Authoritarians have studied protests. They've adapted, and the effectiveness of protests has dropped.

[Sympthsical]

6. If your protest is selling merch

You've already been absorbed into the system. Processed, accounted for, noted.

Power is not afraid. Power is exploring ways to monetize that, too.

At the end of the day, a small group of people make a lot of money off the protests, and then the voters do exactly what they would have done anyway without the protest. Trump is not overthrown because of protests. He destroys himself. He would destroy himself without the protests. It's in his nature to destroy everything around him.

There are only two viable methods forward. The first is to bring the system to a halt through a general strike, but the American people won't do that. They are simply too comfortable and will not risk their livelihoods and security. It's a non-starter.

The second is to reach, persuade, and connect with voters - namely, people who are not themselves, who do not think like them, who do not necessarily share the same values or worldview. And that bumps into a nice little ironic paradox:

The people who create, run, and populate protest movements tend to be the same people who have no idea how to talk to or relate to voters. As a result, protesters are really only standing around talking to each other. Which, as noted in the OP, is neat for morale, but it is not the most productive use of time and resources. The results in people outside the protest are indifference at best or alienation through antagonizing at worst.

Trump himself and his own actions convert more voters than anyone in the modern incarnation of protest movements. In this digital age with social media, protests are increasingly masturbatory affairs that are about how the protesters see themselves more than any actual movement to effect change.

It's unfortunate, but there it is. Until someone rips the protest movement bodily from capitalistic self-indulgence, it's just spinning wheels and already well-incorporated into the system.

Do I know how to do that? Sure. Have normies talk to the normies - not the bug-eyed, tweets 100 times a day, clearly in need of a Xanax people who typically become the prominent voices of these movements. And stop inviting celebrities. They have the opposite effect intended.

As for Christopher Armitage. I've read his stuff in the past. Particularly on legal matters, he has no idea what he's talking about, but he writes well in such a way that people unfamiliar with the topics would think he knows. A lot of it is well-articulated pseudo-intellectual did-my-own-research nonsense. Which really should be the subtitle of half of substack at this point.

I don't begrudge anyone the quarterly picnics they've been having. But I do wish people were more clear-eyed about what it actually accomplishes, concretely, with evidence-based results and not just vibes. No one said the vibes weren't good. But vibes didn't stop Republicans from taking all three branches of government.