Rebuttal: A Real Protest is More Than Just Sign Holding

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This opinion piece is a rebuttal to “When it Comes to Protests, Silence is Compliance,” published March 3, 2026.

Thank you, James. I could almost see you, flaming sword of righteousness in hand, armor gleaming in the first rays of apocalyptic dawn, as you face down the tidewaters of devouring evil. Alas. I’d love to have heard that you’ve applied your wealth of time and money to organize a phone bank through which all protestors relentlessly hounded your local, state, federal reps as well as any relevant office reachable. That you primed a class action lawsuit, flew to the tragedies you currently absorb secondhand to interview the relevant subjects, and return to the Bartlet Mall with truth in unassailable context. 

I wish even a trace of the self-awareness I so admired in your piece on the doxxing of the ICE head were present in your rebuttal. 

So, A little quick history: 

Vietnam is known as the war lost in America’s living rooms. Historians also call it the great disillusionment. Thanks to unfettered correspondents, America discovered its government was lying to them. Not its partisan government. Not LBJ, the anomaly. As a whole. Afterwards, the governing powers collectively vowed that loss would never happen again. Your newscasters were good ol’ boys before, they’re something far worse now. 

I won’t point out how disturbing it is you equivalate yourself to the abolitionists. But I am pleased you brought it up. Uncle Tom’s cabin will always be one of the most profound,  influential books I’ve ever read, and with it, Harriet Beecher Stowe reached thousands, perhaps millions of hearts and minds. The movement  followed exactly the steps I prescribed protest/revolution in my first article, which clearly you skimmed. 

1. The matriculation of change is, by unimpeachable necessity, bottom to top, as defined in my first article, and the exact trajectory of abolition.  

2. Her message was deliberately, emphatically non-partisan, designed to unify. Because real need, not autoerotic emotionalism (are you “pissed” James?) affords no lost allies. As long as you’re at war with an entire half of the U.S, there will be no majority voice, denying not just change, but the democracy you claim to be defending.  

3. The major media outlets and oligarchs were from the outset not on the side of abolition. Thus, noise (slaves) reached voice (wealthy, influential white people) who applied pressure (pressure) and forced reformation. Had the call to abolition originated among major papers and industry oligarchs, who then demanded that the people make the changes for them; something’s rotten in Denmark.

In my last article, the word “performative” appeared by editing error. I don’t think your protests are performative. I believe they are in deadly, misguided earnest. I also believe ICE is as close to a substantial reason to protest as you’ve managed to hit on in 10 years, and I’m on board that ICE is a blight.  

Yet, somehow you are missing the forest for the trees.  

Only a moron would crash their car, and then believe the resulting broken headlight was the problem. Why don’t you ask, how any of this came to exist at all? 

Protesting, cohesively, is the most powerful weapon in democratic society, and every infamous leader through history has understood that. The court of public opinion will always be the first seduction of a clever suitor, for good or evil, notably understood by the great physicists Einstein and Russel in their nuclear manifesto. Bypassing the government, they appealed directly to the population. No one understands this better than modern media. 

ICE doesn’t exist because half the population is stupid and evil. ICE exists because half the population voted out of reasonable fear for the country they love, destabilized by a national deficit approaching 40 trillion. The size and pace of this debt, in tandem with deteriorating internal and international relations, should be our new Cold War, yet somehow you were convinced it was a party issue exclusive to racist deplorables. You forced half of the U.S into a box and left them nowhere to go except deeper into it, where Fox News embraced them with what any human needs to hear: that they are valuable. Fox tells them the same thing your sources tell you: That they alone are the guardians of righteousness, and their enemies the agents of evil. Trump achieved his second term because he addressed these fears. He made them feel validated, which they deserve to feel, and you cemented his election by ceaselessly abusing them, barring exit from the box that every day bakes them deeper into the Conservative crust. Your bizarre flex that you’re not trying to unify, that you’re “pissed” condemns everyone to apocalypse, and you to the wrong side of history. A cause that seeks not to heal, but retribution, will only be remembered as evil.  

If I made it public that I am convicted of the incipient destruction of the democracy I and my children live in, I don’t believe I’d omit any asset which could fund counter effort. You asked what I think you should do other than selling your homes?  Put your money where your mouth is. Any act greater than standing on the side of the road in your embarrassment of luxury, waving signs that serve as flaccid handshakes to the initiated and nothing at all to anyone else: Please, be pissed at me. Let me rattle your cage. But for God’s and your children’s sake, question the status quo. Marshall McLuhan, from his essay “Know-How” said:  

 “Combatants merely infect one another. But the friendly dialogue of rational beings can also be as catching as it is civilizing” 

I know I’ve walked the line between friend and provocateur, but I hope you don’t skim this one, James. As a 35 year old who has too much at risk, and none of your luxury, I aim to unify.  

P. Christian Neverette
Rowley resident

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