[hermit22]

I've had a theory about protests for a while now that, if I was doing work in Sociology or Political Science, I would make my thesis. I may eventually write a paper on it for a conference or something anyway.

The idea is that protesting has lost almost every bit of impact it once had. People don't care about protests anymore, so the entities/policies these people are protesting end up winning after all. Protesting has become a joke - ie. Clinton's comments at WTO meeting in 2000 ("Kids always need something to protest" or some such thing.), news reports that basically belittle the protesters...and then there was the show I saw on Fox while on vacation. In the vein of World's Deadliest Car Crashes, the show displayed footage of various protests, with a voice-over by some sarcastic wise-cracker to provide the entertainment. What these people are upset about wasn't important.

When protesting has entered into the mainstream public consciousness in such a way, it has about as much impact as a Nordstrom's President's Day Sale. So what can be done in its place? Many of the recent anti-globalization protests have resulted in violence. While this did raise the status of the protests in the public consciousness, it did so in a negative way. And, by many definitions of the word, these violent actions can be construed as terrorist actions (ie. political violence).

I don't know what would replace them, and there's a lot more to the theory than just this; esp. in dealing with our consumeristic society and the effect this has had on deadening the public intellect - which can easily be related. So not to hijack the thread, but does any of this make any sense, or am I just more off my rocker than usual?