they won’t, they didn’t in 2020, you’re an idiot who thinks all things help Trump.

Do you know what all those sentences up there have in common?

They’re all from people who are against the protests, but don’t have the stones to admit it so they dress it up in concern-trolling “decorum” nonsense.

Is Jake Tapper against these protests? Yes! Is Karen Bass against these protest? Yes! Is everyone who went to the Yay For Centrist Democrats conference last month against this? Odds are yes! Because effective protest sparks more effective protest and that means that the status quo these lukewarm goobers make their money off could change. Everyone involved here, talking head / politician / audience, is invested in a reality where protestors are simply opportunistic vandals and rogues. Because that means everyone scolding and everyone agreeing with scolding can still consider themselves to be the good guys, the smart guys, the ones doing it the right way. If protest were both effective and morally good, what would that say about America? What would it require of the couple sitting on their suburban couch — would they have to drive one of their three cars into downtown and GASP make a police officer uncomfortable by walking in the street??? Impossible — so they all bite down on their belief that the protests and protestors are in fact, the problem.

But they can’t come out and say that, because that would shatter the illusion they’re not just coastal Republicans — a revelation that would, again, cripple their bag. Remember, all these people have to pretend they give a shit about things actually getting better for everyone, not just themselves. So they have to find a way to say the protests shouldn’t happen while still pretending there’s a protest they think should happen.

They’re gonna pretend they’re for protest — but it’s a mythical perfect protest that doesn’t exist. One that inconveniences no one, is completely obedient to authority, and when told “no” will say “thank you so much for considering righting injustice, it’s an honor to be rejected.” This is also a protest they themselves would never attend.

And that is why fundamentally their arguments do not matter. Because they’re not arguments, they’re not advice, they’re not even suggestions. They’re chaff sent off to their future customers letting them know “I’ll never help fill your downtown with ne’er do wells!” So to drive the point home, what they are saying does not matter and does not merit good faith arguments. Especially if you’re getting out there on the streets.

No one with boots on the ground at a protest should give two shits about what someone one a screen and not at a protest thinks should happen at said protest.

I have been to hundreds of protests in my life for dozens of issues. Some with my whole family, some alone, some with a white friend to make sure I didn’t get my ass beat by the police. [If you’re a white friend on the fence about going to a protest, ‘being a protective layer for brown protesters’ is a real thing, and you should go do it!]

Never, in any protest, did I or anyone there go, “Wait wait wait, everyone stop — we have to check in with what John Fetterman thinks our most effective strategy is!!!” Protests are organic, they are grassroots, and in leading them you’re wrangling a crowd of sometimes thousands of people each with their own motivations and interests and thoughts on 'what we should do to fix all this.’

And you may have noticed, if you’ve been to one, that there is not a Protestmaster General who everyone blindly follows, an executive leader commanding each indivudual protester in their actions as one slavish corporate body. Because again, that’s not how protests work and everyone who has ever been to one knows it. A protest is an eruption of humanity who has been told every other recourse to power is closed to them. It is the bulging spinal disc of democracy. It’s going to get inflamed, and go places it shouldn’t go, and shut shit ALL the way down until it gets addressed.

Obviously I give a big HELL YEAH to this. Protest got women the vote and Black people the consideration of being human. And just as that generation starts to pass, looks like we might have to do it again. And it’s not all Woolworth’s counters and buses. It’s making life inconvenient the the convenienced. It is FORCING yourself to be heard.

But there’s one more dumb-as-hell argument out there I have to talk about. And it’s so pervasive, so prevalent, that even people who are out and supporting protests feel like they have to caveat with it.

It’s the “Well obviously you shouldn’t set Waymos² on fire” line.

To anyone saying this seriously, I have equally serious followups I would love actual in-writing answers to:

• Who the f*ck do you think is lighting Waymos on fire?

• Who specifically? Teens? Immigrants? Antifa? Johnny Storm as Fantastic Four promo?

• Do you think the organizers of protests over ICE are delegating a car-b-que squad to go looking for autonomous vehicles?

• Do you think somewhere on a protest discord they’re setting targets for how many vehicular fires they can set in a night?

• Is your understanding that someone has come to a protest with the express purpose of lighting a car on fire, brought the materials to light a car on fire, and then is going to be immediately dissuaded by another random protester who says “don’t do that?”

This is how you know these people don’t ever go to protests and have never been to protests. Most of these people couldn’t keep 15 middle schoolers sober on a field trip, but they believe that collecting 1,500 adults in the street is gonna have zero outliers.

[Or maybe juuuuust maybe they know that and furiously searching for a burning car is a convenient way to dismiss the protests as a whole and shortcut their way back to We’re The Good Guys Keep Paying Us To Be On TV.]

I have a formula I want you to use when you consider protests and blame. it’s pretty simple.

How Many People Did It Take For This Thing To Happen?

How many people have to decide to spit on a cop for it to happen? One.

How many people have to decide to light a Waymo on fire for it to happen? One.

How many people have to decide that squads of masked, badge-hiding ICE agents are going to swarm immigration court and drag out families reporting for court dates and throw them into windowless vans escorted by local police departments and the national guard for it to happen? [Here’s a hint: it’s a lot more than one.]

Reader, I’ll be honest, I’m sitting here staring at my computer wondering if I need to spell this out or should move on to the end. But I guess I’ll be safe over sorry.

When they do something that takes a bunch of people working in coordination, that’s the thing they’re doing on purpose. When they do something that’s just one guy, that’s usually the thing that guy’s doing.

Well. Not the most eloquent. But enough to beat you over the head with rhetorically.

If you have never been to a protest, you should go. This Saturday is a great opportunity, many many cities are hosting “No Kings” protests/rallies and again, you should go. See it for yourself. Experience the joy of aggravated police supervision for yourself. Tell that one teenage kid with the brick to cool it, yourself.

And then hey, you can tell you’re self You’re One Of The Good Guys.

1  This is a separate thought that I will maybe write about later this week / enshrine as a perma-thesis I keep up here and only have to ever explain once: this is why Black people are best situated to speak comedically about These Times. Because Black people have always held dual emotions for America: pride and sadness. It’s the best place in the world, it’s also broken and poisoned by white supremacy and inequality. Many many people get squishy trying to do both, but not Black people. And that’s why Black people can laugh when America is at it’s worst — because that’s always the side we’ve seen, and you’ve got to laugh sometimes. This has been your Magical Negro Minute, I will now evaporate into emancipated whimsy.

2  Waymo specifically is such a funny choice because some electric cars very famously set themselves on fire anyway, and in choosing a Waymo you are burning up a car that no human driver is going to miss.