Yes, in the ever more ominously unsettled (dis-)United States of Donald J. Trump, I recently went to the “hate America” rally in New York City. Or at least that’s what Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson insisted it was. Who knew that so unbelievably many Americans, millions of us across the United States, would “hate” this country enough to go out and march in the recent No Kings demonstrations, even in places where we might have feared being in distinct danger from the troops of “our” president?
In the days before the latest No Kings demonstrations, no matter whom I talked to or where they lived, they seemed to be planning to go to their local version of that march or rally. My neighbors, other city people, suburbanites, even friends living in the countryside. And despite the people I knew who had marched in the first round of No Kings rallies, as I did, that wasn’t true then. This time, just about everybody turned out, or so it seemed!
Oh, wait! I suddenly thought of someone who wasn’t there. Oops, let me take that back. He was there, he just didn’t know it. He was on sign after sign after sign, doing this, doing that, doing the inconceivable—or do I mean, sadly enough, the all-too-conceivable?
Take this one that I copied down, for example:
“Tyrant
Rapist
Usurper
Madman
Pedophile”
And I’m sure you know just what the first letters of those five words spell out!
“Only Butterflies Should Become Monarchs”
For me, that march began not at 50th Street and Seventh Avenue where I came out of the subway, but at the subway platform uptown where I was waiting to get on a train to the march. I suddenly noticed that the elderly woman (and I say that advisedly as an elderly man) standing next to me was carrying a handmade sign—the first of literally thousands I would see that day—that said, “No dictators, no kings” and, when I asked her about it, she promptly replied, “I would have called Trump a cunt, but he lacks the depth and warmth.”
I finally made it off that subway train with literally hundreds of other soon-to-be protesters and ever so slowly managed to make my way up the packed stairs onto an instantly packed Seventh Avenue at the edge of New York’s Times Square. At least as far as I could tell, President Trump wasn’t there himself, preparing to march down Seventh Avenue in his old hometown of New York City with staggering numbers of other New Yorkers and me. News reports, based on police estimates, suggested that “more than 100,000” of us in my hometown and “nearly 7 million” Americans in “more than 2,700” demonstrations nationwide actively protested—and when it comes to anti-Trump demonstrations, those doing the figures never exaggerate but almost invariably underestimate. (All I can tell you is that it was a stunning vista, with protesters, unbelievable numbers of whom carried homemade signs, literally packing the streets in a rally that would stretch from 47th Street to 14th Street with no space to spare.)
Despite what Donald Trump may think, this is no longer his America in a country where a genuine majority of us “disapprove” of him in the latest polls and—best guess—more of us will do so in the months to come.
And yet, though he wasn’t in New York that day, it isn’t that Donald Trump never appears anywhere. In fact, only the previous Saturday, I’d actually (almost) seen him. I was visiting an old friend in Washington, DC, and we were taking a walk along a canal that leads to the Potomac River when suddenly we came upon a man with an elaborate camera on a stand and began chatting. He was, it turned out, working for a TV news network and his camera was pointed at an extended grassy area across the Potomac, which, he told us, was a golf course. At that very moment, it seemed, America’s king—oops, sorry, Donald Trump—was evidently playing a round of golf there and the cameraman was waiting for him to make it to the seventh hole, which, he said, was right where we were then looking.
Hey, and it was a relief to know that Donald Trump, just two years younger than me, was outdoors, too. As it happens, in my 81-plus years on this planet, I’ve only been on a golf course once in my life. Still, on that recent trip, I was indeed nearly in the presence of “our” president who, on the weekend of the No Kings demonstrations, was at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida for a $1 million-a-plate dinner and undoubtedly playing golf again. And on that more recent Saturday, when I took that long walk (or, in terms of pacing, more like a crawl) down Seventh Avenue in his former hometown, from 47th street to 14th street, with—or so it seemed to me—a trillion other New Yorkers, I felt as if I were again in “his” presence, given all the fantastic handmade signs people were carrying, which said things like: “Only butterflies should become Monarchs” (with, of course, an image of the president on it).
Or how about the two women in those dinosaur costumes with signs that said: “Eat the Tyrant,” “Eat the Oligarchs”? Or the poster that said “King of Fools” or, for that matter, the one that had “Kings belong in fairy tales, not government” scrawled on it. And here are just a few of the others I scribbled down (something I could have done steadily for hours without ever coming close to copying them all): “Hey, Donald! George called and he’s pissed” (with an image of George Washington); “Keep your tiny hands off our Constitution” (with two tiny hands sketched on the sign); “No crowns for clowns” (with a drawing of Trump with a crown flipping off his head); and there were endless signs that had yellow king’s crowns with lines slashed through them. Or what about “King of Fools”? There were also a remarkable number with swastikas on them, while the phrase “the Turd Reich” was distinctly popular.
