Scream Therapy for the terminally ignored: Is protesting becoming a national sedative?

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Yeah, yeah.  I know.  Protests are an insignia of democracy tattooed onto American buttocks. We are injected with the right to protest in grade school, like a measles shot.  We’re conditioned to do it from the time we can spell “liberty,” which is usually before we can do critical thinking.  What we should remember is most of the world has no right of assembly to protest even the weather.

Modern American protests are not of the Selma or the March on Washington kind that historically meant something. Modern protests are often distractions, people yelling about war with Iran, race, sexual mores, politics, and culture war issues.  Fox News and CNN let you see people protesting transgender bathrooms one day and tax hikes on private jets the next, as if both hold equal moral weight. We even protest allowing drag shows in school libraries, when children can’t even read “Green Eggs and Ham” at the fourth grade level.

If protests actually worked the way we pretend they do—as a steam valve for public pressure—you can bet Elon Musk and George Soros would’ve already have put out an Initial Public Offering on them.  We’d have futures trading of protests on Wall Street,.  Meanwhile, Congress would’ve slapped term limits on itself decades ago, lobbyists would be legally required to wear eye patches and carry parrots to signal their pirated plunder, and lawmakers wouldn’t need polling firms and focus groups to translate what their constituents are screaming in plain English.

Hell.  Americans can’t agree on the time of day.  But here we are—still pretending First Amendment protection of outrage is important.

Sometimes President Trump is the blind squirrel that gets an acorn, but the Anti-acorn Wing of the Democrat party immediately organizes a protest.  Trump appears cloaked in writer Jonah Goldberg’s “Ferris Buellerism.”  Is there a parade marching your way? Jump in front and proclaim yourself the leader. Don’t see a parade yet? Pretend it’s coming anyway and act as if you’re its leader-in-waiting.

Year after year, mobs that are still convinced protesting works keep gathering, chanting, and dispersing, patting each other’s butt for a job well done, leaving behind trampled grass and confused pigeons. 

I’m not a protester.  I know I have a right to, but never have.  Probably won’t.  But I have a constitutional right to protest all the protesters!  My view is if even half of those bug-eyed dreamers doing the protesting clocked in at a steel mill, a meatpacking plant, or even a damn Wendy’s, maybe—just maybe—we’d goose the GDP enough to build something worth protesting for. But no—better to block traffic and livestream your outrage on your cell phone.

“Look Mom, that’s me on the TV, burning the flag.”

Topics.  Protesting has become a hobby.  Some folks knit, some go fishing, some take in NASCAR races, and some scream into the void while holding handmade placards.  President Trump or his supporters can’t buy a bag of marbles without a new protest being ginned up for the next day’s news cycle. 

The newest something to whine about are Florida environmentalists protesting the construction of a makeshift immigrant detention center on an old airport in the Florida Everglades.  The place was Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ idea, but the anti-Trump press named the ‘Alligator Alcatraz’.  The place has heavy-duty tents, FEMA trailers, generators, toilets, no air conditioners, and portable infrastructure.  It is better living than the homeless tent cities in San Francisco and it will house several thousand undocumented immigrants until deportation and if things are as nasty as the protesters speculate, the detainees will be happy to get sent back to where they came from. 

Human guards are not needed.  The facility has well-trained resident pythons and gators. 

The 2025 Florida immigration detention site opposition.

Protest Begins in the Frost:  This American fetish for protest began in the snow and slush of 1770 Boston.  A mob of frostbitten colonial hooligans decided to throw snowballs and icy epithets at Redcoats, who preferred to be in a pub knocking back some gin. These underpaid tools of empire lined up, and let loose a proper volley. When the smoke cleared, the cobblestones were painted with blood. Five were dead and others moaned in the gutter.  The Boston Massacre was a preview of the revolutionary fights coming next.  It was the first protest in America where blood was shed.

