It’s that time of year again: “No Kings” Protest weekend, otherwise known as International Poster Board Industry Support Day. My local News4-Jax ran a story headlined, “Hundreds participate in Jacksonville ‘No Kings’ rally against Trump administration.” Hundreds. In a metro area of 1.7 million. At least they enjoyed nice weather.
On Saturday, I found myself stuck in traffic behind a large group of people dressed like they were preparing to scale Mount Everest for a costume contest, but who were actually just marching toward the local park to bravely declare that America has a king. Apparently. Actually, we’re not sure yet what exactly they were complaining about. Scientists continue to study it.
It was the third “No Kings” protest gala, a nationwide event in which, according to corporate media, 8 million Concerned Citizens gathered across 3,300 locations to stand up against the Monarchy that, as far as I can tell, we do not actually have.
I am not making this up. The premise, if you can call it that, of the “No Kings” protest is that President Trump is acting like a literal monarch. Now, I am just a working lawyer, not a constitutional scholar. My primary qualification for commenting on the organization of the federal government is that I once successfully assembled a gas grill without having any leftover parts. But I am fairly certain that actual kings do not have to deal with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Or with this:
If we actually had a king, things would be very different. For one thing, we would all have to wear pantaloons. (The Pantaloons would, by the way, be an excellent name for a folk music band. Just saying.)
But alas, there were no pantaloons on Saturday. Instead, there was a lot of chanting, some of it explicit. Explicit chanting is how you know a political movement is legitimate. If you just stand there quietly holding a sign that says “I AM UPSET,” people might mistake you for a guy waiting for his wife outside IKEA. You have to chant. Explicitly.
The protests united gender studies majors, elderly boomers, hardened Marxists, drag queens, and a large group of adult children in inflatable costumes who wish Halloween were a daily event. They were united in their anger about many things. Like immigration, the situation in Iran, and the fact that we are not a communist autocracy. You could tell they were serious because of the sheer volume of artisanal signage. The real winner this weekend was not Democracy; it was Big Sharpie.
I carefully observed some of the coverage in trad-media. One protester —who was wearing a $400 Patagonia jacket, which is the official uniform of the Oppressed— was yelling into a megaphone about how we are currently living in a brutal dictatorship.
This is a fascinating type of dictatorship. It is the kind of dictatorship where you can organize a massive, highly publicized public rally to yell at the dictator, and the dictator’s police force actually blocks off traffic so you can yell more safely. In historical dictatorships, like the ones run by actual kings, traffic control was generally handled by guys with halberds, and the penalty for yelling at the king was that your head was relocated to a spike.
But modern oppression is different. Modern oppression means you have to march for three miles in high heels, take a selfie for Instagram to prove you are on the Right Side of History, and then try to find a bathroom that doesn’t require you to buy a $9 latte to get the door code.
Resisting modern oppression also seems to mean supporting things like vaccine passports to enter grocery stores, FEMA camps, misgendering laws, social media censorship, cheering on political violence, and forced face masking (except for ICE agents). It also apparently means you can vote for a cabbage-brained candidate on Sunday, and on Tuesday, the Party retires the old man and crowns a cackling Queen. Efficiency! No voting required.
Queens, yes. Kings, no. But never mind. I won’t call the movement incoherent outrage. That gives it too much credit. They can’t even settle on the no-kings thing. NPR headline, 2013, when Obama flexed his executive power during a shutdown to nominate nauseating Janet Yellen for Treasury:
See? In 2013, it was good to be the king. Now, not so much, apparently, when it’s the other guy wearing the crown.
In the end, this weekend’s “No Kings” protests achieved their primary objective, which was to make everyone involved feel very good about themselves, and to ensure that nobody could get to the Olive Garden for lunch. The republic survived. The poster boards are being recycled. And the “king” remains enthroned in the White House, probably eating a Big Mac and definitely not wearing pantaloons.
Which is a shame, really. The pantaloons, I mean. That would be kind of fun.
