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Experiment 626 wrote:
Any intelligent person would soon realise that Quebec has no way to stand on it's own

Funny, I'm just coming back from one of the monthly conferences of the Intellectuals for Sovereignty.

And the Francophones have never had a choice

They've been given the choice twice and both times turned it down.

 Kovnik Obama wrote:
Why engage in a political process that you need to share with constituency with which you do not share any (or few) values? When mathematics alone assure that your values will never be the ones that are used to make a decision? Or when (in the case of Catalonia) less than 2 generations ago that same political entity was busy torturing and killing your people?

Yeah, I didn't express myself that well. I was commenting more on groups with imagined or minor grievances, who lurch straight to calls of secession. I didn't mean to dismiss all calls for independance.

Though in the case of Catalonia, while there was torture there in recent history, it was fascist Spain - the Franco regime was torturing regular Spanish folk as well. There should be good reason to believe that a good life and an independant culture can be maintained under the now democratic government.


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 BaronIveagh wrote:
Agreed, however, the odds of reform in many countries, no matter how many voters are engaged in it, is remote. The United States can't even seem to manage election reform, despite both parties promising it since..... 1950, at least. Healthcare reform had been pitched by every president since Roosevelt.

I think there's a key difference between lots of talk about electoral reform, and an actual meaningful demand for it. If there was real, substantial demand for reform, then a reformist movement like the Tea Party wouldn't have just folded into the Republican party, it would have remained its own thing, and that real, meaningful support would have made it a genuine rival party.

The reason you haven't seen substantial reform on elections, or healthcare, or many other issues is that ultimately the electorate satisfied enough with the status quo. They'd like things to be better, but that isn't enough in itself.


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 Testify wrote:
Citation needed. The UK had a Jewish Prime Minister in the late 19th century, Musslini was famously unracist (until he was bullied into it by the nazis), I'm not aware of any *serious* anti-semitism in the rest of Western Europe.

Actually there continued to be sporadic pogroms against Jewish communities through the 19th century, with several thousand killed. Although by the 20th century, outside of Russia this had largely died down, but there were still pogroms in Wales and Poland (the Polish pogrom killing 70 odd Jews)

And the Jews were doing just fine in Poland/the USSR.

They most certainly were not. Between 1903 and 1906 more than 2,000 Jews were killed in a wave of pogroms across Russia. In many instances it is clear the police knew of impending attacks and chose to do nothing.

This got much worse during the the Russian Civil War, charges of Jewish influence in the Soviet coup led heightened the anti-semitism already present, and somewhere between 70,000 and 250,000 Jews were slaughtered by the White and other forces fighting the Communists. Never being ones to miss out on a crime against humanity, Soviet forces killed several thousand Jews themselves (though without sanction from higher ups, who actually did punish soldiers in an effort to stop such killing).



Seriously, the holocaust didn't come out of nowhere. There's a thousand year history of violence and hate there, right across Europe.


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 BaronIveagh wrote:
That's... and interesting and not exactly accurate view of Texas. Part of the issue in Texas was, amusingly enough, slave ownership, which the Mexican state that Texas was then part of passed an emancipation law slowly phasing slavery out, in 1827. This combined with anglo-american settler frustrations with Mexican rule fueled the war with Mexico. Texas then spent a decade as an Independent state, until a combination of economic issues, which some have suggested may have been deliberately created, and political scandals forced the nationalists out of office. Initially they made an offer to the US, but then lost the following election and Texas withdrew the annexation offer. Tyler tried in 1843, but the treaty fell through in the Senate.

The final offer, which was accepted, was rushed through just about everything before people changed their minds or upcoming elections changed them for them. Only the fact that then President Anson Jones of Texas insisted that they wait for Mexico to respond with an offer of an Independence treaty (which they did) slowed it at all. With the death of pro Annexation vice President Kenneth Anderson days after signing the agreement, the press used this to sway voters in favor of annexation.

That's a really interesting bit of history, thanks for posting that.

 sebster wrote:

I think there's a key difference between lots of talk about electoral reform, and an actual meaningful demand for it. If there was real, substantial demand for reform, then a reformist movement like the Tea Party wouldn't have just folded into the Republican party, it would have remained its own thing, and that real, meaningful support would have made it a genuine rival party.

