Rebuttal: When it Comes to Protests, Silence is Compliance

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P. Christian Neverette’s opinion piece, “Local Protests Divide More Than They Unify,” deserves a rebuttal. I congratulate him on one goal of his column, to “piss people off,” which has succeeded in my particular case. As a victim of “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” I am falling for his bait. I wish the argument he presents is worthy of it, but I find common sense severely lacking here (as in, learn from history), and in emotive appeal. If my wife and I didn’t show up each week at the Bartlett Mall, we’d go crazy. That’s reason enough to do it.

If I understand his argument sufficiently, he seems to be saying that our collective antipathy towards Trump and his cronies has been formed by the news media. Since they’re on our side, cataloguing the various sins of commission undertaken by our delusional president, what’s the point? Going up each week to Bartlett Mall carrying our silly signs (mine reads “No Gestapo Here”), what we’re really doing is nothing more than “performative” nonsense: showing off to ourselves and our friends, play acting as revolutionaries. Man, do we come off as lightweights in his version of things.

First of all, is he aware of conflicting news outlets? Here in Newburyport, most of us might start our days reading the Boston Globe and/or the New York Times, and end it watching the PBS Newshour, but what does he think the MAGA crowd is reading, or some dumb ass in Iowa? It’s the Des Moines Register, the Wall Street Journal, and most insidious of all, Fox News.

Speaking personally, I don’t form my opinions based on what the NYTimes thinks editorially. I base my opinions on what I read in news columns and reportage, where the truth of our national situation … read crises, if you wish … are in full and unbiased display. Facts are facts. People dragged out of their cars by masked thugs, Alex Pretti shot 10 times, all recorded by multiple video cameras, jets flying off aircraft carriers to bomb the bejesus out of Iran, with no full explanation as to why they’re doing it, and no input at all from Congress. We’re at war, everybody, but with no Declaration of War, only an 8-minute statement from you know who, in a stupid white USA baseball cap. He just felt like launching one, thank-you very much.

You’d have to be a complete moron not to understand what’s going on here. Unfortunately, something like close to half the nation are morons. This is why my wife and I carry silly signs for an hour each Saturday. Does Mr. Neverette think we’re preaching to the choir here? Well come out and join us, we get our full share of middle fingers, jeers, and f’yous. Really, it’s lots of innocent fun.

OK, how about a little history. Most publications and news media outlets initially supported LBJ and the Vietnam War. Gradually, they turned against the president, in fact ran him out of office, all caused by demonstrations and people carrying signs. I remember in New York City, when I lived there, being threatened by construction workers and redneck hecklers. But we did the trick.

Going further back in time, no news media outlets programmed what people in the North thought about slavery. A mass abolitionist movement, spearheaded by church groups and our own, and often very lonely, Willian Lloyd Garrison, gradually turned public opinion to the point where the South began the Civil War, concluding it had no other choice than to secede. People starting in small groups, often unknown to each other, can achieve momentous change.

Is this what Bartlett Mall is all about? Not in and of itself, but when you add in all the surrounding communities here in Essex County, who gather and do the same thing each week as we do locally; then magnified by similar activity throughout the state; then throughout the region; then throughout the country, you get a wave that will, over time, overcome the miserable creeps running our country today. Stay tuned, Mr. Neverette, to March 28, the next No Kings national rally. If that doesn’t impress you, nothing will.

Finally, I found Neverette’s  demographic analysis of the Newburyport turnout insulting. Is there something wrong with the fact that we’re mostly older, probably financially secure, self-satisfied (according to him) and dilettantes (again, according to him)? So what? What does he want us to do, other than sell our houses and move to Amesbury? What are we supposed to do to “unify” our country, which seems to be a goal of his? He implies we encourage violence, which is absurd.

Personally, I’m not demonstrating to “unify” anything or anybody. I’m standing out with my pathetic sign to emphasize my belief that our great country and institutions are being systematically destroyed by a shallow, incompetent, morally bankrupt moron. Yes, Mr. Neverette, my wife and I are pissed, and proud of it.

James Charles Roy
Newburyport resident

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