New York Times VERY CONCERNED that the “No Kings” movement hasn’t met the goals the New York Times has set for it

As anyone who takes more than the shallowest notice of activism knows, a certain type of detractor likes to declare that an activist movement has failed because it hasn’t met a specific goal. Often that goal is fresh from the detractor’s ass.

The NYT provides a sample, complete with abysmal writing.

Organizers hoped Saturday’s protests would turn out to be the largest yet. But as the marchers tried to fulfill that promise, it remained an open question whether another big turnout would be enough to influence the course of the nation’s politics.

Remaindered open questions: Better or worse than clouds of doubts?

Can the protests harness that energy and turn it into victories in the November midterm elections? How can they avoid a primal scream that fades into a whimper?

How the reporter stopped jerking themselves off long enough to write those words remains an open question.

The reporter doesn’t explain how to measure whether the protests influence the course of nation’s politics or result in victories during the midterms. The 30 state-level seats Democrats have flipped don’t count, apparently. Neither do they explain why an organization that had its first event nine months ago warrants these great expectations. And here’s another tell that this things stinks, based on the article the reporter never asked the organizers to address the influence national politics/midterm wins issues.

In a change so abrupt it should come with a record scratch, the next few paragraphs explain that the events have eventuated exactly as the organizers intended.

Otherwise, organizers said, “No Kings” protests intentionally lack a single, specific demand, reflecting the diffuse nature of the anti-Trump effort. The signs protesters carried on Saturday highlighted a wide range of issues, including immigration patrols (“ICE Needs to Melt”), democracy, diversity and the war against Iran. “We Can’t Afford the War or the Gas,” read one sign in Atlanta.

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Protesters held events in thousands of locations from Alaska to Florida, in liberal big cities and Republican strongholds, in addition to cities overseas. And beyond urging the faithful to turn out in big numbers and remain nonviolent, organizers were hands-off about what they expected from attendees.

So those were the organizers’ stated goals. How did they do?

Organizers said before Saturday that they were hoping to exceed the seven million people they said showed up at the “No Kings” rallies in October and the millions of people they said turned out in June. (The New York Times has not verified those numbers, which encompass thousands of rallies.)

Research? No way. That gets in the way of punching the hippies.

But skeptics of such events say that during Mr. Trump’s first term, progressives mistakenly thought that mass protests were a sign of the movement’s widespread popular support, without mastering the harder work of organizing.

How the hell does this person think these protests happen? Organizing a protest is work and it is hard. In addition to logistics, getting people off their butts and often out of their comfort zone is never easy. But the reporter seems to be working from the premise that protesting can’t be perfectly viable form of activism in and of itself. But that’s fine for the hippie punchers whom I assume this article is for. No Kings must be doing something wrong, otherwise why are they hippies?

Also, since this reporter couldn’t do more than gesture toward a nebulous group of naive progressives, I assume he’s referring to randos on the internet who might or might not be associated with any movement and might or might not be bots.

But at last we hear from the “skeptics.” Or, a couple of professors who answered some questions in a thoughtful and professional manner.

“These large-scale protest events make people feel like they’re not alone — it’s like collective therapy,” said Dana R. Fisher, a professor at American University who studies civic engagement.

She has surveyed “No Kings” participants in her research and supports their work. But, she added, collective catharsis and hitting what she called “a magical number” of participants is not enough to sustain an effective political movement. “What we really need to do is the work of defending democracy in our communities,” she said. “It’s not about inflatable costumes. It’s not about clever signs.”

Lara Putnam, a history professor at the University of Pittsburgh:

Because of social media, “it is much easier to get people in the same place,” Ms. Putnam said. “But it doesn’t necessarily make the other pieces needed for building a political movement.”

I would love to know what questions the reporter asked the professors and their complete answers because something seems off here. I’m not staying the reporter fabricated anything. But when a reporter gets so invested in a hypothesis that they tie themselves in a bunch of passive voiced knots, I can’t help but wonder if they went out of their way to make a source’s statements fit that hypothesis.

At any rate, the apparent division between protesting against the tRump admin and the work of defending democracy seems artificial. Some groups focus on specific forms of activism, some have a broader scope. Groups also evolve and NK is very new. If the No Kings people just wanted to organize protests, that would be enough. However, five seconds on my search engine of choice revealed that that isn’t all they’re doing, something you would not find out from the article.

Now for some bothsiderism.

You might want to stop reading.

It’s really bad.

“No Kings” protesters do share one thing with their Republican counterparts: a belief that the country is being led to a precipice by a reckless president. In the Tea Party’s case, that was Mr. Obama.

I warned you.

“What really motivated the Tea Party was a deep, philosophical disagreement with Obama about what government should be — and the sense that his policies represented such an unprecedented overreach,” said Tim Phillips, a conservative activist and former president of the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity.

Comparing the racist assholes riled up by racists like tRump, the OG Birther, to the people appalled by the OG Birther’s actions, which include a lot of attacks on marginalized people probably earned the reporter a raise.

Three paragraphs from the end there’s this sad little fart.

The organized opposition to Mr. Trump has had little difficulty summoning the nation’s outrage at opportune moments. Quantifying the impact of those protests is much harder.

Heads, I was right. Tails, you can never prove that I was wrong.

People who post off topic comments want to lick Ted Cruz’s flop sweat.