On Saturday, America experienced perhaps the largest single day of protests in its history. The No Kings rallies were everywhere, from major cities to some of the smallest rural towns in the reddest of red states. America has spoken, and it has said loud and clear that the United States does not bow to kings, and the weak men who currently hold power do not have the consent of the governed. Not even a little.
But perhaps the most encouraging thing about the protests is their tone. In the face of all the violent rhetoric and in defiance of a president who is doing everything he can to cause as much bloodshed as he can, the protesters are peaceful. Actually, they’re more than peaceful. They are joyful.
For months now, Trump has been sending troops into American cities to combat fictional crime waves that only he can see. And pundits everywhere have been warning us that these invasions are designed to lull us into normalizing these tactics over time. Trump is conditioning us so we will be less likely to push back when he eventually invokes The Insurrection Act in order to clamp down on government, seize elections, and essentially install himself as the first American dictator. But all the authoritarian trial runs in Chicago, Los Angeles, Memphis, Portland, etc. have not convinced us that nonsense is normalcy. Instead, they have trained us to resist. And along the way, the leader we needed has emerged.
During the protests against Trump’s attempted takeover of Portland, a true patriot in an inflatable frog suit did the thing that fake alphas in combat gear fear most. He mocked them. He stood in front of their lines, stared into the cold dead eyes of the new American brownshirts, and he danced. It was just a little wiggle, but it was also exactly what we needed.
The frog suit has spawned a legion of inflatable heroes in cities large and small, coast to freedom-loving coast. People aren’t just showing up to protest against authoritarianism – they are showing up to defy the weak old men who are trying to take power away from the American people and keep it for themselves.
Trump wants us to be afraid. That much is clear. He’s attacking our freedoms and doing everything he can to intimidate us. With that goal as the backdrop for this weekend’s protests, it becomes an act of true heroism to stand up to that aggression by replacing the fear they want us to feel with the joy of friends and neighbors gathering to support each other. Trump is trying to divide us, and he is failing because instead of running away from his goons, we are instead celebrating American freedoms right in their hateful little faces.
And at the center of the celebration, you’ll find a patriot in an inflatable frog suit, dancing with some unicorns and maybe a T-Rex or two.
God Bless America.
Brett Pransky is a writer, a teacher, a father, and a husband, but rarely in that order. He spends his days amplifying the voices of freedom and democracy as an Editor right here at The Political Voices Network, and he spends his nights trying to fix the world one clever sentence at a time.