The reason you haven't seen substantial reform on elections, or healthcare, or many other issues is that ultimately the electorate satisfied enough with the status quo. They'd like things to be better, but that isn't enough in itself.

Actually any reformist movement in the US is doomed to fold into either the Republican or Democrat party, as lawmakers from both of those have made it nearly impossible to get on the ballot in most states without being one or the other.

An example from PA: to get your party on the ballot, they have to have received a certain percentage of the vote in the previous election. Sounds reasonable, right? Up until you realize that they can't get any percentage of the votes, as they can't get on the ballot. Write in is about the only possible way to do it, and there's a glass ceiling to that in PA, which more or less prevents a newly formed party from ever receiving the required number of votes, unless it wins state wide. Plus there's all sorts of little tricks like write ins being counted as 'independent' regardless of registered party, if you don't correct it with the board of elections before taking office.

 BaronIveagh wrote:
Actually any reformist movement in the US is doomed to fold into either the Republican or Democrat party, as lawmakers from both of those have made it nearly impossible to get on the ballot in most states without being one or the other.

An example from PA: to get your party on the ballot, they have to have received a certain percentage of the vote in the previous election. Sounds reasonable, right? Up until you realize that they can't get any percentage of the votes, as they can't get on the ballot. Write in is about the only possible way to do it, and there's a glass ceiling to that in PA, which more or less prevents a newly formed party from ever receiving the required number of votes, unless it wins state wide. Plus there's all sorts of little tricks like write ins being counted as 'independent' regardless of registered party, if you don't correct it with the board of elections before taking office.

I thought you could get on the ballot in Pennsylvania through a petition? I think I remember reading that during the whole ID kerfuffle.

Anyhow, the number is like 50,000 isn't it? Point is, if you can't get 50,000 signatures or write-in ballots out of a population of 12 million, then you simply don't have the base level appeal to make two shades of gak difference to the greater politic scene.

We've got countless minority parties over here, and with little any ballot is likely to have half a dozen names on it. Because there's preferential voting in Australia there's no notion of 'wasting your vote', you can pick whatever minor candidate you want, and still get to choose which of the most likely candidates you'd prefer. And because the upper house is determined by proportional representation minor parties win seats in there regularly.

And even with all that, they have little chance of usurping a major party because they just don't represent the beliefs of that many people. The majority powers are in the majority because, when push comes to shove, the bolted together mess of political compromise that forms their political ideology captures the majority of voters.

Actual, serious reform that would see a minor party become a major party requires a situation where a majority of people are seriously unhappy with the current state of affairs and are willing to let go of the status quo. And that doesn't mean 'I think government are idiots and don't speak for me'. It means something a lot more like 'there's a good chance I won't eat today'.

 sebster wrote:

I thought you could get on the ballot in Pennsylvania through a petition? I think I remember reading that during the whole ID kerfuffle.

Anyhow, the number is like 50,000 isn't it? Point is, if you can't get 50,000 signatures or write-in ballots out of a population of 12 million, then you simply don't have the base level appeal to make two shades of gak difference to politics.

The number varies by district, based on previous elections. You have three weeks to get the signatures you need, they can't be gotten before or after that three week span. Assume that your opponent will try to have half of them thrown out, so aim for half again as many as you need. As most people will tell you, assume it will take 100 hours to collect 1000 probably valid signatures. Each person that collects signatures must get them notarized. Then the entire petition must be driven to Harrisburg in it's entirety (not mailed or something else) and delivered by hand by 5pm March 9th.

 BaronIveagh wrote:
The number varies by district, based on previous elections. You have three weeks to get the signatures you need, they can't be gotten before or after that three week span. Assume that your opponent will try to have half of them thrown out, so aim for half again as many as you need. As most people will tell you, assume it will take 100 hours to collect 1000 probably valid signatures. Each person that collects signatures must get them notarized. Then the entire petition must be driven to Harrisburg in it's entirety (not mailed or something else) and delivered by hand by 5pm March 9th.

Which sucks and shouldn't be needed to get your party on the ballot, I absolutely agree. But for a party with real momentum and support for whatever their brand of reform might be, it isn't prohibitive.

 sebster wrote:

Which sucks and shouldn't be needed to get your party on the ballot, I absolutely agree. But for a party with real momentum and support for whatever their brand of reform might be, it isn't prohibitive.

