by Donald Jeffries, “I Protest”:

I’m fond of quoting Robert F. Kennedy’s greatest speech in my view, the one where he suggested billions of “tiny ripples of hope” could conceivably come together in a giant tidal wave, to defeat the mightiest tyranny and oppression. Now, he was speaking in South Africa, against Apartheid. Post-Apartheid South Africa isn’t exactly a paradise.

But the point he made was a timeless bit of optimism, perhaps hopium. The little people really can win, because there are so many more of them than the rich authoritarians controlling their destinies. But they have never come together, and probably never will. They’ve shown they have no tipping point. The experiment conducted by Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram was begun in 1961. Milgram found that a shocking 80 percent of people will obey any order from an authority figure. Since the population wasn’t quite as dumb or controlled in the 1960s as it is now, we can safely assume that the figure isn’t any lower in 2023.