My friend and occasional co-author Morton Marcus recently sent me the following:
Hortatory: Definition: giving exhortation or advice; encouraging someone to take a particular course of action
Origin: from the Latin word “hortatorius” meaning “encouraging”
Example: The coach gave a hortatory speech to the team, urging them to give their all in the upcoming game.
Giving exhortation or advice is at the core of what “hortatory” means. It involves motivating or inspiring someone to take action towards a certain goal or objective. This can be done through words of encouragement, counsel or advice. A hortatory speech can be given in different settings, such as in a business meeting, a classroom or a sports team huddle. It is a way to inspire people to aim higher and achieve their desired outcomes. Effective hortatory speeches are often filled with passion, conviction and sincerity, and can be a powerful tool for inspiring others to take positive action.
I’m not sure what this bit of wisdom was intended to convey–whether it was in response to a post, or someone’s comment– but it got me thinking about what I’ve been calling “the resistance.”
A number of people who’ve been advising/considering the options for those of us opposed to the coming full-scale assault on American governance have downplayed the effects of public demonstrations–protests, marches and the like. The central point is that these expressions of anger or disapproval don’t really accomplish anything–that We the People need to apply our energies to more substantive efforts. I don’t disagree with the observation that public dissent by itself is insufficient, but I think it is nevertheless important.
Look at that definition of “hortatory.”
Widespread expressions of disapproval, whether delivered via letters to elected officials, mass demonstrations, letters to the editor, blog posts, op-eds or other means have important impacts we shouldn’t dismiss: they send a message, and not just to the MAGA folks and Trumpers, many of whom are unaware and dismissive of the extent of public disapproval. Examples of public exhortation help forge community among the people who are participating in other, more scattered acts of resistance. They reassure resistors that they are not alone, that many other people share their belief in American values–especially the rule of law and transparent, competent and ethical governance.
In 2022, the Brookings Institution considered the effects of mass protests. In a study titled “Protest Matters” the focus was on the effects of protests on economic redistribution. Researchers studied whether citizen-led protests were able to nudge governments to increase redistributive efforts of fiscal resources, using evidence from Nigeria. The results were mixed– but overall the results showed that protests did influence fiscal redistribution.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies has also looked into the effects of demonstrations. Among other findings, that study found that such protests have been increasing globally.
Mass protests increased annually by an average of 11.5 percent from 2009 to 2019 across all regions of the world, with the largest concentration of activity in the Middle East and North Africa and the fastest rate of growth in sub-Saharan Africa.
Analysis of the underlying drivers of this growth suggests the trend will continue, meaning the number and intensity of global protests is likely to increase.
Protests have resulted in a broad range of outcomes, ranging from regime change and political accommodation to protracted political violence with many casualties.
The study also identified what it called “catalyzing factors” responsible for the trend: (1) the use of technology by protestors and governments alike, (2) the tension between shifting democratic and authoritarian government types, and (3) the need for improved understanding and responsiveness between governments and their citizens.
Some protests have greater impact than others–it turns out that the “how” of a protest is important. A study, titled “Protests: How Effective Are They?” found that three factors were most significant in predicting the success of such mass efforts: Nonviolent tactics, a favorable sociopolitical context, and a large number of participants. (A “favorable sociopolitical context” includes the existence of pre-existing, favorable public opinion, supportive elites, a favorable media environment– and luck.)
There’s a fairly robust academic literature considering the role of mass protests in promoting change, and while most studies don’t use the term “hortatory,” the hortatory element of successful protests was obvious. Those of us who are determined to resist the corruption, incompetence and sheer anti-Americanism of a Trump administration need to include public protest in our arsenal of weapons.
It’s not enough, but we shouldn’t dismiss it. It will be an important aspect of the resistance.
The recent mass protest in South Korea earlier this week was impressive. Their president thought he could pull a fast one off; the people proved him to be greatly mistaken.
