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Oh, you will get protests, even organized by Democrats! That's the point, they will never be effective, but they will siphon off the willpower to actually start up meaningful protests to the point when the real shit goes down, protests won't mean anything any more!
And if you organize a protest yourself? The Dems will come to support you, coopting the whole thing, and making sure it all stays civil and respectful while the police tear gas your ass!
I am not saying give up. There is light at the end of the tunnel. At least that's how it feels right now in Hungary. But the tunnel is long and fucking dark, and you have just taken the first steps in, and Trump is going to try to make sure you can't back out. And our way through was sending our corporatists masquerading as leftists to the garbage dump of history, as it should be.
You can't protest, Trump will bring in the armed forces if you do.
Oh, that's the point, in an Orbánesque society, some protests are allowed. A very often used playbook is to create an issue that his base can rabidly frothe about, most people don't give a shit about, but it hurts a small minority of people enough that they will be very loud about being on the opposite side.
For Hungary, it was academic freedom for a university teaching mostly social sciences. Most people never even heard of it and had no opinion when laws were made to make its position untenable and basically destroy it. But the people immediately close to the issue were protesting like hell! They were out in orderly groups, with loudspeakers and signs on the streets of Budapest, week after week.
Orbán was very happy about this. Hungarian state media was frothing about how this university was destroying the fabric of society, so his base was rabidly against it. The people close to the issue were loudly trying to save it, but they were a minority. And you had a situation where there were weekly protests for half a year, representing a clear minority opinion, basically defanging all other protests for any other issue, while people got jaded into an opinion that protests don't mean anything.
Orbán was not in the country even for most of this, that's how much he cared.
Now imagine the same with Trump deciding to repeal the ADA. Most people don't care about people with disabilities enough, but just enough people will be marching around the country to keep it in the news cycle constantly. All the while his supporters will be out in counterprotests dwarfing the others. And all the while if the economy tanks and there was real discontent, and there was space for real protests, you'd be called a Nazi and a Republican if you didn't join in the existing "movement" headed by the Dems and didn't abide by the "civil and high road" ways of protesting. Most people won't even join your protest because they are tired of protests and protesters, and it will never work anyway, see all those other protests?
Sorry for the rant, I am really jaded by all this, and it just seemed so obvious years ago that the US was going down a Hungary path, and it's just a boring dystopia from now on going forward. It doesn't look like the people getting shot by the National Guard for protesting, it looks like you can do anything, you will always stay a minority, and decency dies a death of thousand cuts.