One of These Things is Not Like the Other

By now, we all know that the Pink Panther flipping off French riot cops was a too-good-to-be-true AI fabrication, while the Portland Frog facing down Trump’s ICE gestapo is 100% legit — and has balls of steel under that inflatable costume. But questions remain about the long-term strategies of the two protest movements they symbolize.

The entirely real Portland Frog (who goes by Seth Todd when he isn’t being an inflatable superhero) has become emblematic of the Indivisible/No Kings movement that has arisen in response to the Trump Regime’s blatant unconstitutionality and inhumanity. The entirely fake Pink Panther has become a media mascot of protests currently happening in a country where they really mean it when they say “no kings” — and where protesters understand that violence against property is sometimes the only way to get the attention of the propertied class.

This is not to say that Testset is advocating French-style street violence in U.S. protests against the regime. Predictably, Trump has offered his unasked opinion that the French protests are entirely the work of immigrants of a certain color and ‘deranged’ leftists — and suggested that France should engage in exactly the sort of martial law crackdown and draconian border control he would like to see in the United States. It is rather less a question of ‘if’ he will attempt some…