Humor & Life Quote by David Cross

Activism is easy until you have to share the sidewalk with your own side. That’s the sting David Cross bakes into this line: a confession delivered like a shrug, but sharpened into critique. He signals bona fides upfront - “I believe in the cause” - then pivots to the real punchline, where politics stops being a belief system and becomes a social experience. Marching isn’t just expressing values; it’s choosing proximity.

The phrase “those people” does heavy, ugly work on purpose. It’s vague enough to let the audience fill in the cast: the purists, the slogan-barkers, the fringe ideologues, the chronically online made flesh. Cross isn’t taking aim at protest itself so much as the coalition math that protests require. Every mass movement is an improvised alliance between people who agree on the headline and violently disagree on the footnotes. “Compromise” here isn’t legislative; it’s psychological. It’s the swallowing of irritation, the management of embarrassment, the quiet fear of being guilt-by-association’d by the loudest person holding your banner.

Context matters: New York and Washington are protest capitals, where demonstrations double as performance and networking, where cameras and self-mythology are always nearby. Cross, a comedian with a long record of left-leaning commentary, is poking at the left’s self-image: the idea that righteousness automatically confers good taste, good strategy, or even basic tolerability. The intent isn’t to dunk on a cause; it’s to expose the uncomfortable truth that solidarity often feels like social compromise - and that discomfort is part of the price of showing up.