US News

like idfk how you got that from my post

I don't know how you got that from my post! I said be engaged in, not be aware of — because obviously we both think being up to date on current events is worthwhile when this community is literally called "US news", why would that even be a point of discussion? What I'm talking about is actually going out and doing stuff, which could be protests, but should not be protests alone. Because as you're saying, protests actually need to have something behind them to be effective, and the No Kings protests have pretty much nothing behind them: they're somewhere between an excuse to make silly signs and play dress up for a picnic, and a way to vent frustrations in a way that doesn't actually change anything.

I'm just saying that it doesn't have to be that way. The overseas Yankees in my country who protested yesterday with signs reading things like "No Turd Reich" didn't really achieve much, they got some local news coverage but that's basically it; but if I were to organize my own protest, I would've perhaps elected for signs reading things like "Divest from the USA" or "Withdraw from the base treaty" — because these are actual policies that my country, or its institutions, or even its individual citizens to some extent, could adopt, furthering my political aims in a tangible way. But even this would be meaningless without more direct actions at the same time, of varying degrees of legality. The protests can serve as a way to gain publicity and make connections with other activists, or might sometimes be useful for some other aims, but are in any case not the beginning and end of all advocacy. But that doesn't mean that they're always invariably completely pointless.

This is the point I'm trying to make.