Eh, I still doubt it. What usually ends up happening is that one of the major parties hijacks whatever cause is motivating people before it can reach critical mass, spews bull about it for as long as they think people will care, carefully kills any attempt to change in committee and blames the opposite party. You will never see another viable 3rd political party unless the parties in power do something awe inspiringly stupid.

 BaronIveagh wrote:
Eh, I still doubt it. What usually ends up happening is that one of the major parties hijacks whatever cause is motivating people before it can reach critical mass, spews bull about it for as long as they think people will care, carefully kills any attempt to change in committee and blames the opposite party. You will never see another viable 3rd political party unless the parties in power do something awe inspiringly stupid.

I agree that major parties frequently pick up fringe policies. But then I don't see that as a problem, but as a working system. Finding out what people want and then doing that is what political parties are supposed to do.


And yeah, the major parties will often make noise about issues and then do bugger all about them. But then if there's any major kind of demand that kind of shenanigans won't be enough by itself. Either the party will eventually be forced to actually take a meaningful stance on the issue, or those voters will leave the party and move back to their fringe party.

Either the party will eventually be forced to actually take a meaningful stance on the issue, or those voters will leave the party and move back to their fringe party.

Except they don't. At least not in Canada, and definetely not in America, Look at occupy wall street and the tea party, both were "fringe parties" that if they had been able to easily form their own parties would have done so and likely would have met with a recognizable amount of success. Instead the Tea Party had to push out establishment republicans to get their people in and the Occupy movement got effed in the a.

I'm against Catalan independence. Barcelona was one of the most awesome cities I visited in Europe, and just about the only one where I never got a single whiff of the "Oh, an American... sigh" vibe. Largely because they have the rest of Spain, right there, to vent all their hatred on. It's nice.

If they became independent, I fear that the sentiment would crop up there as well.

A financial crisis is a good way to get what you want. It's easier to get a Visa is a depression than peace-time, or so I've heard.

 Testify wrote:
I'm not aware of any *serious* anti-semitism in the rest of Western Europe.

And the Jews were doing just fine in Poland/the USSR.

My only possible response is:
You must be fething joking.

@sebster thanks for finding this one.

 Ratbarf wrote:
Except they don't. At least not in Canada, and definetely not in America, Look at occupy wall street and the tea party, both were "fringe parties" that if they had been able to easily form their own parties would have done so and likely would have met with a recognizable amount of success. Instead the Tea Party had to push out establishment republicans to get their people in and the Occupy movement got effed in the a.

Except you're really, really missing the part where I said 'if there's any major kind of demand'. That's the really, really important thing here.

When all those Occupy kids got out and protested and nothing happened for six months, and then those kids just stopped protesting... that basically means they weren't that serious. The real, pressing demand for reform wasn't there.

Same thing with the Tea Party. They were co-opted into the Republican party because they were never really anything else, it was just a shoutier version of the same stuff the GOP had been pumping for years. You look at Freedomworks and the other groups who started the whole thing, and it's groups and people that were part of the Republican party bureaucracy. If there had been something genuinely unique from what the Republican party was offering, they never would have folded back into the party.


I mean, look at real protest movements around the world. You can have policemen and military firing on crowds, but if the grievance is real they'll step up and do it again and again, over and over, until they win. But here you have people saying 'oh but we can't get on a ballot without 50,000 signatures and that makes reform too hard. Well not if people really want the reform it doesn't.

The problem is, ultimately, that there is no truly great problem at all. There's stuff that'd be nice to have, but nothing that really demands hundreds of thousands, or millions of people, settle for nothing else but reform.

 sebster wrote:

Except you're really, really missing the part where I said 'if there's any major kind of demand'. That's the really, really important thing here.

When all those Occupy kids got out and protested and nothing happened for six months, and then those kids just stopped protesting... that basically means they weren't that serious. The real, pressing demand for reform wasn't there.

Sebster, protests in the US can reach the point of people setting themselves on fire (and that's being pretty serious about it) and still not generate a new political party. Why? Because the existing parties are very, very good at preventing that. Ever since Theodore Roosevelt scared the gak out of them, the major parties have manipulated voting laws and gerrymandered districts to stack the deck against new parties (and one another) as much as possible. And the other things they're very good at is blaming one another. Party A: We support X! See we introduced this bill that would have given you X but the other party shot it down! This way, no one leaves the party in question, as it looks like they're doing something about it, without ever actually doing anything about it.

 sebster wrote:

I mean, look at real protest movements around the world. You can have policemen and military firing on crowds, but if the grievance is real they'll step up and do it again and again, over and over, until they win. But here you have people saying 'oh but we can't get on a ballot without 50,000 signatures and that makes reform too hard. Well not if people really want the reform it doesn't.

