Political marches take two forms: Those which are a form of direct action (e.g., the women's march on Versailles weaponized the reluctance of soldiers to victimize women), and those organized around displaying the commitment of a group to a specific idea or demand. Anti-war marches, MLK's March on Washington, and even the yearly futility of the March for Life fit this format. But what about the Women's March?

From the poorly-knit pink cat-ear hats to the charted buses (often underwritten by allegedly non-political institutions) to the lack of ideology, the Women's March rather only represents itself. Such "empty" marches only work in contexts where such a march itself would be surprising, but as women face no impediments to marching in the United States (and in fact are praised for doing so), it has no effect. No one is surprised, even Republicans, that women exist. That they have chosen to remind us with what essentially amounts to a massive opportunity for social media narcissism would be a blow to the belief that they can be full, mature participants in the political process if it weren't for the fact that the men of establishment belief are no different.

A little high, some social approval-- but no politics!

Donald Trump won because people were tired of the real anti-politics in our culture, that which said all things are settled, that "reality has a liberal bias", history had a side, and nothing needed any other reference point other than efficiency, AI approval, or the support of 90% of the experts. It's just a fact! screams the liberal one last time, before instagramming her hat for the approval of the reality based community, her social sphere entirely reduced to mechanics.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3499389&forum_id=2)#32427227)

i dont get it either. no president has 100% approval. more than 60M ppl voted against Obama too. not sure what they are trying to convey here

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3499389&forum_id=2)#32427375)

The women's march represents their opportunity to in the 1960s, which regret not being s part of.

They desperately want to be able to "tell their daughters that they did this to help them."

Other than restrictions on abortion (which there should be some), I cannot think of a single institutional impedement for women that can be fixed by the government.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3499389&forum_id=2)#32431123)

see howmany respond with some racist shit against michelle malkin

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3499389&forum_id=2)#32428708)

there's no *there* there. women just enjoy the self-aggrandizing pomp and circumstance of dressing up their naked self-involvement as a grandiose "political" movement.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3499389&forum_id=2)#32427571)

women did not invent the social media, the history, or the anti–thought that underlies all this, and if men could get social approval for doing the same, they would, and in fact some have tried anyhow (exactly the sort of "men" who were envious of the girls who were their first grade teacher's favorites)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3499389&forum_id=2)#32427599)

the inanity of the "women's movement" has everything to do with "women in particular."

and all of these other phenomena you've named have plenty to do with the effeminization of culture/politics, which now cater to, and reflect, women's inanity.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3499389&forum_id=2)#32427668)

most of the left’s discomfort with trump has little to do with his politics but rather his rhetoric and what he’s come to symbolize as a social figure. they'd obviously prefer someone like clinton to him but ultimately trump is much closer to center than most of the other republican candidates. when i push my lib friends on their dislike of trump they typically fall back on disliking the uncertainty and risks that his character brings and the consequences that they could have, but nobody is protesting “uncertainty” today. they dislike trump not because he’s a uniquely risky political figure or because he’s staunchly conservative (he’s not) but because he makes them feel icky (“he said pussy!”).

in fact he makes libs feel so icky that they were compelled to protest him today. but press libs on what makes him such a dangerous figure and aside from the uncertainty aspect there’s not much that they can pin down, at least with regards to social issues (many real leftists, if they are honest with themselves, probably prefer much of his economic platform to hillary’s anyways), and aside from the more unlikely and over-the-top proposals that he made through the campaign. but many of these were of course rhetorical themselves. he’s simply come to represent “anti-inclusivity.” to be fair, some do hate him for some of his policy stances, but this isn’t why the liberal masses recoil from him.

they were compelled to protest him because they *feel* that trump is a deeply odious figure but unlike most political protests there was really no significant *political* object against which to speak out.

i’m sure that many were there today just to take some snaps but at a deeper level i think it’s another symptom of the left’s confusion about its distaste for trump. they want to hate him as a political figure because they hate him as a social figure and as a human being. and so they stage a “women’s march” which, as you describe, has no real political content, because it’s all they can do. i don’t think it was just an instagram party insofar as they truly dislike trump and wanted to be there to protest him but there’s no political content to their protest because there’s little political content to their distaste for him.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3499389&forum_id=2)#32427684)

Trump embodies two things: The reassertion of politics into the realm of anti-politics, AND the hated, uncool outcaste. Trump's policies don't matter and never could matter, which is why elite libs are suddenly cool with the CIA or down with hysterical anti-Russia stuff or suddenly throwing around "treason" even though they don't really believe in such a thing.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3499389&forum_id=2)#32427771)

we agree that there would still have been a march had another republican candidate won the presidency, and we agree that it would not have been as heated. it wouldn’t have been as heated because someone like gentle marco rubio or john kasich doesn’t stir the emotions as does trump.

and we agree that his politics don’t matter in this regard.

but your argument above says that the march amounts to an instagram party. well, of course it was just an instagram party, thus is life for most people – just signaling common virtues, because that’s the semblance of meaning that they find in their lives. the concern with “antipolitics” is just adopted rhetoric used to justify their concern over trump. but trump has rustled shrew jimmies very powerfully and very particularly. i'm willing to believe that today’s march was materially larger than it would have been had kasich won because trump is such a reviled figure for his rhetoric.

but that’s not so much my point.

elite virtue signaling was of course the motivating force behind what happened today but the uniquely comical apolitical “content” of the march in particular is a product of what trump has come to represent. to the extent that you use “politically empty” to describe the shallow motivating force, we agree. but i would say that this force has been just as much at play in more “politically meaty” demonstrations throughout the last 30 years (climate change marches, etc.). i think not just the motivation but even the face-value political content of the march itself today was particularly vacuous, for the reasons i’ve described.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3499389&forum_id=2)#32428126)

their social lives are like their political and intellectual lives, emptied of content or genuine relations, but easily quantified. or, put another way, their social life doesn't represent genuine human connection or community, but rather "sociality" itself, reduced to a form that may be represented and easily processed.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3499389&forum_id=2)#32428953)

however, the origins of the phrase come from a left-wing critique of the liberal technocratic fetish, and it's more in that spirit that I use the phrase to critique them. liberals genuinely believe there isn't really "politics" (that is, the clash of values and persons in the polis), but rather a sort of objective managerial policy which is either correctly presented to the democracy or not, and should function in any case in spite of it. (this is why liberals will whine about the "dead hand" problem with the US Constitution but then talk about the "original democratic vitality" of the Clean Air Act in justifying Mass v. EPA) the actual clash of values and persons, the realities of ambition, all of these are deeply discomforting to the liberal, who is a Last Man.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3499389&forum_id=2)#32429040)

I wish that the march organizers were more inclusive to social conservative women - particularly pro-life women - who wanted to march.

I understand why people marched. I don't think they needed to be protesting a particular subject or regulation (e.g., AIDS deaths, Jim Crow, abortion). It was a magnificent show of solidarity across the world, and that in and of itself is political.

Also, Trump just signed this executive order pulling federal funding for international NGOs which perform abortions or advocate in favor of abortions: http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2017/01/23/its-offical-trump-defunds-taxpayer-funded-abortions-abroad-n2275639.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3499389&forum_id=2)#32438886)

This isn't Cairo, Tehran, or Beijing. No one is impressed by solidarity alone, it's meaningless in the Western context, especially for the Left, which does this sort of thing regularly.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3499389&forum_id=2)#32439200)

its only impact will be when people share their "memories" of the event on social media each anniversary

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3499389&forum_id=2)#32621922)