And like political campaigns with all their campaign experts,modern protesting has become an interest where someone profits, especially when it is linked to the internet.  There are groups advertising they will organize your protest event, for a fee, of course.  Organizers choose law-related observers, and medics to provide any first aid needed.  Exit routes are chosen along with rally points.  Hydration and food are left to the individual protesters.  Your best running shoes are suggested along with black clothing for anonymity and face masks to shield identity.  Emergency and legal contact info is best written  on their bodies.  Protesters are urged to bring burner phones because burners can’t be traced by the authorities. 

Assisting a riot is a federal crime. The DOJ recently indicted Alejandro Orellana who on June 9^th was delivering protective gear to the more violent anti-ICE protesters in Los Angeles.  Charged with aiding and abetting civil disorder, he faces a five-year prison term.  What Alejandro was doing was showing us protest organizers assume there may be property damage or violence, a few viral arrests, and then someone weeping on TikTok why the Constitution doesn’t protect poor Alejandro.

Then the leftwing lawmakers get involved.   Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA.) criticized ICE agents for wearing masks.  “These ICE agents would do themselves a lot of favor and have more credibility if they did not wear masks and they identified themselves more, because if they are being lawful, they shouldn’t be afraid to show their faces.”

 Uhhh, Eric.  Wouldn’t the same “take off the mask” theory help the ICE agents know who is lawfully protesting and the thugs interrupting ICE agents doing their duty?

Protesting Can Be Deadly.   Prior to Israel’s and the U.S.’s joint efforts to blast Iranian nuclear bomb building to smithereens, pro-Palestinian  demonstrators had taken over parts of American college campuses, especially the elite places like Harvard.   It’s appropriate.  Harvard is the cradle of American student protesting, beginning with the Harvard Butter Rebellion of 1766.  Harvard’s young men paid good money for room and board but had to eat rancid butter.  They began chanting, “Behold our butter stinketh!  Give us butter that stinketh not!” 

In World War I, there was extensive anti-German anger in America.  Some Germans Americans were beaten to death and German Shepherd dogs were killed.  National labor leader Eugene Debs led protests against the war and was imprisoned under the Espionage Act of 1917.

Prior to December 1941, there was strong isolationist sentiment on campuses and in civic life in America, especially among students, religious pacifists, and isolationist conservatives.  After Pearl Harbor, protests mostly vanished.  The few pacificists did protest the war but at great personal cost.

There were protests against the Korean War though they were limited in scale.  A period of the intense McCarthyism blanketed the USA.  Dissent became politically risky.

College demonstrations during the Vietnam War were numerous and some turned radical and deadly.  The 1968 protests in Chicago at the Democrat National Convention were among the more violent, where over 7,000 protesters clashed with police and the Illinois National Guard.  Six hundred were arrested and many were beaten and tear-gassed, including journalists and bystanders.  Nobody was killed.  The reaction of the Chicago police was later called a “police riot.” 

Arrested students protesting in support of Palestine, April 22, 2024.

UC Berkeley: Free Speech in 1960s   It is hard to imagine, but California state government once was uber conservative.  California public universities had enacted numerous limits on students’ political activities in the wake of McCarthyism.  A state government committee claimed universities were breeding grounds for radical or subversive ideas.  Student political activities were banned on campus.

At Berkley in 1964, students protested the university’s ban of student on-campus political activities and free speech.

A Berkley Sit-in, 1964

Eventually the universities overturned the restrictions.  The free speech protests in California became models for later national anti-war protests. 

Kent State. In May 1970, students at Kent State began protesting the invasion of Cambodia and threw rocks at guardsmen.  The Ohio National Guard with live ammo opened fire on the protesters, killing four students, injuring several others, and leaving one paralyzed.  Hanoi was quick to portray the shootings as evidence that in America, dissent is met with violence. 

Jackson State  A few days after Kent State, at Jackson State College, a historically black college (HBCU), black students in Mississippi began protesting some racial taunts from white motorists.  Police came on campus and without warning opened fire on a black dormitory.  Two students were killed and 12 were injured.

The Kent State and Jackson State College killings spurred national outrage.  I was in Vietnam at the time and when word of the killings came in, one old, grizzled sergeant mumbled, “Jesus, now we’re killing our own kids.” 