And don’t forget the woman carrying a sign that read, “The Pilgrims were undocumented.” Then there was that little girl with a handmade sign of her own that said, “The President shouldn’t bully,” while her mother carried one reading, “May I please remind you that it does not say RSVP on the Statue of Liberty.” Oh, and don’t forget “Grab ’em by the Epstein files”; “No Kings since 1776”; “Put Trump on ICE” (or “I prefer my ICE crushed” or “Fight climate change, send ICE to Antarctica”); “The American revolution was the first No Kings rally!!”; “We don’t bow to billionaires”; “No Fuhrers!” (with a swastika crossed out); and from a white man of a certain age, “My Dad Fought Fascism, too!” (And yes, I asked, and his father, like mine, did indeed fight in the Second World War.)
And then there was a Hispanic protester carrying a sign that said (movingly), “I’m using my one Saturday off to be here. #No Kings.” And don’t forget that image of an umbrella with the words, “I can’t stand the reign.”
Mind you, since more or less every other person was carrying a sign of some sort, there were literally thousands more of them, mostly handmade. Meanwhile, as we walked, chants like “No KKK, No Fascist USA, No ICE!,” “This is what Democracy looks like!,” “What do we want? Trump out! When do we want it? Now!” rang out constantly.
The march was so big that, when I finally made it to 14th Street, my son, who had come to the rally later than me, was still at 42nd Street on a wide avenue still utterly packed with marchers. And consider all of this, nationwide, a reminder that, despite what Donald Trump may think, this is no longer his America in a country where a genuine majority of us “disapprove” of him in the latest polls and—best guess—more of us will do so in the months to come.
King Trump?
Sadly, as many of the signs at that rally suggested, this country seems to have a future that’s anything but bright, however low the president’s approval ratings may sink. (They’ve more or less leveled off for now, but don’t expect that to last.) And yes, he clearly does have the urge, whatever Americans may or may not approve of, to rule as the equivalent of a king. He and his key officials have already taken a significant amount of power away from Congress and, worse yet, he’s been itching to use the US military, the National Guard, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, however haphazardly, in cities with Democratic mayors whom he obviously dislikes. And that’s something, if it finally happens, that no American since the Civil War has ever had to experience. Of course, he’s already asked the Supreme Court to permit him to federalize state National Guard troops and send them into Democratic cities to support his immigration enforcement and mass deportation plans.
While it’s all still experimental (if such a word can even be used for it), from the Caribbean Sea to Chicago, President Trump and his crew seem intent on militarizing and—if such a word can even be created—authoritarianizing the world he (more or less) rules over. Certainly, immigration raids are growing ever more militarized with, in one recent case, masked US law enforcement agents armed with rifles “rappelling from a Black Hawk helicopter and swarming [a] 130-unit building in Chicago.” As that city’s mayor, Brandon Johnson, would say afterward, “This raid wasn’t about public safety. It was certainly not about immigration. This was about a show of authoritarianism, a forceful display of tyranny.”
How long before such AI-generated fake videos might indeed become an eerie Trump- and Vance-generated version of reality?
And mind you, we’re not quite a year into Donald Trump’s second term in office. Under the circumstances, three more years could prove a long, long time for him and his crew to be able to do their damnedest, or perhaps even literally crown him as the first American king. After all, back in February, he had already posted an image of himself at Truth Social with a king’s crown on. Only recently (and all too ominously), in response to the No Kings demonstrations, he posted a fake AI video of himself wearing a king’s crown and flying a fighter plane (with “King Trump” emblazoned on it) over what’s probably Times Square in New York City filled with protesters and dropping what’s clearly a bomb-load of literal crap on them. Soon after that, he reposted another AI-generated video that Vice President JD Vance had put up (with the song “Hail to the King” by the heavy metal band Avenged Sevenfold in the background). In it, he crowns himself and then unsheathes a sword, while those in front of him, including former Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, go down on their knees and bow their heads to him.
So much for No Kings.
The question, of course, is: How long before such AI-generated fake videos might indeed become an eerie Trump- and Vance-generated version of reality? After all, in the wake of the recent congressional shutdown, we’ve found ourselves in a political world in which Congress functionally no longer seems to exist.
In some sense, everything is now being Trumped (or perhaps that should be put in capital letters: TRUMPED). It will certainly be (ominously) interesting to see just how long he can both trample on and Trumple on the American people.
Think of him as golfing while Rome burns.