Actually after a while they stop. Usually once the police start executing their families or hauling them off to gulags. The 'Arab Spring' was highly unusual in that it actually by and large succeeded. Compare it to anti-government protests in China.

 sebster wrote:

The problem is, ultimately, that there is no truly great problem at all. There's stuff that'd be nice to have, but nothing that really demands hundreds of thousands, or millions of people, settle for nothing else but reform.

Hmm... Ok, an example: Slavery. A big issue, right? The Republicans did eventually get in, but only because the Democrats were absolutely wracked by infighting so extreme that they could not even unite behind a single presidential candidate in 1860. However, the system was so rigged that even with the Democrats unable to present a solid front, the Republicans could not get their candidate on the ballot in 11 states. (and not all of them in the South) Lincoln basically won it in the electoral college.

Since then there have been, IIRC, two similar meltdowns in a major party in 150 years, one for each party. (the Roosevelt/Taft split and the brief 'Dixiecrat' break of southern democrats over Civil Rights). The way the laws are written and the winner take all nature of the electoral system in the US more or less guarantee there can only ever be two major parties. For a third party to be elected at all is highly unusual, and the only time a third party candidate has out performed one of the 'big two' at the federal level was Roosevelt beating Taft, the result being that both lost to Wilson.

 BaronIveagh wrote:
Sebster, protests in the US can reach the point of people setting themselves on fire (and that's being pretty serious about it) and still not generate a new political party. Why? Because the existing parties are very, very good at preventing that.

No-one set themself on fire because they wanted another political party. And no, the action of one person, no matter how extreme, isn't the measure of political support for an action.

Ever since Theodore Roosevelt scared the gak out of them, the major parties have manipulated voting laws and gerrymandered districts to stack the deck against new parties (and one another) as much as possible. And the other things they're very good at is blaming one another. Party A: We support X! See we introduced this bill that would have given you X but the other party shot it down! This way, no one leaves the party in question, as it looks like they're doing something about it, without ever actually doing anything about it.

And if they accept that and just go on with their lives, quietly hoping maybe it'll happen next time... then the demand honestly, truly isn't there.

Actually after a while they stop. Usually once the police start executing their families or hauling them off to gulags. The 'Arab Spring' was highly unusual in that it actually by and large succeeded. Compare it to anti-government protests in China.

Yeah, absolutely. That's the challenge of facing up to genuine government oppression, you can go through all that and still not win - look at the fate of so many dissidents in Iran today. Simply having

Since then there have been, IIRC, two similar meltdowns in a major party in 150 years, one for each party. (the Roosevelt/Taft split and the brief 'Dixiecrat' break of southern democrats over Civil Rights). The way the laws are written and the winner take all nature of the electoral system in the US more or less guarantee there can only ever be two major parties. For a third party to be elected at all is highly unusual, and the only time a third party candidate has out performed one of the 'big two' at the federal level was Roosevelt beating Taft, the result being that both lost to Wilson.

Those examples are evidence of my point. Slavery, despite any blockade against it, was eventually banned because it was, to more and more people every year, simply not an acceptable moral practice. Similarly with slavery, despite obstructionism from the minority, eventually civil rights for all were guaranteed. When something becomes a major issue for enough people, it happens in a democracy - even if the system works to make that hard.

The lack of such reforms today aren't evidence of a system that prevents such reforms, it's evidence that there is no such reform with such a pressing importance to the people.

 sebster wrote:

No-one set themself on fire because they wanted another political party. And no, the action of one person, no matter how extreme, isn't the measure of political support for an action.

No, they set themselves on fire because they believed in something. You seem to be putting the cart before the horse on this: The cause drives the party, not the party driving the cause. Large numbers of people can support a cause without being able to form a coherent political party. It takes more than just a cause to do that. It takes a cause, charismatic leaders, and an opportunity. Without those things, a political party will never form.

 sebster wrote:

And if they accept that and just go on with their lives, quietly hoping maybe it'll happen next time... then the demand honestly, truly isn't there.