The result was America’s first general student strike in our history.  Four hundred colleges and universities shut down to protest the invasion of Cambodia, the Kent State and Jackson State killings, and the Vietnam war itself.

The Future of Protest.  Comparing historical protests with today shows the nature of protest is changing in ways that may threaten its democratic purpose. The start of a peaceful protest may see interlopers using the protests to engage in looting, property destruction or blockading highways.  The George Floyd protests in Minnesota saw such an aftermath.  The 1968 Rioting in Chicago at the DNC national convention was a huge conflagration. 

Once a tool to expand freedom and challenge authority, protest today is increasingly used to exhibit political and ideological rigidity.  Campus shout-downs of speakers with conservative views show nothing more than how students are being radicalized.  Professors who should be urging moderation often are leading the protests. 

Large-scale demonstrations like the “No Kings” protest do not spring up overnight from grassroots passions.  Funding and organizing for the No Kings protests came from a range of progressive groups. The 50501 Movement, which began early in 2025 as a decentralized grassroots anti-Trump campaign, was central to national coordination. Other key participants included Ezra Levin’s progressive Indivisible organization, the ACLU, MoveOn, the American Federation of Teachers, SEIU, the Third Act movement, Working Families Party, Democrats Abroad, and the Democratic Socialists of America. While the Democratic National Committee didn’t appear to be involved, the protest was anti-Trump, and Democrat voters and officials undoubtedly took part, which is their fundamental right.  Except for the Salt Lake City event, the No Kings protests were peaceful. 

Although peaceful, the “No Kings” protest saw protesters basically advocating for different elected leaders, not the one elected in 2024 and living in the White House today.  Since that was the gist of this protest, the “No Kings” protest became nothing more than a managed PR stunt.

However, when peaceful protest is replaced by violence, the very protests and the freedoms they claim to defend are undermined.  Campus antisemitism may be an example.  On May 21, a betrothed couple, Sarah Lynn Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky, were shot to death outside the Capitol Jewish Museum in Washington.  The gunman, Elias Rodriguez, shouted “free Palestine,” and later that he committed the shootings “for Gaza.”  Karen Diamond, an 82-year-old Boulder, Colorado woman injured in a June 1 firebombing of a peaceful pro-Israel march died of her injuries June 30th.  Mohamed Sabry Soliman, an Egyptian national illegally in the U.S., yelled “Free Palestine” as he threw the Molotov cocktails. 

The health of protests depends on preserving what Jewish philosopher Simon Rawidowicz called Libertas Differendi—the freedom to be different. Without that foundation, protests risk becoming a form of coercion against democratic societies. 

Though writing in the early 20th century, Rawidowicz grasped the enduring importance of differences. We measure our freedom not by how well we accommodate sameness.  Everyone at a gathering singing kumbaya usually get along with each other.  But how do we respond to those who do not fit easily within our categories?  Differences are a necessary friction in a free society.  Even the differences between our political parties.  Think on it.  Differences are not allowed in totalitarian societies.   Iranian leaders can gin up large crowds of anti-Israel and “Death to America” protests on a moment’s notice.  Political systems that cannot tolerate divergence, as in Iran, Rawidowicz might argue, are ones that have lost confidence in their own intellectual foundation.

Here’s the paradox: when protest shifts from a plea to be heard into a demand that others relinquish their right to think differently, protests cease to defend liberty.  Protests on campuses and city streets easily can spiral into mob behavior where principle gives way to spectacle and rage.  The Los Angeles anti-ICE demonstrations and violence are an ongoing example. 

When slogans like “From the River to the Sea” are chanted red state college campus encampments like the University of Kansas, igniting fears by Jewish students of ethnic cleansing in Israel, we must ask: is this a First Amendment protest or something more sinister?

John Stuart Mill warned that silencing any opinion robs us not only of potential truth but of the opportunity to better understand opposing views. In a pluralistic society like ours, political harmony does not demand uniformity of thought. As Isaiah Berlin argued, imposing a single “correct” belief on everyone is not an act of liberation.  It is the first step toward losing the very freedom of assembly the First Amendment was designed to protect.