We need to do whatever we can to baffle, derail, create splits in, and block the Trump presidency. One way is by attacks they never see coming and don’t know how to defend against. Protests and demonstrations baffle and enrage them, as witness their outrage at the spontaneous protests after the election and the comical accusation that the protests were funded by Soros. These protests were outside their experience and they didn’t have a clue what to do about them. Â Also, Â Trump, inexplicably, goes bonkers when satirized on Saturday Night Live and is clearly extraordinarily thin-skinned. So, the more protests the better, ditto for satire and lampooning Trump.
Sometimes street theater can be hugely effective. In 1967, Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin snuck into the New York Stock Exchange and threw money off the balcony at traders. Some traders tried to grab money. Others screamed insults at them. Hoffman and Rubin got ejected, went outside and burned money on the sidewalk. It made headlines across the country. Playful antics like this certainly won’t bring down the Trump presidency on their own, but they can be effective and get publicity.
If we operate outside their experience, they won’t know how to counter what we do or their counter-reaction will be clumsy and ineffective.
Rules for Radicals:
The third rule is: Wherever possible go outside of the experience of the enemy.
Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat. General William T. Sherman, whose name still causes a frenzied reaction throughout the South, provided a classic example of going outside the enemy’s experience. Until Sherman, military tactics and strategies were based on standard patterns. All armies had fronts, rears, flanks, lines of communication, and lines of supply. Military campaigns were aimed at such standard objectives as rolling up the flanks of the enemy army or cutting the lines of supply or lines of communication, or moving around to attack from the rear. When Sherman cut loose on his famous March to the Sea, he had no front or rear lines of supplies or any other lines. He was on the loose and living on the land. The South, confronted with this new form of military invasion, reacted with confusion, panic, terror, and collapse. Sherman swept on to inevitable victory. It was the same tactic that, years later in the early days of World War II, the Nazi Panzer tank divisions emulated in their far-flung sweeps into enemy territory, as did our own General Patton with the American Third Armored Division.