These days, we don't go on many protests. That's down to a combination of advancing years and an aversion to police tactics that make any militant protest a fraught and increasingly dangerous activity for us. These days, we prefer practical community based activity such as this:
I swore off protests long ago, seeing them as a waste of time and energy, as well as potentially bad for your health. People walk the alloted/organised/arranged with the authorities route and gather to blah blah, blah; the police get paid extra time and Boisterous Bonus and have a chance to dress up like Judge Dread and vent some spleen, and take lots of analysable video footage, then everyone (that has one) goes home to watch it misrepresented on the news. I could go on. You make a fair point about authority previously being okay with that state of affairs, but I'm not sure you satisfactorily answer the question of why now. Granted there may have been a broader spectrum on the streets recently, but the police never had a problem with steamrollering over grannies or women holding babies, both of which I've personally witnessed, safe in the knowledge that it would never be shown on the news and that non-MSM reports wouldn't much leak out of those echo chambers. I'm pretty sure that if the powers that shouldn't be didn't want them to happen, they wouldn't. People are allowed to let off steam, because the release of social pressure benefits the system. Now if that crowd were to occupy, and I don't mean the OTPOR manual-copying manufactured social safety valve release circus, I mean as in sit-in (but yes, stay on your feet), the Old Bailey or The Houses of Parliament, now that would put the wind up them and make some waves. But still short-lived and potentially injurious to health. Before the Pantomime I saw a general strike as being the only hope the people had of forcing a change. But now I'm not so sure. Teachers and nurses, once two influential union forces capitulated, especially the nurses, but they had a real mind job done on them, and many other employment sectors had it demonstrated how non-essential they were. But those non-essentials and members of tooth-pulled unions could support other more essential cogs in the machine, like farmers or lorry drivers, (who need to see that the writing's on the wall for them and do something with what they've got before self-driving systems take that power out of their hands), if they chose to stop turning. But as you say divide and rule is an old game that they're good at, and unfortunately it's part of the intrinsic programming of folk in Blighted, ahem, Blighty. One of the lowest points of the Pantomime for me was reading how the national hotline set up by the police for people to phone in and report people for "breaking lockdown regulations" had to shut down within days of it going up due to the system being overwhelmed with calls. Intrinsic and easily tweaked. Apologies for the descent into negativity.
The divide and rule topics are coming at us so thick and fast these days it's hard to keep up! The big one last October is now fracturing into even more splinters, for example because of views within the Left on self-immolation as a political act. Tucker Carlson and Putin have successfully confused a large portion of the Right and other Western regime critics. When you stand back and look at it as you suggest, it's utterly astonishing that we keep on falling for it. Will it have to continue until enough of us finally get it? I can empathise with your feeling of banging your head against a wall!
I swore off protests long ago, seeing them as a waste of time and energy, as well as potentially bad for your health. People walk the alloted/organised/arranged with the authorities route and gather to blah blah, blah; the police get paid extra time and Boisterous Bonus and have a chance to dress up like Judge Dread and vent some spleen, and take lots of analysable video footage, then everyone (that has one) goes home to watch it misrepresented on the news. I could go on. You make a fair point about authority previously being okay with that state of affairs, but I'm not sure you satisfactorily answer the question of why now. Granted there may have been a broader spectrum on the streets recently, but the police never had a problem with steamrollering over grannies or women holding babies, both of which I've personally witnessed, safe in the knowledge that it would never be shown on the news and that non-MSM reports wouldn't much leak out of those echo chambers. I'm pretty sure that if the powers that shouldn't be didn't want them to happen, they wouldn't. People are allowed to let off steam, because the release of social pressure benefits the system. Now if that crowd were to occupy, and I don't mean the OTPOR manual-copying manufactured social safety valve release circus, I mean as in sit-in (but yes, stay on your feet), the Old Bailey or The Houses of Parliament, now that would put the wind up them and make some waves. But still short-lived and potentially injurious to health. Before the Pantomime I saw a general strike as being the only hope the people had of forcing a change. But now I'm not so sure. Teachers and nurses, once two influential union forces capitulated, especially the nurses, but they had a real mind job done on them, and many other employment sectors had it demonstrated how non-essential they were. But those non-essentials and members of tooth-pulled unions could support other more essential cogs in the machine, like farmers or lorry drivers, (who need to see that the writing's on the wall for them and do something with what they've got before self-driving systems take that power out of their hands), if they chose to stop turning. But as you say divide and rule is an old game that they're good at, and unfortunately it's part of the intrinsic programming of folk in Blighted, ahem, Blighty. One of the lowest points of the Pantomime for me was reading how the national hotline set up by the police for people to phone in and report people for "breaking lockdown regulations" had to shut down within days of it going up due to the system being overwhelmed with calls. Intrinsic and easily tweaked. Apologies for the descent into negativity.
The divide and rule topics are coming at us so thick and fast these days it's hard to keep up! The big one last October is now fracturing into even more splinters, for example because of views within the Left on self-immolation as a political act. Tucker Carlson and Putin have successfully confused a large portion of the Right and other Western regime critics. When you stand back and look at it as you suggest, it's utterly astonishing that we keep on falling for it. Will it have to continue until enough of us finally get it? I can empathise with your feeling of banging your head against a wall!