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A Theory of Victory Part II: What NOT to Worry About. [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-04-06
How does one accomplish our goals operationally? What are the concrete steps that these can lead to the goals we are aspiring towards?
First another Primer on Objectives & Approaches
I see a good deal of writing and dialogue on protesting and boycotts and other direct actions or congressional calls etc here on Daily Kos, Bluesky, and Youtube as well as other locations and I think these can all be effective tools, sometimes VERY effective.
Right now what gives me some concerns (even though I also participate as well in some of these) is that I don’t see any theory of victory around them.
I wrote much of this article before the April 5 Protests, to catch up a bit on the most recent events, I’ll add here that I am really glad to see how they are taking off, I think they do have a place—so I don’t want any of this to come across as “this is a waste of time.” That is not what I believe and not what I am trying to say so hopefully no one walks away with a different take away.
When I say I am “concerned,” I AM NOT saying we shouldn’t do this or any other specific tactic, but merely we should have appropriate expectations of what this can potentially accomplish and be cognizant of where we need other tools to be successful.
Consider the South Park episode of Underpants Gnomes.
Step 1 Collect Underpants
Step 2 ?
Step 3 Profit.
There is a belief around some of these actions that they will lead to our desired outcomes but—and maybe it is just me—I don’t see a planning structure around them that gives a cause and effect step by step perspective on how these will succeed.
In some cases, some actions or executions fit into the topic from my first part on the Theory of Victory where I indicated some activity is more reaction than action and fills the void of the desire to do “something”/”anything” with less consideration to what it can accomplish than is perhaps desirable or optimal.
In other words how do we concretely see these steps forcing the change we seek? Certainly, we know anecdotally that these actions can sometimes make a difference in some popular manifestations of political change but they are not always effective.
Further, their specific effects have limits of scope, which is to say not every change that is desirable has a history or evidence of these actions leading to it. In some cases no matter the magnitude change can only happen with other tools.
I am mostly focusing on protesting here, but this is relevant for any activity, be it direct action such as boycotts (of which protesting also fits) or political donations or campaign messaging, or lawsuits etc—they all have their place and have specific empirical histories of success or lack thereof for specific magnitudes, approaches, and goals.
Black Lives Matter: A Too Quickly Forgotten Case Study
By some reports the Black Lives Matter movement enveloped 20+ million Americans into it. I think, if you look at one of my previous articles you can see details on why I believe that this was a key part of the 2020 election success. Maybe even THE key success. It is a chicken or the egg kind of thing though, correlation vs causation. Did the movement just signal that there would be high turn out in 2020 or did it help cause that?--for discussion in another article(though I do have an opinion).
The fact remains that these were associated one way or the other. Other commentators or public opinion teams/orgs have asked “What did the BLM movement accomplish if anything?” citing the drop in support a few years later.
However, I contend this is beside the point. Movements have life-cycles, we shouldn’t be surprised that the BLM movement eventually dissipated. The tea party fizzled out, does anyone deny they made an impact?—albeit of course a terrible one (note I know the Tea Party was not “exclusively” a protest movement, but they did protest and this is as much about how movements affect change as only the protest type of tactic).
No, no one does.
So if you expect a movement to last years and years and change opinion persistently, massive protests may be effective, but we shouldn’t expect this to be the case, we should expect immediate or near immediate impacts if any, in specific domains at specific times.
Black Lives Matter I would suggest likely helped set up victory in 2020 even if it didn’t generate all the hoped for changes culturally for the long run. The Tea Party set up political victories in the 2010s and helped shift the Republican Party to be more obstructionist.
These were real consequences even if not all the objectives the movements were hoping to achieve (perhaps in some cases not even the primary objectives) so understanding these kinds of consequences and connecting those to our own objectives can help anchor us in what protesting—or any action—can achieve and where we need to utilized other methods for objectives that won’t fit into that framework.
What we (mostly) don’t need to worry about.
