Paid to Protest?

A cynic knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.

Hey, all you protesters and neighborhood guardians in Minneapolis, did you get your checks this week?

I mean, of course you’re doing it for money, right? You wouldn’t be out in the cold, eating free donuts and samosas, if someone weren’t paying you. Where did all those free handwarmers come from, anyway?

What’s the going rate? Can’t be minimum wage. For that chicken scratch, you might as well stay indoors and work at Auto Zone. Is it $50 an hour? Do you get full medical and dental? Can you retire at full benefits at 20 years, like the Army, and then move on to your next career? When’s the company picnic?

Last week in McSweeney’s, John Moe wrote a hilarious piece about the problems of paying all those protestors. The title says it all: I Am the Payroll Accountant for Professional Protestors in Minnesota, and I Am Swamped. Take a moment and read it. It’s a perfect blending of office bureaucracy and the insulting nonsense spewed by the right. It describes a fantasy land in the MAGA mind.

Oscar Wilde famously said, “A cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”

The same could be said for the mouthbreathers and recliner lizards and mic-suckers who accuse Minnesotans of being paid to protest. Of course, the word “know” short-circuits any direct comparison. The mouthbreathers echo cynicism, parrot it back because the world is confusing, multifaceted and alive.

The usual MAGA rhetoric rings with notions of sacrifice for abstract ideals and undefinable yardsticks. It gets morons charged up about the fight for “nation” and “greatness” and “heritage” and “sacrifice.” There’s no shortage of vague, emotional ideas being used to push people’s buttons and demonize others.

Did they get paid to scream about that?

The ones with platforms do. Some even get paid by Russia. Hate sells.

But the red caps don’t get paid. They’re the ones shelling the money out. The MAGA audience pays T-shirt sellers and tour operators and who knows who else, to follow the orange shitgibbon around and feel like part of something bigger than themselves. Hell, if you have so much free time, why don’t you go coach Little League?

Wait, I take that back, for the children’s sake.

Martin Amis famously said (or let’s just say it’s my favorite, apropos in many situations):

“Money. What IS this shit, anyway?”

MAGA “thinkers” throw around big words all the time. Destiny. Western civilization. Homeland. Purity. Purpose.

All hot air. Just keystrokes on the keyboard, a couple of bytes on computer, some buzz over the airwaves.

Compare that empty blather to the experience of watching people on your street being pulled out of car windows, pinned down by half a dozen masked men, zip tied and taken away to who-knows-where. The idling car sitting in the street where it was abandoned.

Is that scene real enough to get someone riled up? Does a person’s outrage about that injustice need a couple of extra bucks to get stoked?

If your humanity is so cheap that you’ve entertained the notion these protesters get paid, I pity you. Maybe you weren’t moved emotionally by the kidnapping scenes. Fine. Maybe you think these “rebels” or “illegals” need to be put in their place. Okay. Maybe you even thought that people “deserved” getting beaten, gassed or even killed because they didn’t scurry away from Meal Team Six as ordered. (Maybe you play too much “Delta Force” and are looking forward to the day you’re permitted to shoot another American.)

But to assert that these people are PAID to stand against authoritarians and protect their neighbors?

Again, “Money. What IS this shit?”

It’s a confession. It’s a clear statement that there’s nothing you yourself wouldn’t do for money. If the price was right, you hold no principle or person you wouldn’t sell out. Mom, Grandma, the view out your back door, your right to vote or assemble, your right to own a gun. “Make me an offer. I’m a savvy operator.”

And maybe you’re sad no one ever asked you to sell out. No one thinks you’re worth corrupting or recruiting. No one thinks of you at all.

Ouch. Again, I pity you.

Contrast that with the tens of thousands of Minnesotans who are watching over other people’s kids at school drop off. Closing their stores to use the building for warming centers. Delivering food to strangers afraid to leave their houses because it’s the right thing to do.

I guess we owe you for making it so easy to see what’s the right thing to do. But don’t expect a check.

One of the best articles I’ve read this year comes from Adam Serwer in The Atlantic. Reporting from Minneapolis, he writes about riding with resisters who patrol neighborhoods in their time off work. He conveys the sense that Federal agents are still everywhere in the city. He contrasts resisters’ commitment and selflessness and bravery with the screechy, cowardly bullshit that spews from DHS officials. It’s worth checking out.

Serwer ends with a very potent observation:

The secret fear of the morally depraved is that virtue is actually common, and that they’re the ones who are alone. In Minnesota, all of the ideological cornerstones of MAGA have been proved false at once. Minnesotans, not the armed thugs of ICE and the Border Patrol, are brave. Minnesotans have shown that their community is socially cohesive—because of its diversity and not in spite of it. Minnesotans have found and loved one another in a world atomized by social media, where empty men have tried to fill their lonely soul with lies about their own inherent superiority. Minnesotans have preserved everything worthwhile about “Western civilization,” while armed brutes try to tear it down by force.

It’s worth reading, and reading again. I’ve put a gift link up in my Bluesky account (@jamesfinngarner.bsky.social).

My daughter lives up there now in Minneapolis, and talks freely about standing up for “her community.” Not in some vague or self-righteous or juvenile way, but very concretely. Alex Pretti was killed at the spot where her best friend catches the bus to work every morning. She and I enjoyed bahn mi last October about 3 storefronts down from the spot where mounds of flowers and candles now burn in his memory. She’s out there for the community when it’s 20 below zero.

Years ago, I mentioned I was surprised that she loved Minnesota, despite the weather.

“Oh, I HATE the weather,” she laughed. “It’s the people I love.”

Looks like I didn’t raise no cynic.

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