Coming back from a funeral a couple of weeks ago, I asked the driver, Robert Khruschev Mshana, how he got his middle name. He told me he was born with no hair on his head, and his father said he looked like Nikita Khruschev. Then he asked me why Americans elected Donald Trump again. I said I’d been asking myself that same question since last November and still hadn’t come up with a good answer.
At the time that we were making that drive, from Bagamoyo to Dar es Salaam, the No Kings protest rallies were starting in approximately 2,700 locations across the US (and in some other countries as well), with around seven million people taking part. It may have been the largest rally ever held in the land of the round doorknobs.
From the videos, it appears they had a jolly good time: marching bands and folks dressed up like bananas, chickens, and the Statue of Liberty. My oldest friend, even older than I am, a retired US Air Force fighter pilot and commercial airline captain, had his ‘NO KINGS’ sign out in Smalltown, North Carolina. An 83-year-old Vietnam veteran sent some rally videos he took in Miami.
A muted official response
The Republicans kept very quiet for the most part. Trump said beforehand: “I hear very few people are going to be there…”. Vice President JD Vance and defense secretary – sorry, I mean war secretary – Pete Hegseth were at Camp Pendleton, where marines had been deployed to Los Angeles in June. Neither mentioned the rally going on just down the road.
That left the third-in-line, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, to come up with a catchy label. “I encourage you to watch – we call it the ‘hate America’ rally – that will happen Saturday. Let’s see who shows up for that.” He figured it would be “antifa types,” people who “hate capitalism” and “Marxists in full display”.
Yes, Mike, all those seven million hate America. That fellow dressed as a banana must be antifa. The 83-year-old Vietnam vet/retired stockbroker must hate capitalism. And my buddy, who I’ve known since the age of 12, has been a secret Marxist for decades.
Maybe Mike doesn’t know, the term ‘antifa’ is short for ‘anti-fascist’. There is no Antifa organization like there is, say, the ultra-far right, very fascist-like Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers. Mike, if you are anti-antifa, does that mean you are pro-fascist?
Trump’s smashing diversions
Possibly to counter the massive media coverage of the No Kings protest rallies, Trump decided to do something to divert our attention. In fact he did two things: one abhorrent and one absurd.
First, he demolished the East Wing of the White House to make way for his golden ballroom – a giant surprise to almost everyone except the wrecking equipment operators. The spectacle churned my stomach and I live 14,000 km away – 80 years of history destroyed in a few days.
Not surprisingly Republicans defended this abomination. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said: “Nearly every single president who has lived in this beautiful White House … has made modernizations and renovations of their own.” Just some minor changes – no reason to clutch your pearls. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent “completely endorsed” the destruction. Why? Apparently because “The president is ‘a master builder’”. Not a single Republican lawmaker condemned this desecration of ‘the People’s House’.
While busy trashing the East Wing, Trump found time to announce he is demanding $230mn from his own Department of Justice in damages for investigations into his “high crimes and misdemeanors”, like the illegal possession of highly classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and inciting insurrection on 6 January 2021. Not even Beckett or Ionesco could make this up. Trump himself said it best: “I’m suing myself.”
Is America at the tipping point?
It seems America, the greatest nation on earth, is hurtling down the road to authoritarianism. Congress is shut down and 700,000 federal workers not paid. Farmers are going bankrupt due to Trump tariffs. Rural health facilities closing. Lines growing longer at food banks. Flights cancelled because air traffic controllers are not at work. Millions upon millions are about to lose their health insurance or see premiums skyrocket. Soldiers and masked men in military gear are attacking immigrants and citizens alike. What next?
I recently learned about the 3.5% rule. Harvard professor Erica Chenoweth studied protest movements from 1900 to 2006 and found that if 3.5% of the population determine to stand up to authoritarian rule, they almost always succeed. In the US that would come to 12mn people out on the streets protesting the Trump administration’s unethical, immoral and often illegal actions.
The National Institute of Health estimates MAGA (Make America Great Again) comprises 33.6% of Republicans, or about 16% of adult Americans. Progressives make up 12% of the Democratic Party, or 6% of adult Americans. To repeat, 6% of adult Americans identify as progressives.
Let’s make good trouble
Trump and his minions are not pursuing a policy agenda. They are principally interested in power and money. Disrupt these two goals and they will very likely fold like a deck of stacked cards. Look what happened when ABC/Paramount pulled Jimmy Kimmel off the air because he said something Trump didn’t like. Folks raised a hullaballoo and Kimmel was back on air just a few days later. Trump is a bully. When he meets resistance, it’s TACO (Trump always chickens out).
Back in my wildwood days, we demonstrated for civil rights. We sat in. We marched. We sang ‘We Shall Overcome’. We engaged in civil disobedience, or what the great civil rights leader John Lewis called ‘good trouble’. We didn’t do it once or twice or on special occasions. We did it every chance we got. And that good trouble resulted in the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
So let’s seize the moment and call the two No Kings protest rallies what they really are: a good start.