The “horatory” providing the support for Trump by his followers in office as well as his voters, shows there is always a negative side to positive words of encouragement. Consider the fact that more of Trump’s supporters followed their words by their actions showing up at the polls while too many Democrats, including sitting officials who spoke against him, didn’t follow their words with actions or we wouldn’t be in this mess. Some are already providing “horatory” in hopes of gaining Trump’s favor to seek his support in Congressional positions. It is called “sucking up” or “covering their ass”.
Have we forgotten the violent protests by the Trump faction which attacked peaceful demonstrations supporting positive actions to save democracy? Do we really want the type of protests in our streets as we have seen most recently in South Korea which is a negative form of “horatory” encouraging a takeover of the government rather than working out issues they have faced for half a century?
Rev. Martin Luther KIng, Jr.’s words and actions of peaceful protests have been lost along with the repealed Civil Rights Act.
The right-wing true believers and fellow travelers are, for now, immune to protests of any sort. They are blind, dumb and intellectually lazy. The only “demonstrations” that will get their attention will be the lies creating hardship for themselves. Then, after they finish blaming the protesters, Democrats and “libruls”, they will finally understand the depth of their mistakes.
How many years of demonstrations did it take to finally get the Viet Nam war stopped? We went through 2 entire administrations of protest before that finally worked. How long will it take this time?
Professor Kennedy-I have the high honor of having lunch with your friend and co-author, Morton Marcus. When we are together, face to face, he dumbs his remarks down for me to understand. That always helps.
The re-election of trump is simply so overwhelming to most of us as to have a numbing effect. From the ridiculous and scary cabinet nominations to the announced deportations to the upcoming tariff debacle to his own complete and utterly useless personage in the most important office in the land – in the world – we are indeed numb. And angry. At the parade of clownish members of the maga crowd about to populate the US Government, to the millions who voted for him, to the millions who didn’t vote for a bright and hopeful future that Kamala represented, and mostly to the millions of eligible voters who simply stayed home, allowing this travesty to unfold before us. The glimpses of hope I see right now are in the Biden judicial nominations which continue to go forward, and to the – shall we call something that should be simply duty, brave – GOP Senators’ opposition to the various totally unqualified and otherwise reprehensible figures trump has put up for cabinet nominations. One can only hope for other glimpses – the states which are being proactive regarding abortion rights, etc. – as we travel through this nightmare, and for an equally overwhelming responsive victory in the 2026 elections, putting the lid on unbridled autocracy at two years.
Sometimes people do get tired of the effort when no results occur, and the hortatory messages they’ve heard for a decade or so cease to be effective. Purdue football pretty much reached that stage this year.
As for politics & America’s governing, I myself am there now, and can’t help but have a chuckle now that I’m beginning to read articles about people who had no idea what the issues were and voted for the Trumpublicans because what they said they’d do sounded good to them, but now are being told just the opposite is going to happen.
My own question to them would be – ‘Where have you been the last 8 years when their 40,000 + lies were being repeated over & over?
Yes, I’ve given up and have decided to let things proceed toward the inevitable failure of progressive proposals for awhile. The Democrats have a history of not knowing how to campaign in the ‘political’ aspect of our system, but when things are bad enough and they do win, they govern intelligently and get results.
All I’m prepared to do for awhile is just wait for things to cycle around again.
I love the new word. Thanks Sheila.
Here is what’s going on in Syria by rebels.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/06/middleeast/syria-rebel-offensive-homs-flee-intl?cid=ios_app
What interests me is comparing these rebels with ours in 1776.
“ In Congress, July 4, 1776”
“The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.” Etc.
The US has declared the Syrian rebels and their leader as terrorists and our own rebels as patriots.
Hortatory me this – what are the differences between us and them?
Thanks for that comment, Dennis. After reading the first few lines today, the word that came to mind was hoity-toity. We must dispense our vocabulary of words that sound “woke” or “elitist.”
As for effective rebellions that grab attention, Vern, how about the execution of United Healthcare’s CEO with engraved bullets left at the scene of the crime? That sure made a statement!
