How Activists Undermine Themselves
Imagine a scenario: Two people are being threatened with disciplinary action by an authority figure.
One gets angry, whiny, says things like "It's not fair! I didn't do anything wrong! Come on, please don't do this!"
The other is calm, powerful, assertive, says something like, "Okay, let me be clear: You have not explained where any of this is coming from. You simply assert things that are not true, and then declare what you intend to do without seeking any kind of input on my part. This is amazingly disrespectful and unconstructive. I don't know what you hope to accomplish, but this is not the way to go about it. Now, I would like to help you resolve this if I can, but first I need you to be clear about what is going on here."
What is the key difference in the two? The first one concedes authority, and is plaintive - the second one competes for authority, and is demanding without breaching decorum. Authority is not power - it does not require a rank, position, badge, title, or anything other than a conscious decision to seize and occupy the moral and social high ground. Nonetheless, people respond to it, even when they assume themselves to be in authority.
Regardless of how any given confrontation goes, the person with official authority will be more hesitant to confront an authoritative person again than a whiny, childish, plaintive one, because the latter's complaints carry no weight of any kind while the former is obtrusive precisely because they're scrupulously correct. The latter advertises their weakness and passively requests what they want, while the former advertises their strength and seizes control of the conversation.
Even if an authority figure gets pissy at the challenge and just brings down a hammer, they will be irritated and disquieted by the experience, and thus not happy about the prospect of having to do it again. The more they do it, the weaker they look, and they know that if they're remotely competent. Every successful activist in history has been of the authoritative style - Gandhi and MLK being the most obvious examples. They did not try to whine their way to better treatment like a teenager complaining to their parents - they simply took upon themselves the moral authority that the political authorities were failing to meet.
It seems to me there are far too many of the whiny, complaining behaviors in activism - too many attitudes that are tailor-made to be ignored - and not enough of the authoritative, agenda-setting behaviors.
Too many activists are just against things, and have no alternative ideas in the arenas in which they act. They might have the vague outlines of alternatives left implicit, but the alternatives are not treated as a priority - they remain purely in sketch, treated like an irrelevancy, because they are so certain of never being in a position to have to implement them. And people with this attitude act accordingly, in a self-fulfilling prophecy of powerlessness. It's just an endless cycle of "That's not fair, mom!" complaining, which never works and yet they never get tired of it either.
We see a large-scale example of this problem when we compare the Civil Rights movement with the Occupy movement: Concrete objectives with specific policy demands vs. nebulous rhetoric with purely cultural, non-specific goals. One weathered all storms, endured constant violence, inspired millions, and braved terrorist attacks against them over years; the other dissipated like fog in a sudden wind at the first contact with state force. One exercised authority despite having no power, the other preferred to remain in an adolescent state of complaint as a form of entertainment. That difference in attitude makes the vast divergence in their respective impacts easy to understand.
The results are not hard to foresee: People who complain about the composition of the Democratic Party while refusing to participate in primaries to change it; people who complain about the lack of legislative action (which they invariably blame on Obama), while failing to deliver Democratic majorities in Congress; who complain about foreign policies they offer no alternative to; moaning into the clear blue sky about the mountains of shit piled around them because they can't be bothered to work a shovel. Asking to be ignored, being obliged, and then complaining about it.
On the list of things important to activism, expressing yourself is dead last. Your feelings are the absolute lowest priority in being an effective citizen, and anyone who thinks any part of a politician's job is to be your therapist or surrogate parent is incapable of being anything other than totally irrelevant. What matters is knowing what's true and saying what needs to be said to improve the state of affairs; to seize authority for your position such that you can set the agenda and force the other side into a reactionary posture; and to put gravity on your side rather than constantly fighting it so that you can indulge in fantasies of being a rebel.
Progressives are not rebels and never were. We represent knowledge, truth, and compassion, all of which are the absolute bedrock of genuine authority. When you treat these fundamental values as radical, you do the work of their enemies. Everyone already knows we're right. But it's a latent knowledge - they have to be reminded of it. They have to see the authority of your ideas and values demonstrated in action, not merely hinted at in passive-aggressive complaining about their polar opposites. And the first step toward that is to prove that you actually consider your views authoritative, and not merely opinions to be won or defeated by who shrieks the loudest.
You need no permission to see that the sky is blue and act accordingly.
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bookmarked !! 