Yes, actually it can be. You have to remember that human beings are, as a group, cowardly, panicky, stupid, animals.

 sebster wrote:

Those examples are evidence of my point. Slavery, despite any blockade against it, was eventually banned because it was, to more and more people every year, simply not an acceptable moral practice. Similarly with slavery, despite obstructionism from the minority, eventually civil rights for all were guaranteed. When something becomes a major issue for enough people, it happens in a democracy - even if the system works to make that hard.

The lack of such reforms today aren't evidence of a system that prevents such reforms, it's evidence that there is no such reform with such a pressing importance to the people.

Ok, deep breath: Actually you're wrong. Democracy would have kept it out indefinitely. If the system had function as it was designed, Lincoln would never have been elected. An things like Order 38 certainly would not have happened. You have to remember that Lincoln ran the country with almost dictatorial power.

To claim that Democracy brought an end to slavery is to ignore all the people that opposed Lincoln or the war who were deported, jailed, or executed. Even former members of Congress were tried and deported under this.

"General Order Number 38: That hereafter all persons found within our lines who commit acts for the benefit of the enemies of our country, will be tried as spies or traitors, and, if convicted, will suffer death. This order includes the following classes of persons: ... The habit of declaring sympathies for the enemy will no longer be tolerated in the department. Persons committing such offences will be at once arrested, with a view to being tried as above stated, or sent beyond our lines into the lines of their friends."

So, tell me how execution and deportation at hte whim of a military tribunal was a triumph of democracy?

 BaronIveagh wrote:
No, they set themselves on fire because they believed in something.

Yeah, lots of people believe in something very deeply. It doesn't mean their views have any serious traction with the greater population.

You seem to be putting the cart before the horse on this: The cause drives the party, not the party driving the cause. Large numbers of people can support a cause without being able to form a coherent political party. It takes more than just a cause to do that. It takes a cause, charismatic leaders, and an opportunity. Without those things, a political party will never form.

You have a country of 300 million people. There's no shortage of charismatic people. There isn't even a shortage of political parties. There's Socialist parties, Green parties, Libertarians and all sorts of whatever else. They just score effectively bugger all votes, because, quite frankly, their message just doesn't resonate with that many people.

Because there is, simply, the absence of a cause.

So, as you're know saying and I've said all along - the cause drives the party. And when you can't get politically relevant party together on an issue, it's most likely because your cause isn't very popular.

Yes, actually it can be. You have to remember that human beings are, as a group, cowardly, panicky, stupid, animals.

Which is why we've never had revolutions, or civil movements ever.

To claim that Democracy brought an end to slavery is to ignore all the people that opposed Lincoln or the war who were deported, jailed, or executed.

I think you might be making the mistake that the only political processes that affect things in a democracy are elections.

Point is, simply, the South felt threatened by the rising opposition to slavery. If that was one guy setting himself on fire, one time and no-one else really caring, or some college kids occupying Wall St for a week or two, then it wouldn't have amounted to gak. But the reality that this was a growing belief that wasn't going to get away was undeniable. What followed from there was, well dirty, ugly history. But what drove it was a real, meaningful belief among voters that the institution of slavery couldn't be accepted forever.

 sebster wrote:

Which is why we've never had revolutions, or civil movements ever.

Depends on your definition of "revolution" and "civil movement". Most revolutions, even successful ones, are not popular in that people support them, but in that they gain the consent of the governed through apathy or fear. In the end, it matters little to the common person who's name is on the door, or what they call themselves. The difference between tyranny and democracy is that the purges within the government happen on a time table.

 sebster wrote:
I think you might be making the mistake of thinking democracy is the only political process.

No, I was basing it off the words: " When something becomes a major issue for enough people, it happens in a democracy"

My point was democracy had little to do with it. Bizarrely, the end of slavery in the US owes more to the assumption of absolute power than it does to democracy.

The voters, after all, voted *for* slavery, overall. But due to the electoral college, they *got* abolition. Whole cities in the north rioted in the streets over it. Lincoln just sent the army in and had the rioters shot. It wasn't until after he was safly dead that the Supreme Court ruled that he and Congress had exceeded the powers granted them under the Constitution.