My horatorial speech has been clamoring for beheadings via guillotine for a long time now. The time for marches has passed. The heads lost are not lapdog politicians but the oligarchy pulling the strings not just in the US but abroad as well.
I hope all the democrats following this blog read Mehdi Hasan and his media outlet, Zeteo. The best thing that happened to him was leaving the entertainment-owned MSNBC so he could do real journalism. Alexandra Rojas wrote the perfect article addressing the demise of DP and where our anger should be targeted – DP leadership and the billionaires:
“This is a problem decades in the making by Democratic Party leadership who have worked overtime to serve the needs of corporations and billionaire donors, while leaving ordinary people out to dry.”
https://zeteo.com/p/democrats-will-keep-losing-until
One last note: one of the major unions is planning a work stoppage in several years to allow them and other unions to dramatically increase worker membership in appropriate unions. Amazon employees are on the list. If you want to get the oligarchy’s attention, a work stoppage will absolutely work. Union membership must increase to the days when FDR was pressed to act on behalf of the people.
Who had time for protests? We got Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Small Business Tuesday, TikTok, NFL, NBA, 500 channels, sports betting, legal weed, etc.
Todd, is this a new low? Encouraging murder is not of value.
I took part in several protests of the war in Viet Nam, and do believe, as stated, that they all had a salutary impact on the situation. Thanks, Sheila, for supporting tis idea.
Mitch, supporting murder is being an American Patriot according to genocide defenders and apologists! 😉
Instead of murdering innocent women and children – how about we support public lynchings and beheadings of corrupt CEOs as a deterrent?
I’m in favor of protest marches. One reason is that Americans need more exercise and walking is a good one.😉 While walking we have an opportunity to speak with people and understand that not everyone in a march thinks exactly like we do. People come for their own reasons, some of which seem to misread the specific reason for the march, itself.
Other types of protest including letter writing and calling or texting are easy ways to engage even non-voters in governance. The problem with it is that the verbiage is provided by the sponsoring organizations. People send thousands of the exact same protest notes. Unfortunately, those are usually dismissed by the government officials for whom they are intended. They just look at them as limited to a specific group and not as a real protest.
United Healthcare used a faulty AI program to deny patients lifesaving treatments. The executives at U.H. knew that program was faulty.
Brian Thompson…. good riddance.
Sorry for the length. From The Guardian…
Abortion rights activism can provide a model for resistance to Trump
Post-Dobbs abortion activism offers a map for nonviolent civil disobedience during the second Trump presidency
“At what point does the duty to comply with laws enacted by a legislative majority (or with executive acts supported by such a majority) cease to be binding in view of the … duty to oppose injustice?” asked the political philosopher John Rawls in his book A Theory of Justice.
The answer, for the US, is now.
What was during Trump’s first term a shambolic disregard of constitutional principles and settled law is now a conscientious program of their subversion. Project 2025 envisions a government that provides no public goods but employs all forms of unconstitutional surveillance and carceral violence to control the speech, movement and bodies of everyone within US borders.
And thanks to the supreme court, the president will enjoy absolute immunity from criminal prosecution, so long as the subversion is committed as an official presidential act.
Pregnant people are already living with this legally sanctioned lawlessness. Shortly before the court’s Dobbs decision overturning Roe v Wade, the attorney Lynn Paltrow, the OB-GYN Lisa Harris and the medical ethicist Mary Faith Marshall predicted that abortion bans would create “a new class of persons for whom fundamental constitutional rights don’t apply”. Every pregnant person would instantly become “vulnerable to legal surveillance, civil detentions, forced interventions, and criminal prosecution”. And because 85% of American women get pregnant at least once in their lifetimes, that class essentially includes all women.
quote
What is happening to pregnant people in the US has been happening all over the world for decades.
