Protest holds a special place of honor in our great American experiment. Dr. Martin Luther King’s leadership awakened our nation — and the watching world — to the absolute necessity of building a more just and colorblind society. King’s brand of protest was effective — it was principled, driven by necessity, and laser-focused on its objective.
We’re now locked into a poor imitation. Democrats, after their stinging loss in the 2024 election, have chosen protest as the path out of their political wilderness. That’s no surprise— they are experienced in the mechanics of protest, and it’s a way to rally their troops to put their brand back in the spotlight.
But in this case, it’s a movement without an underlying cause. Today’s protests may not seem aimless, but they are. What matters is not the grievance of the moment, readily replaceable — it’s the anger, the uproar, the visibility, the protest for protest’s sake.
So, here we go again. Angry mobs. Cars burning. Buildings defaced. Projectiles of all kinds (rocks, soup cans, bricks) thrown at authorities, traffic blocked, looting, waving foreign flags, and desecrating our own.
The current spate of protests in Los Angeles started on Memorial Day night and immediately devolved into a pitched battle with police. The temperature has been ratcheting up since then, with six nights of violent protests in LA last week. Reportedly, this round of protests is a spontaneous reaction to the Trump administration’s increasingly aggressive actions to find and deport illegal immigrants.
We’re told by the media and city and state politicians that the protests’ ferocity (i.e., violence) is a direct consequence of the government’s actions, and that the movement’s spread from city to city is another indicator of the intensity of public disgust at our government’s behavior. And we’re told that the president’s action to dispatch National Guard troops to help quell the violence escalated it even further.
In short, we’re expected to believe that what erupted last week in LA was spontaneous, provoked, mostly peaceful, and constitutionally permitted protest.
Sorry, that excuse is wearing thin — we’ve seen this all before. Just two months ago, we saw similarly violent action leveled at then-DOGE leader Elon Musk, vandalizing Tesla dealerships, torching Teslas, smashing windows, ugly confrontations with Tesla owners, and the same roving, raging, sign-carrying mobs.
For the year before that, we watched angry mobs in cities and universities around the country waving Hamas flags, burning American flags, enthusiastically supporting Hamas (an international terrorist organization) in their opposition to our Israeli allies, all with the same confrontational demeanor as displayed in LA in recent weeks. Ironically, leftists’ reaction to the unspeakable violence visited on Israeli Jews on October 7, 2023, is violence targeting Jews right here in the USA.
The ongoing string of protests in LA and elsewhere led directly to Saturday’s main event, the “No Kings” Day — about 2,000 organized protests coast-to-coast, reportedly attended by millions. CNN and the New York Times called them anti-Trump protests; the No Kings website (they have one) billed it as a “Day of Defiance.”
No Kings Day was scheduled for June 14, American Flag Day, for the express purpose of upstaging the Trump administration’s long-planned Army250 Parade, a celebration of the U.S. Army’s 250th birthday.
I’m not so sure of the political wisdom in these dangerous times of casting shade on the magnificent Army that protects us all — we’ll see how that plays out. But in any case, Saturday’s No Kings events were civil and impressive, the largest political assembly of Democrats since the election, suggesting that they are back on their feet and hitting stride. Evidently, they were keen on showing their dissatisfaction with everything Trump.
The organizers had the good sense to throttle back on violence — their website exhorts attendees to be nonviolent and non-combative, and with a few exceptions, the millions of protesters complied. More importantly, there were no reports of flag burning at any of the thousands of protest sites.
But to someone on the outside looking in (me), the No Kings theme seems to be simply a rebranding of the “Trump is Hitler” theme that flamed out spectacularly last November. As described by their website, their newly hatched movement mobilizes opposition to authoritarianism, executive overreach, and its imminent threat to democracy. Left-leaning media reports warned us of the risk posed by an emerging dictatorship, a not-so-subtle reminder of how Nazi Germany threatened the world.
It’s catchy, but I’m not sure the “No Kings” spin has legs. Like it or not, what we’ve got is a president who is seen by many (with reason) to be abrasive, blunt, and gruff, and who unapologetically takes actions that many don’t like — but which happen to be precisely what he told the electorate he would do if elected. By definition, that’s democracy in action. My guess (generally supported by opinion poll results) is that most Americans want exactly that. They see Trump as a doer, not a dictator.
No Kings is a protest with no real mission other than to be there, be seen, and vent unhappiness. It is not a protest FOR anything, it’s a protest AGAINST something — and that something is simply the presence in the Oval Office of Donald Trump, whom they consider to be the root of all evil. It is also clear that there is nothing Trump can do, short of disappearing, that will assuage them.
That unspoken wish that Trump disappear is itself dangerous. Twice, he’s been the target of near-miss assassination attempts. On Saturday, millions of people made it clear that they would like him to be gone. I don’t believe there was any malice in that sentiment, but we can be sure that there is a nutcase out there somewhere who would love to be the “hero” who makes that happen.
Reverend King had a dream, a dream that was clear and sharp and specific, and one that he believed could be achieved in this nation. He shared that vision with his nonviolent protesters, and they followed it with single-minded devotion.
In stark contrast, the endless, unfocused anti-Trump protest is getting tiresome. On Saturday, Democrats got our attention. They’re angry. Got it. Now, please stop burning cars and flags.
