2024 Campus Protests: Freeze Peach Under Attack (By Cops)

[CaffeineNeeded]

Really seems like these campus protests are also not really that big and republicans sure think they can use this as a wedge issue. Annoying af story to be honest.

[pvn]

@CaffeineNeeded

Really seems like these campus protests are also not really that big and republicans sure think they can use this as a wedge issue. Annoying af story to be honest.

99% of people don’t give a shit about the protests or gaza at all either way

[Jman220]

There’s a pair of leftish election bloggers I have followed for decades now over at www.electoral-vote.com. They wrote a post about the protests that, unfortunately, I think is somewhat on the money (quoted below). Recent polling of young people seems to indicate that they’re going to either: 1. Withhold their vote for Biden, or 2. Vote for Trump, in part, because they disagree with Biden’s policy on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. That is the ultimate “Bold move Cotton, Let’s see how that works out for them” when Trump wins in November, does everything Bibi asks, and then also destroys any chance of the environment not descending into a hellscape by the time these young people have their own children.

Welcome to 1968

Those readers of a certain age will recall that 1968 was a tumultous year. There were anti-war protests on campuses across the country, a Kennedy running for president, and a riot at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Well, here we go again. Donald Trump was 22 and a student at the University of Pennsylvania then. On April 26, 1968, one of his fellow Penn Quakers, Kiyoshi Kuromiya, announced that he was going to burn a dog alive using napalm to show the students what napalm is like. Thousands of students showed up. They were handed a leaflet reading: “Congratulations on your anti-napalm protest. You saved the life of a dog. Now, how about saving the lives of tens of thousands of people in Vietnam.” Trump graduated in June 1968 and was undoubtedly very aware of all the unrest at Penn and nationally. He is surely aware that the campus turmoil and Chicago riot helped defeat Democrat Hubert Humphrey.

Now Trump is trying to put to use his knowledge that many Americans tend to regard college students who are busy protesting, rather than studying, as spoiled brats, rather than as citizens exercising their First Amendment rights (although setting up tent cities and camping out on campus is probably not covered by the First Amendment the way a march would be). He is seizing on the protests to gin up his base, get them good and angry, and make sure they vote. The pro-Palestinian protests on many campuses, including Columbia, Emory, MIT, Texas at Austin, USC and Yale, are inadvertently helping him, just as the anti-war protests helped Richard Nixon in 1968. In addition, Trump is claiming that some of the slogans the protesters are chanting (e.g., “From the river to the sea, Palestine must be free”) are blatantly antisemitic since they are effectively calling for the destruction of Israel. This gives him a patina of moral superiority. The students seem to be unaware that Trump’s Middle East policy (“What Bibi wants, Bibi gets”) would be far harsher for the Gazans than Joe Biden’s.

Trump is arguing that Biden is unable to maintain order or quash lawlessness, so the protests are his fault. Of course, dealing with campus protests is not one of the powers listed in Art. II. Handling them is up to college administrators, campus police and, if called in by the college president, local cops. But many voters don’t really grasp the concept of federalism very well.

Other Republicans are also trying to make hay out of the encampments and protests. Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) sent 100 state troopers to clear out pro-Palestinian protesters at the University of Texas at Austin, resulting in dozens of arrests. Sens. Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Tom Cotton (R-AR) have demanded that Biden mobilize the National Guard to protect Jewish students. Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), who would dearly love to be Trump’s running mate, said that the protesters are mentally unstable. He tweeted: “You don’t get to turn our public places into a garbage dump. No civilization should tolerate these encampments. Get rid of them.”

The campus protests have deeply fractured the Democratic Party while uniting the Republican Party, just as in 1968. Being the “out party” is a luxury. You don’t have to take any action and are free to whine about what the president is doing (or not doing).