Their prediction has been realized. The legal advocacy organization Pregnancy Justice reports at least 210 “pregnancy-related prosecutions” in the 12 months after Dobbs – the most documented in a single year. Charges include child abuse, neglect, or endangerment (such as delivering drugs to the fetus), or criminal homicide for miscarriage. Not to mention that pregnant women denied emergency abortions have been effectively sentenced to infertility or death.
What is happening to pregnant people in the US has been happening all over the world for decades. And feminists, including those in the US, have been resisting, not just politically and openly, but materially and clandestinely. In the last 20 years, they’ve provided pills and guidance for self-managed abortions; before that, they performed safe, illegal surgical abortions. While helping women exercise their human rights, these activists push legal means to the max and, when they depart from the law, stay ahead of it.
That makes post-Dobbs abortion activism a model for non-violent civil disobedience during the coming regime. Some guidelines:
Employ every democratic instrument
Rightwing legislators successfully employ democratic institutions and procedures to undermine democracy. When the US supreme court gutted the Voting Rights Act, radical gerrymandering ensued, ensuring minority rule and with it the abridgment of rights for everyone from drag queens to school librarians.
But where minority legislative rule is all but unbreakable, citizens turn to direct democracy. This election, pro-abortion ballot referenda prevailed in seven states, and one, in Florida, gained majority support but fell 4 percentage points short of passage. Seven more states retained or expanded abortion rights or defeated anti-abortion ballot measures in 2022 and 2023 and subsequent lawsuits cemented those wins.
Of course, Republican elected officials do not take all this democracy lying down. Instead, they’ve retrofitted the machinery of legislative democracy to undermine direct democracy or fought direct democracy with more direct, but crooked, democracy.
In Ohio, in 2023, with a pro-abortion measure polling at 58%, the legislature added its own referendum, to raise the bar for passage to 60%. The first won, the second lost.
In Nebraska, in 2024 abortion activists got Initiative 439 on the ballot, to enshrine a state constitutional right to abortion through the third trimester. Four months later, the antis crafted Initiative 434, to fix the current second- and third-trimester bans in the constitution. The confusion caused by the dueling initiatives was intentional. The anti-abortion text mimicked the pro-choice text. Canvassers for 434 misrepresented themselves as pro-choice; 300 tricked signers asked the state to remove their names from the petition. Republican state officials circulated misinformation. Both measures appeared on the ballot, and in the muddle, the antis won. But what happened in Nebraska is not inevitable. And the state’s reproductive justice champions aren’t giving up.
Exploit federalism, or go global
Is liberal-to-conservative-state telemedicine legal? Is mailing pills to conservative states? Is sanctuary for undocumented immigrants constitutionally protected? The answer to these questions, so far, is: “It depends on what state you’re in.” Conservatives have extolled states’ rights since they invoked them to uphold racial segregation. Trump boasts of appointing the judges who returned abortion law to the states.
The left can use federalism too. Take shelter in Democratic-led states to protect immigrants and transgender people and support abortion access; export what you can. In both Democratic and Republican states, a constitutional lawyer suggested to me, bring cases that focus only on state issues, avoiding the sure-to-be-unfriendly federal supreme court.
Still, the federal judiciary is not a lost cause. Almost two thirds of the federal bench was appointed by Obama and Biden, and even Republican appointed judges stood up to Trump the first time around, David Cole points out, adding: “The constitution’s checks and balances are not self-enforcing; they work only where citizens and civil society institutions fight back.”
When domestic options are exhausted, look abroad. Aid Access, a global telemedicine service based in Austria, prescribes and sends pills for self-managed abortions anywhere a person needs them. Demand has grown tenfold since Dobbs, its director told NBC. Transgender people may need to build similar global networks for procuring hormones. During the Aids crisis, activists smuggled experimental or cheap drugs into the US, where they were unavailable or unaffordable.
When liberty is criminalized, defend it – secretly if necessary
Rawls was writing after the civil rights movement but before Watergate. He assumed a liberal democracy under the rule of law, even if the laws were unjust enough to legitimate defying them. For Rawls, as for Thoreau or Martin Luther King, doing it in the open was critical to its impact. Thoreau, who had long refused to pay taxes as a protest against slavery, was arrested in Concord, Massachusetts, for nonpayment of a $1.50 poll tax. He wanted to stay longer, for maximum publicity. MLK was dogged and defamed by the FBI – before he was assassinated – but he never hid.
