Extreme protests, unions, dangly parts, the wall and an AGW "heretic"

Sorry about the lack of posts recently.  Stomach “bug” did me in.

On to “happier things”. No?  OK, then let’s talk about what’s happening in the world.

You might find this interesting.  I doubt the left will:

Social movements are critical agents of change that vary greatly in both tactics and popular support. Prior work shows that extreme protest tactics – actions that are highly counter-normative, disruptive, or harmful to others, including inflammatory rhetoric, blocking traffic, and damaging property – are effective for gaining publicity. However, we find across three experiments that extreme protest tactics decreased popular support for a given cause because they reduced feelings of identification with the movement. Though this effect obtained in tests of popular responses to extreme tactics used by animal rights, Black Lives Matter, and anti-Trump protests (Studies 1-3), we found that self-identified political activists were willing to use extreme tactics because they believed them to be effective for recruiting popular support (Studies 4a & 4b). The activist’s dilemma – wherein tactics that raise awareness also tend to reduce popular support – highlights a key challenge faced by social movements struggling to affect progressive change.

It’s one thing to protest and we all know that everyone has the right to do so.  It’s another thing to damage property, block access and generally throw infantile tantrums.  No one, or not the people at which the protests are aimed, are either impressed or have their minds changed.  And those that are on the fence?  More likely to fall in line with the unimpressed than the violent protesters.  And, I’d guess, there’s a point when “protest fatigue” sets in where no sort of protest, violent or otherwise, has an impact.

Remember when Boeing opened a plant in South Carolina and took all sorts of guff from unions and the Democrats?  They were accused of everything from “union busting” to, well, you name it.  The fact that the plant was a new one and they didn’t close the one in Washington put lie to most of the accusations.  However, the unions have made the SC plant a prime target in a right-to-work state.

Bad news for the union:

Organized labor suffered its biggest defeat in decades in South Carolina on Wednesday, with Boeing Co. workers stating overwhelmingly that they do not want to be represented by the International Association of Machinists union.

A total of 2,828 of the approximately 3,000 workers eligible to vote cast ballots, with 74 percent – 2,097 votes – against union representation.

Folks, that’s not just a loss, that’s an ass whoopin’. I doubt the union will take the hint.  You have to make a compelling case when you plan on taking money from people in the form of “dues”.  You have to convince them they’re going to benefit from such a thing.  Obviously the union failed in that attempt.

Private sector unions are very 19th and 20th century.  There is little need for them in this day and age.  Most companies have figured out how to make their employees happy and content.  Unions are now instruments of governmental plunder – that is, they are strongest in the civil service sector where they contribute to political campaigns, work to get certain politicians elected and then “negotiate” with them for higher wages and the like.  Of course the politicians are free with your money because being free with it helps ensure their reelection.

I mentioned a happy story.  Well, here you go:

As reported previously, 2 students at The University of California stated that they would publicly remove their penis’ if Trump enforced the existing USA-Mexico border wall. In a continuance of this trend, 4 students at the University of Washington have promised to remove pieces of their reproductive anatomy if Trump builds the wall.

 Benefit?  They won’t reproduce, will they?  Reminds me of “if you don’t do what I want, I’ll hold my breath until I pass out” on steroids. Tantrums.  As I mentioned above, this will impress no one and change not one mind.  However it may convince a number of people that the left is deranged.

Speaking of “the wall”.  Well really, “the fence”, Border Patrolmen made an interesting discovery recently:

U.S. Border Patrol said a catapult mounted to the Arizona-Mexico border fence, and used to throw bundles of marijuana across, is the first one of its kind that agents in the area have encountered…

“We’ve seen air cannon-powered cylinders; some even have engines attached to it,” [Tucson sector spokesman Vicente Paco] said. “We’ve seen slings with rubber bands, and we’ve seen people tossing [drugs] over, the size of footballs,” he said. “We’ve seen different types of launchers, but this specific design is [a] first.”

All part of the “transportation” infrastructure, I suppose.

Oh, and a little more good news.  A few words from a possible science adviser to the Trump administration:

A world-renowned physicist in line to be one of President Donald Trump’s science advisers equated climate scientists to cults that chant all day about global warming.

“There’s a whole area of climate so-called science that is really more like a cult,” William Happer, a physicist at Princeton University, told reporters Tuesday. He could become Trump’s next science adviser.

He added: “It’s like Hare Krishna or something like that. They’re glassy-eyed and they chant. It will potentially harm the image of all science.”

Happer, who is highly regarded in the science community, said in January that he would immediately accept a role in Trump’s administration.

The Princeton scientist made similar comparisons during his Trump meeting.

He told Trump during the meeting that he believed man-made global warming is “exaggerated.”

“Very briefly. I said, ‘I’m sure you know my position that I think climate change has been tremendously exaggerated—its significance. Climate is important, always has been, but I think it’s become sort of a cult movement in the last five or 10 years,’” Happer told The Scientist (TS) in early February.

I’m in agreement with him.  We’ve talked endlessly of the “cult of global warming” here at QandO.  Look, when the other side uses the term “climate heretic” when describing the other side, I’m not sure how you come to any other conclusion.  Sanity in the White House science spot for at least a few years.

~McQ