this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2024
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United States | News & Politics
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The life of a painting is worth less than my life, bud
If you are hand wringing about a painting because someone tried to use it to stop the deaths of real himan beings, you dont give a shit about climate change. Shove that made up concern back up your ass where it came from.
Saying "we are dying, and we will threaten to damage non living artwork until you stop the thing killing us" is not hurting any cause in the eyes of rational thinking human beings.
You will not get me to care more about a painting that wasnt damaged just because the rich losers who own the museum dont like the negative press, and you cannot make me care more about warhols work more than human lives. (You also cant get me to care about andy the asshole anyway, but thats an opinion shared by any artist who studied him)
Seriously. You need therapy if this damaged """the cause""" in your eyes. Because youre likely a sociopath.
I'm not saying this necessarily because I give a shit about the paintings. I'm saying this because I care about climate change, and building awareness and support for changing the policies that are destroying the planet is important to me. Actions that discredit the environmental movement and damage activists' ability to get this vital work done are, to me, bad things.
The people using these tactics aren't "stopping the deaths of real human beings." Their actions are prolonging the policies that kill real human beings. You can curse at me all you want, or call me sociopath whatever; I'm still going to think that's a bad thing.
Nothing done has prolonged the current policies. You are either arguing in bad faith or from a position of complete ignorance of human history.
If you were turned away from fixing climate change because of this nonviolent protest, you were 1) never actually on the side of humanity, and 2) do not understand what protests are or have ever been.
We used to kill leaders who put our lives and our neighbors lives in jeapordy. They threaten us, and we kill them and replace them.
These protests are progressive steps towards that old method, to remind them that we used to kill them for poor leadership, we could choose to do so again, and that we will start by destroying their property and financial investments first. That if they wish to live, and if they wish to keep their wealth, they need to start leading properly and stop putting our lives in jeapordy.
The museum curators spoke out against this not because it harmed any movement, but because it risked costing them money. Thats it. Its a threat to cost them money if they dont listen to us.
This isnt about swaying your bigoted dipshit of a grandma. Its about reminding turtle boy mitch and his country club friends in congress that we will burn down his house if he keeps ignoring this issue. Because we have exhausted the non violent options, and are approaching the point of needing to use violence.
So, no, I dont give a shit that a painting wasnt even actually damaged. Because pretending to damage the painting is to remind those in power that the next time, we will not throw soup. We will throw bottles of kerosene with lit rags poking out.
And I am speaking as an ecologist. We have tried the advocacy. The people in power do not care. They need to be made to care.
I'm not saying I was turned away from fixing climate change because of this protest. I wasn't. Anyone who knows as much about it as you or I do would have to be insane to support saving humanity, or not, based on some trivial detail like this. I am saying, though, that a lot of people -- the vast majority -- are in your group #2, and yes, will be turned away by these actions.
My grandma marched with Martin Luther King, more than once, at a time when his approval rating with other white southerners like her was pretty damn low.
If we were talking about doing something that would directly impact Mitch McConnell and the other people who are engineering this crisis, that sounds great. I don't agree with the violence, and we can talk about that, but the main point -- directly impacting the people who are responsible -- sounds to me like a great idea.
Directly impacting the museum curators and the people in Seattle driving to work doesn't sound like that. It sounds like they're just easier targets for your (very justified) anger and desperation to solve the problem. I think it's highly unlikely that threatening any number of Andy Warhol paintings or closing any number of highways will ever bring the criminals in congress to their knees so that they beg for an end to it all if they agree to start pursuing sensible policies. I think it's far more likely that when they see stuff like this they rub their hands together with glee and think about how they can use this to portray climate protestors in the news, and extend by another irreplaceable year the length of time they can continue their evil work, unimpeded.
THE VAST MAJORITY DO. NOT. MATTER.
Read that sentence over and over until it sticks in your head. These protests Are. Not. For. Your. Racist. Grandmother. They are direct threats to the politicians who know better. They are direct threats to the people in power who are knowingly letting the climate worsen for profit. They are direct threats that say if they continue putting our lives at risk for money, we will burn down everything they own into ash that if we die we do so without making them richer.
You are gently tonguing and sucking turtle miches fucking balls with this bullshit rhetoric. You are getting him off in the worst way, because he knows climate change is real and does not care because IT MAKES HIM MONEY. He is in love with the fact that you think threatening him and his coffers """hUrTs ThE MoVeMeNt""" because you are stopping anyone from actually holding him accountable.
Your racist grandmas opinion doesnt matter!! She isnt burning coal!! She isnt razing the amazon for cattle farming!! The people who store their expensive art in museums do!! These protests are not for your dumb as rocks grandma!! No one gives a shit what she thinks!!
These protests are reminders that we can do things that cost the people in power lots of money, because costing them money or killing them is all they care about, and we are polite enough to start with their wealth before their lives. End of story. Thats it.
Threatening art threatens their investments. Halting traffick shuts down their factories and offices. Its not for you! Its to cost them money, and then remind them that we will do worse, for longer, next time. Anything that would make their stock wobble makes them tremble. Anything that shuts down a city fucks every business in that city, and all those angry business owners turn to the politicians and cry "fix it daddy! Or Ill stop paying you under the table!"
THIS. ISNT. ABOUT. YOU. Its about hurting, directly, the people who cause these problems, in ways they cannot stop you from doing without killing you for it.
I think this conversation may have reached the end of its usefulness. Why are you insisting my grandma is racist? Why do you think ~~damaging~~ (edit: pretending to damage) an Andy Warhol painting hurts Mitch McConnell in any way, or that popular support for ending climate change (by "the vast majority") would be in any way shape or form unimportant to ending climate change?
Edit: Actually, don't answer that. You seem very committed to arguing against points that aren't what I'm saying, and insulting my grandma which is 1,000% unwarranted, such that I don't think there's any point to continuing. Again, my grandma was a physically active anti-racist activist back in a time and place when it was wildly unpopular and genuinely dangerous to her physical safety to be one. Your insisting on asserting otherwise is, one, uncalled-for and insulting, and two, an indication of how cavalier you are about saying things that simply aren't true.
I'm happy to continue the conversation if you're open to being civil and listening to what I'm actually saying (although you're in no way required to agree or anything). If not, then not.
You might be right. If youre not bright enough to grok that Im not talking about you, mozz's, literal biological grandmother, and if you need to re-ask questions I have explicitly answered twice now, I dont think you can ever understand what protests are in a conceptual sense, let alone why these specific protests happen.
Good luck not walking into doors before opening them bud