The Concord sheriff and J Edgar Hoover had nothing on the apps in your phone that track your every purchase, move, and thought. Thoreau spent one night behind bars. Today, a Texas abortion provider might face life imprisonment. But just as every authoritarian has methods of persecution, every underground has defensive tactics.
Resistance fighters assumed noms de guerre not just to protect themselves but to keep their comrades innocent of intelligence in case of interrogation. Today encrypted messaging takes the place of fake names. In Abortion Beyond the Law, the sociologist Naomi Braine writes that the feminist movement for self-managed abortion “refuses to comply with laws that limit or ban abortion” – but to prevent arrest participants balance protective secrecy with sufficient visibility to abortion-seekers. It’s “civil disobedience without a press release”, Braine says.
Do everything to prevent arrest. But if it happens, co-opt Trump’s favorite tactic: delay, delay, delay. The 14th amendment still guarantees due process. The wheels of justice turn slowly. Slow them down.
Be radical
Roe v Wade was a compromise. Choice is a euphemism, since restrictions to legal abortion under Roe made it inaccessible to millions anyway. Practically all is lost, so why not go for it all?
Don’t just ask for child tax credits, for-profit Obamacare, temporary arms embargoes, or a slightly less bad abortion law. Eat the rich. Medicare for all, defund the military! Maga promises to burn the government down. Follow their example. Where the law is unjust, break it.
I went to the women’s march in DC, at the time largest in the world, 3 people at the antarctic even participated. Now women in what many believed was the freest country in the world don’t even have a right to basic healthcare during pregnancy or body autonomy. Yes, lots of women ran for office and won, however it accomplished nothing for the majority of women.
Since we have had the climate, George Floyd, and repeal of Roe protests and it’s now legal to run over protestors in certain situations and banned by some local governments. Maga ts want to be able to shoot protestors and trump had encouraged the police and government officials to crack down on peaceful protesters. Hundreds of people were injured by the rubber bullets. Then of course there were the 3%s embedded with custom and border agents showing up in all black and terrorizing the protesters and citizens.
The incoming admin along with full cooperation of our governor and others will declare marshall law against us and his minions will support him.
Regardless of the details surrounding the CEO execution that we are all supposed to be shocked over for some reason is beyond my comprehension. The Sandy Hook anniversary is approaching , those babies were hunted down, he planned it, etc , until we stop this from ever happening, I have a hard time caring about some rich guy that spent his life hurting the sick, poor and dying. I will save my outrage energy for deserving victims. If you think that’s cold so be it.
If it wasn’t for knowing the history of how Hitler happened I would have walked away from all this, voted and ignored everything else, but I can’t no matter how much I would like to. I can’t sit back and chuckle because I don’t have that luxury.
Having spent years demonstrating for peace, for women’s right (all phases) and climate protection, here’s what I know. Maybe it doesn’t impress the ”powers that be” (maybe/maybe not) but it’s an overwhelming feeling of positivity and strength in numbers! And that’s a very good thing!
I am in my 84th year and intend to resist as much as I can. I have the usual medical conditions, none of which rises to the extent of disability to take physical and intellectual action. My complaint about the recent election is that I offered my physical support along with my financial support to four major candidates in the last election cycle and none of them even took the time to thank me; let alone ask me to actively help. They all lost their elections, but probably my future support as well if they try to run for something in the future.
Pam – WADR, thanks for the nice description of virtue postering and group feel good. That is NOT what MLK stood for.
With protests now a days it’s too easy for the police to drag out the rubber bullets, flash bombs, batons, pepperspray, etc. whether people are protesting peacefully or not.
Here is something productive
https://www.mobilize.us/progressivedemocratsofindiana/event/742431/