What some of the protesters are demanding is “divestment.” This means they are demanding that universities rid their endowments of stock in defense contractors who make weapons being sent to Israel. This is something that feels like a substantive action, but in practice is fairly hollow. The portfolio managers that handle university endowments rarely buy individual stocks these days. They buy index funds that track the S&P 500 and similar ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds). These are far less risky and are much cheaper, as well. So in practice, there is no practical way for a university to divest itself of defense companies (or tobacco companies or oil companies). Broad-based index funds cover the entire economy, by design. In addition, even if a university did own some stock in a defense contractor, selling it just means somebody else gets to own it. It doesn’t really matter to Boeing if Yale owns a bit of it or BlackRock owns a bit of it. They are still going to sell fighter planes to Israel if the Israelis can pay for them. If they turned away paying customers for political reasons, the stockholders would revolt and management would be cashiered. In fact, if a university does own some stock in a defense contractor, it can send someone to the annual stockholders meeting and make a fuss. Not so if they’re not invested in the company,

The only substantive way to change Israel’s behavior is to change U.S. policies toward Israel. That means convincingthe average voter that policy should change. The median voter is a 50-ish white person who didn’t go to college. Are protests on campus likely to change that person’s mind in the direction the protesters want? Or will they backfire? We may find out in about 6 months. (V)

[Surf]

I agree it’s bad for Biden but I think the country attention span is so short these days that situation will peak sometime by graduation and then will be business as usual once school restarts in fall. I obviously could be wrong but I suspect some other more recent controversy will be more impactful come election time.

[boredsocial]

I’m sure this time the mass scale student protesters will be on the wrong side of history lol.

[Surf]

@boredsocial

I’m sure this time the mass scale student protesters will be on the wrong side of history lol.

I don’t think being on the right side of history and potentially getting Trump elected are mutually exclusive. This seems to be addressing pragmatic electoral concerns more than morality. (Although personally I think the electoral concerns are overblown but may change my mind if goes on longer than I expect)

[boredsocial]

I’m sorry but if Trump gets elected it will 100% be the fault of the establishment Democrats. Period end of story. Let’s stop normalizing blaming normal people for the consequences of the politicians we elected doing evil shit. They need to stop doing evil unpopular shit.

If you lose to Donald it’s your fault period. Fortunately I don’t think Biden is going to lose to Trump, but if he does because he decided to back Bibi carrying out a genocide… I’m not going to blame the young people we actively chose not to educate over the last 20 years.

Being a political leader means owning the cause and effect of your decisions. There were a lot of choices made around supporting Israel before and after the massacre they, let’s be very honest, instigated and then failed to defend against. I get the Israeli reaction to that, which is why it was our responsibility to keep them on a tight leash. Instead we’ve been very hands off and the Israeli’s, and the sociopath they elected repeatedly, have done their very best to ethnically cleanse Gaza.

Being president is having a new, very complicated, trolley problem pretty much every day of the week. Biden did something objectively evil here, if it was also a political miscalculation that costs him this next election it’ll ruin his entirely legacy because he will have been the guy who crashed our system into the side of a mountain. Kinda like how HRC’s entire legacy is being the person who lost to Trump in 2016, a failure so large with such overwhelming consequences (millions dead) that her not having a major mental health crisis in the aftermath tells you pretty much all you need to know about her.

Biden had better not lose lol. Par for this hole is curb stomping the GOP out of existence, and losing… well the only sane thing you could do after losing to this version of Trump on this timeline is probably suicide. If you could live with that level of guilt you’re a monster lol. It’s actually worse than HRC losing to Trump by a 3-4x multiplier and the cause being supporting a genocide? Jesus fucking Christ that’s ugly.

[LFS]

@boredsocial

if he does because he decided to back Bibi carrying out a genocide

If Biden strongly rebukes Bibi and Israel doesn’t he lose voters on the other end of the spectrum, and then if he loses it’s because he didn’t back Bibi?

[Jman220]

@boredsocial

I’m sure this time the mass scale student protesters will be on the wrong side of history lol.

They’re not on the wrong side of history. The Vietnam protestors weren’t either. That said, we ended up with Nixon and we will end up with Trump as a result too. They’ll have the moral high ground though when they withhold their votes so bully for them.