 BaronIveagh wrote:
Depends on your definition of "revolution" and "civil movement". Most revolutions, even successful ones, are not popular in that people support them, but in that they gain the consent of the governed through apathy or fear.

Not really. I mean, while the people weren't directly in control of everything that happened through the French Revolution, it was a broadly popular movement until, thanks to The Terror and general ineffectiveness of reforms, it stopped being such, and thereafter became unsustainable. The February Revolution was a similar demonstration of mass people power (the Bolshevik coup is another matter entirely).

In the end, it matters little to the common person who's name is on the door, or what they call themselves.

I would agree that fundamentally the people don't care who's name is on the door. The difference is that I'd add an 'except in unusual circumstances - most commonly when the lives the people have become accustomed to are threatened, but also when certain laws or institutions are no longer tolerable'. That's the point at which revolutions happen, and that's the point I've been making here - that the people can and do push for change, when it really matters.

No, I was basing it off the words: " When something becomes a major issue for enough people, it happens in a democracy"

My point was democracy had little to do with it.

Of course it did. If democracy didn't matter, then there would have been no fear in the South of the growing abolition movement ever forcing an end to slavery. That there wasn't an eventual vote, either election or referendum or whatever, doesn't matter. The simple fact is that any donkey could see what was coming, and that drove other political events into action.

The reason why slavery was ended in the USA is that the southern states correctly apprehended that the majority vote would eventually end it by the democratic process.

They did not like to wait for this so they broke away and started a war to preserve slavery under the guise of states' rights. By losing the war it was inevitable that slavery would be lost too.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
The reason why slavery was ended in the USA is that the southern states correctly apprehended that the majority vote would eventually end it by the democratic process.

They did not like to wait for this so they broke away and started a war to preserve slavery under the guise of states' rights. By losing the war it was inevitable that slavery would be lost too.

Never get in an Argument with a southern about the civil war and Slavery and states rights. Every year, my cousins from Georgia come up and pull a Nixon.

Deny deny deny.

sebster wrote:
Not really. I mean, while the people weren't directly in control of everything that happened through the French Revolution, it was a broadly popular movement until, thanks to The Terror and general ineffectiveness of reforms, it stopped being such, and thereafter became unsustainable. The February Revolution was a similar demonstration of mass people power (the Bolshevik coup is another matter entirely).

So.. there must not have been demand for the changes they represented? Since both were effectively failed efforts.

sebster wrote:
Of course it did. If democracy didn't matter, then there would have been no fear in the South of the growing abolition movement ever forcing an end to slavery. That there wasn't an eventual vote, either election or referendum or whatever, doesn't matter. The simple fact is that any donkey could see what was coming, and that drove other political events into action.

You have to understand that it wasn't a fear of them ending it through democracy. In any way shape or form. Even among Republicans, radical abolitionists were, initially, in the minority among those actually elected.

Kilkrazy wrote:
They did not like to wait for this so they broke away and started a war to preserve slavery under the guise of states' rights. By losing the war it was inevitable that slavery would be lost too.

It had nothing to do with either. Slavery, preserving, the Union, these were a pretext used by those looking to dictate the future of a nation. In the end, it was about power and who would be the ruling class in America for the next century. Even the south admitted slavery would most likely end, as large scale slavery was slowly becoming economically non-viable. It simply cost too much to feed and cloth all those people compared to what they were earning. It probably would have ended sooner, if not for the invention of the cotton gin.

Piston Honda wrote:
Never get in an Argument with a southern about the civil war and Slavery and states rights.

Sorry, I'm not an American, and even if I was, I'm from the North.

 Bromsy wrote:
I'm against Catalan independence. Barcelona was one of the most awesome cities I visited in Europe, and just about the only one where I never got a single whiff of the "Oh, an American... sigh" vibe. Largely because they have the rest of Spain, right there, to vent all their hatred on. It's nice.

If they became independent, I fear that the sentiment would crop up there as well.

From what I've read on the 'net Catalan Independence is a joke, in that its more of the Catalan gov't waving it around to try and influence Madrid for money and so on

From what I've read on the 'net Catalan Independence is a joke, in that its more of the Catalan gov't waving it around to try and influence Madrid for money and so on

Quebec does the same thing, although when the government called their bluff it turned out they weren't bluffing. Though they still vote PQ time and again to show displeasure with the government.