How to Lose Friends and Influence

Put away the hammer and the wedge.

When your coalition is winning, it's a bad time to be alienating people who largely agree with you.

And yet, some people seem unable to resist the impulse.

On Sunday, November 8, there was a large demonstration in and around Philadelphia's Rittenhouse square. The organizer was a new group, called Philly Bike on Your Left, not to be confused with the existing group Philly Bike Action, which is concerned with making our streets safer. 

The idea, apparently, was to have flying squads of bicyclists ride around this part of Center City, and stop occasionally in front of Jewish-owned restaurants and complain about the owners' politics. The ask was that the restaurants should go out of business. 

I don't know how the flying squad thing worked. My wife and I walked to Rittenhouse square in the late morning, and we found plenty to look at there. 

In addition to the usual people walking about or sitting on benches or standing by the reflecting pool or the goat statue, there were three large groups. There was a large contingent of protesters. There was a very large mass of counter-protesters, many wearing Israeli flags over their shoulders. And there was an impressive turnout of police officers, most of whom were standing on 18th street, on the east side of the square.

The vast majority of the protesters that I saw did not have bicycles. There was a significant knot of them standing near the reflecting pool, and several other groupings on grassy areas. 

The counter-protesters were distributed everywhere, like sprinkles on a cupcake. They even mingled with the protesters. I said to myself, Dear me. I hope nobody gets punched in the face. And, this being the Quaker city, it appears that nobody did get punched in the face, although there were some bumps and scrapes, and three people were arrested. 

As for the police, they were basically useless. I do understand that the presence of a uniformed officer is the first step on the continuum of force. I did wonder why they did nothing to separate the protesters and the counter-protesters. 

And then there was the motorcycle cop who decided to zip around the circular internal pathway of the park, scattering pedestrians in what he seemed to find a very satisfactory dominance display.

In short, three groups of performance artists showed up on the same stage, and none of them knew how to dance.

There has been a lot of fuss and bother on the internet about all this, but the basic point is that it has been a distraction. What we really need to be thinking about is how to get someone other than Chuck Schumer to be majority leader of the Senate. There are important internal conflicts in the winning coalition, and they need to be resolved more or less right now. 

By the way: the vilified restaurants had a great day. They were jammed with customers from opening to closing. And I guess their name recognition went through the roof. But that's just a guess.

Meanwhile, back at the goat.

See also You Can't Sell Wet Matches.