Similarly, the reverse is true, that some challenges—to put it very mildly—we or the world are facing right now in the face of this Regime and MAGA authoritarianism will work themselves out over time, have other actors pushing for their own interests that will likely resolve them to our satisfaction, or are actually in our interest to reach their failure conclusions.
Ukraine
Two seemingly contradictory facts can be true at the same time.
Russia has been devastated by this war and their incompetence has been revealed to the world. We shouldn’t doubt Putin can wage war for many more years if he would like to do so. (though with increasing weakness and higher casualties as they are very low on equipment). The Russians have a seemingly boundless ability to absorb suffering in their population. This shouldn’t be surprising, this has been true for Russia for 100+ years. They have always been militarily behind in sophistication and execution (with of course very notable exceptional individuals such as Zhukov, Brusilov).
We should also not doubt that Ukraine, with moderate support, can continue to stop Russia and perhaps even push them back.
The EU has a similar GDP to the US and a higher population, a very sophisticated weapons stockpile, and a lot rapidly growing military industrial complex. The only limitation for Europe to contain Russia is political will and right now that is on the ascendancy.
Global Economy
The saying that the US sneezes and the world catches a cold is still true. However, the US percent of the world economy is only approximately 23% or so, varying in the early 20%s vs the 50% it was after WWII. The EU is about the same. China is about the same, or larger depending how you measure.
The US matters, it is important, but the world doesn’t need us. Contagion is though of course real, Thailand wasn’t a large economy but it triggered the East Asia Financial Crisis in the 90s that rippled across the world so I’m not saying a deep recession in the US won’t have world wide implications and I’m not saying there is no chance of a world wide depression, it most likely will and that could happen. I’m just saying that it doesn’t necessitate a disaster for the rest of the world and the continued seismic shifts away from the US will continue to reduce this impact/risk.
Authoritarianism is globally being pushed back
I will be the first to say predicting authoritarianism’s premature demise is unwise. However, we can see that ironically the Trump election and its consequences has instilled an immediate consequential result across the world of push back on right wing political parties. People are getting to see in real time what this kind of administration will do around the world and they don’t like what they see.
Further, we have examples such as South Korea of what a determined and self aware populace can do to protect their democracy. See also Brazil, see France and Le Pen, protest levels and push back in Hungary, in Slovakia (where Fico is hoping to emulate Orban) and in Serbia. It seems at the moment at least the world will do fine without us, economically, and politically.
And maybe for once the pro democracy currents from around the world will wash upon our shores instead of the other way around. One can dream right?
The Domestic Economy
The US economy is in free fall, many will suffer. Note when I say we don’t need to focus on this or worry I mean in terms of defeating authoritarianism. Certainly, it will be a MAJOR focus for many individually given the immense costs it will have so hopefully there is no miscommunication on this very real pain that is already coming and will continue emerge.
We can’t really stop the collapse, only the Republicans and Trump can—though at this point I think it can only be mitigated not prevented. However, I don’t think we should in any event.
This unfortunately appears from the election to be an absolute necessity for our political survival. The idea that Trump, MAGA, and Republicans in general are good for the economy and know what they are doing needs to be rebuked, completely and absolutely.
So take care of those you can, and yourself, and broadcast this is 100% Trump—and his Republican enablers’-fault(s) all day every day. (clearly on the messaging , we ABSOLUTELY DO need to focus on this)
It is a tragedy given the hard work Biden and Powell did but at the same time what they have done is another kind of a gift. It will be impossible, without complete utter blindness, to argue with any sense of validity that this is anything but the purposeful destruction of a healthy economy by Trump & MAGA incompetence, or malevolence.
And this didn’t need to happen economically of course but it seemingly needs to happen politically. Will it be enough? I don’t know, but if not, nothing else would have been.
In Part III I’ll get back to what we can do and focus upon as I had indicated in the first part of the series, however what I thought would be just a brief aside ended up being an article unto itself, hence the shift.
[END]
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