[Jman220]

Yeah Biden is fucked no matter what he does. Trying to stay in the middle is the best play he has, he’s been playing it, it’s not working, but the electoral alternative is worse.

[Surf]

@boredsocial

Being a political leader means owning the cause and effect of your decisions.

I don’t think this is lost on Biden at all. I think he likely absolutely furious with current Israeli leadership but has sat down with a cold calculation that due to the popularity of Israel among those reliable to vote that if he says the wrong thing then the effect of his decision will be Trump letting Putin take Ukraine and Trump being same or even worse on Palestinian related issues.

[boredsocial]

Gen Z isn’t going to stop voting and they aren’t going to vote for Trump. They’re lying to pollsters when pollsters actually get ahold of them because the answer they’re giving on the poll is the protest. If the GOP had elected a Mitt Romney type like Nixon I’d be more worried.

I keep saying the polls at this stage, and political polling in general, are pretty suspect. This thing is about enthusiasm and turnout for each side’s partisans. There’s a reason why the unofficial song of the last election cycle was ‘why is the best case scenario Joe Biden’ lol. He won that election and my guess is we’re going to win big this cycle too because Donald is the worst major politician of either party in a hundred+ years.

[boredsocial]

I am 100% sure there are plenty of ways Biden could have materially impacted this that didn’t have huge political costs. I’m not sold the Israeli lobby can actually move votes like that, particularly not if the US government intentionally chooses to allow what’s happening on the ground in Israel onto the nightly news and social media.

He did what he did because it’s the right move for US foreign policy for our international credit as an always there for you ally is important, particularly after Trump did everything possible to damage that credibility. Given that our support is keeping a large % of global GDP from being spent on on the military (which if our own history is any guide tends to cause your politicians to want to use that military power) I can see an argument where the trolley problem is ‘let the people in gaza get exterminated or probably sow the seeds of WW3’. At least that’s my guess for how the decision was made. I don’t think we’re doing what we’re doing because we want a genocide in Gaza, I just think we feel like our hands are tied because treaty obligations.

[boredsocial]

I’m sorry but you’re giving way too much credit to the Vietnam protests and nowhere near enough credit to ending Jim Crow. LBJ said they had just lost the south for a generation when he signed that bill and he, if anything, undersold it.

[Jman220]

@boredsocial

They’re lying to pollsters when pollsters actually get ahold of them because the answer they’re giving on the poll is the protest

There’s so much confidence that “the polls are wrong” when the polls are usually right, and in recent history when they’ve been wrong, it’s because they’ve understated republican support, not democratic support.

[eyebooger]

@boredsocial

He won that election and my guess is we’re going to win big this cycle too because Donald is the worst major politician of either party in a hundred+ years.

Worst in what way?

[boredsocial]

In terms of winning his party elections vs what would have happened with a replacement level alternative.

[boredsocial]

They’ve been wrong because of the combination of who and what they ask. Politicians and the media need to stop checking the temperature of the room and just do what would do the most good for the most people between whatever day it currently is and election day. Overreliance on polling to make decisions is a big part of how we got here.

The polls this far out have two major flaws: 1) it’s over six months to election day still which means how people feel today doesn’t matter a whole lot to the outcome of the election and 2) the data coming out of the polling isn’t actually actionable in any way because it’s hugely contradictory.

We have a huge problem with measuring the wrong shit when making decisions in this country and holy shit do I ever think political polling is a great exhibit in the case against what we measure.

The main reason political polls reported on in the media are taken in late April of an election decided in November is to create content for news stories full stop. It’s not to figure out what is going to happen in November because that’s much harder and pays nothing whereas creating a news story drives clicks which drives revenue. I’m sorry but any credibility something gets can’t be unlinked from why it exists and political polls this far our belong in the lol media thread.

[goofy]

Hahahahahahahahahahahahhahhaha

[CaffeineNeeded]

Yeah I wouldn’t be too hopeful that a protest that uses language from Hamas’s charter and is infested with stuff like “Israelis are white supremacist colonizers” that should “go back to Europe” is going to be on the right side of history.